Hoping for some advice. The second week of August, we have eight days from Basswood Lake then up the whole Basswood River to Crooked Lake and back out BWR to Basswood Lake. Our main goal will be fishing for walleye, pike, smb and was looking for opinions for best places to spend most time.

Is it worth time in the river just to fish or better to concentrate our time in Crooked. Sun, Sat, Fri, Thurs, Wed - is the fishing much better to justify travel to Sat or Sun? Seems like we could do a lot by just focusing on two or three areas.

I suspect the first few days we will cover less area as we hope to bring in leeches. However, when the leeches are gone, I think we would cover more area trolling or casting. Any experience is appreciated. We may do several day trips from a site or two in Crooked, but no need to pass by great areas in BWR, Wed, Thurs, Fri just to get to Sat or Sun if fishing results may be similar. Thanks.

I don't think you can really go wrong anywhere on Basswood and Crooked and the river in between. Have a good time

I fished Basswood during that time frame a couple years ago. Zero fish on artificials or shoreline structure. We did very well using live bait on midlake structure. So, if it's me, I double up on leeches, download the Navionics app, get a depth map, bring a few buoy markers, and an anchor bag. A slip bobber will work wonders, or live bait rig-type stuff.

what good will Navionics do out of cell tower range with no data? (acknowledging I am not tech savy)

If there is a way is lake contour available for crooked and iron also?

Richwon4: "what good will Navionics do out of cell tower range with no data? (acknowledging I am not tech savy)


If there is a way is lake contour available for crooked and iron also?"

Navionics runs off GPS so you can turn your phone on airplane mode and still run the app!

Drains the hell out of your battery still, and the accuracy is up for debate in my opinion. But you dont need cell range for navionics which is cool.

Or buy Voyageur maps (from this site) and you'll have the contours on your paper maps at least.

Thanks for various advice. The main question I am struggling with is whether to spend fishing time in Basswood River at the expense of spending all the time on the various areas of Crooked.

Lake contours:

DNR lake finder

Enter lake name in search box, When the lake page comes up, choose Lake Depth maps from LHS menu.

Often times most of the time in my experience the special humps and bumps do not appear on those maps....perhaps Navionics does include them...