Boundary Waters Trip June 12-16

Ben and anyone else willing to offer advice,

Next week, I am making my annual trip into the BWCA. Excited as always! Any general tips for what the lakes are doing right now. My favorite fishing is throwing Skitterpops for topwater smallies. In general, what stage of the spawn are they currently in? We will also will be targeting pike and walleyes for dinner. Plan to bring leeches for live bait and a variety of artificials. What are your can’t leave home without them lures?

We are going in through the Mudro Lake access and plan to fish Boot, Gun, Gull, Beartrap, Moosecamp, and Fourtown. Normally we spend most of our trip fishing the bays of Crooked Lake, but we are going to explore some different water this year. 4 people in our group and this is the only fishing that 3 of them do all year, so hoping to put them on some fish.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I have launched out of Mudro many times and have always done very well on pike and walleye on boot. We generally would camp at the first site around the main bend off the east point of boot for a few days. The walleye on the north side of the campsite bite very well on a plain jig and leech. The far southwest bay on boot also produced well for pike on shallow water cranks like the ultra light minnow or the jointed shallow shad. If I remember right, they liked more natural colors like baby bass and crawdad.

We also tried some walleye fishing on the east side of the big island on fourtown and had a little success, but not much. The only spot on that whole chain I have had a decent smallmouth bite is on Gun but I have no been up to Moosecamp or Beartrap.

got back from my boundary waters trip a week and a half ago. water temp varied greatly depending on lakes. We found walleyes in 6-8 feet of water in most cases. smallies, the males were making beds, and the females were off just a bit deeper, but still willing to bite. I dont those lakes personally, but if I were going up those dates, I would be looking for weed edges near deeper water, or a transition area of either mud to rock, or sand to rock.

We brought minnows in with us, but i bet i didnt use more than 5 or 6 the whole trip, no need for them.

Couple lures i brought:

lots of jigs (1/8-5/16 oz.)
moxies, pulsars, 3″ grubs (we used plastics 90% of the time)
stick baits
flicker shads in variety of sizes
Since you have live bait, bringing some lindy rig stuff with and maybe a bobber setup wouldnt be bad either.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the tips!