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Boundary Waters Quetico Forum Fishing Forum Alpine Lake |
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10/18/2020 03:09PM
A couple of buddies and I are planning our usual trip up to the BWCA around alpine lake for the new year. This year we are determined to not get skunked fishing and just wondering if anyone has any experience ice fishing around this area. Any info helps!
12/07/2020 05:55PM
Well we are looking for Lakers along with a pretty decent hike in. The destination is definitely subject to change, but we are looking for a decent bit of solitude and some trout. Any ideas of where that could be would be very appreciated.
12/08/2020 11:50AM
Tuscarora Lake usually has a pretty good trail set to it as it gets a decent number of visitors in the winter. There are some hills but it seems to be popular for good reason. Tuscarora Lodge usually makes sure the trail is in good condition, and they also put up a lot of winter oriented videos on Youtube. If you want to head further, you could certainly push on to Crooked or even Gillis, which may or may not have a trail set - but that just makes it a bit more interesting.
12/17/2020 01:01PM
oof...I would not want to hike all the way across seagull to get into alpine. If you are going for lakers, Seagull is where you want to be anyways. If you are trying to get away from the crowds, you shouldn't need to go any further than the west side of Three Mile Island, or, if you are super ambitious the west side of Seagull. We camped and fished near Miles Island (up by the palisades) a week after statewide trout opener (MLK weekend) a few years ago and only ran into one other group. We had great fishing in 60' of water.
That northern section from the campground has a lot of pinch-points that will remain open pretty much all winter (there are easy areas to hike around the water on land) so be very careful if you go in that route. It is closer than going in at the public launch and much less exposed. As it is quite sheltered up there, we ran into a lot of deep snow drifts, which made the two mile hike in quite grueling. I seem to remember it taking 3-4 hours to do that short hike. Walk 100 yards...rest for 5 minutes...walk for 100 yards....and so on.
The palisades are absolutely gorgous in the winter, I would recommend at least hiking by if you aren't going to camp nearby. Again, if you get more than 2-3 miles in on Seagull, you will likely have the place to yourself.
That northern section from the campground has a lot of pinch-points that will remain open pretty much all winter (there are easy areas to hike around the water on land) so be very careful if you go in that route. It is closer than going in at the public launch and much less exposed. As it is quite sheltered up there, we ran into a lot of deep snow drifts, which made the two mile hike in quite grueling. I seem to remember it taking 3-4 hours to do that short hike. Walk 100 yards...rest for 5 minutes...walk for 100 yards....and so on.
The palisades are absolutely gorgous in the winter, I would recommend at least hiking by if you aren't going to camp nearby. Again, if you get more than 2-3 miles in on Seagull, you will likely have the place to yourself.
12/17/2020 03:37PM
I don't see that anyone has called it out yet, so just wanted to make sure you were aware that if you did stay on Seagull the trout opener is the 16th since it isn't entirely within the BWCA. Aside from that, all the comments above are correct - you will likely have plenty of solitude and better laker fishing than Alpine. Been going up there in March for a few years and rarely ran into others, which I assume is a busier time.
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