We are headed to camp on Rainy in about a week in Voyageurs Nat Park on the east end of the lake at the Anderson Bay West site. We have not ventured that far east before but it looks like a lot of good areas to fish. Does anyone have any experiences at this site and/or fishing this area that would be willing to share some tips?
I have only fished north of there on the Canadian side. But it looks the same start shallow and work your way out deeper. Jigs and a minnow. Some like chubs or rainbows but I think the shiner is king. Greens or blues are my go to colors. Hope this helps. I’m just very jealous that im not going to rainy. Good luck hope you hit it right!
The area around Kettle Falls usually kicks out fish. Bruce give you the how. 
Scott,
Me and the family camped at this site about 5 years ago, the year after it was made by the NPS. At the time it was, well, not a great site aesthetically speaking (tho the NPS pic’s look like its better now). There was no dock, and the area to pull the boat up on was small gravel, not sand. Its was kind of a low, flat, shrubby area so bugs may be an issue (we were there the first week of August and were fine). We did do very well fishing smallies right in the area of camp, casting shorelines in the evenings, my then 11 year old son had a blast. We haven’t stopped there since we camped there, so not sure what it looks like now. We’ve been staying on the Blueberry island site the last 4 years. This year we are headed for the Kempton Entrance East site the first week of July for 7 days
Just a bit to the east of the site is a really nice day-use site with a huge beach. We swam there several times, tho might be a bit chilly this time of year.
We did do pretty well on eye’s, but August is reef fishing so a bit easier to pinpoint. I’ll send ya a PM tonight/tomorrow with some suggestions of a few spots to give a try for eyes. I’d start looking at about 17′ and move deeper, tho the evenings will produce fish shallower along with the smallies.
You will most likely be to early for reef fishing especially with the late spring. Most of the Walleyes have moved out of the Kettle river. Shore fishing early and late should still be good just a little deeper. If they aren’t going for jigs try “live bait rigs”. Shiners are quite pricy this year. Spinners and night crawlers slow trolled would be on my short list. Bass fishing should be good on shallow rocks.
Good luck.
xplorer – We actually stayed at Kempton Entrance East last year and liked it other than a good amount of boat travel near the site. The site itself is nice, great view to the west for awesome sunsets. Had good fishing right off the dock with slip bobbers w/leaches for bass and walleye.
I’ll post a fishing report when we return.
Has anyone used salted or preserved shiners? I really don’t want to deal with keeping minnows alive.
Just got back from the east end of Rainy and we had a tough time finding walleyes. Stayed at Blueberry. Fished shallow with jigs and minnows on shoreline and points, trolled rapalas in 10 to 20 FOW and lead core in 30 FOW. Never figured out a pattern. Caught enough for a fish fry. The black flies were the worst I have seen them. I brought my dog back to a friends house in IFalls. There would be 200 of them in the boat at any time.
Just got back from the east end of Rainy and we had a tough time finding walleyes. Stayed at Blueberry. Fished shallow with jigs and minnows on shoreline and points, trolled rapalas in 10 to 20 FOW and lead core in 30 FOW. Never figured out a pattern. Caught enough for a fish fry. The black flies were the worst I have seen them. I brought my dog back to a friends house in IFalls. There would be 200 of them in the boat at any time.
Not exactly what I wanted to hear about the fishing and the bugs! Looks like we will be headed to by some head nets!
Thanks for the update though!
xplorer – We actually stayed at Kempton Entrance East last year and liked it other than a good amount of boat travel near the site. The site itself is nice, great view to the west for awesome sunsets. Had good fishing right off the dock with slip bobbers w/leaches for <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>bass and walleye.
I’ll post a fishing report when we return.
A couple of years ago we were on Blueberry camping and Kempton was empty, so we stopped at it and liked what we saw. Loved the half log bench!! Hope its still there. Figured there’d be some boat traffic but with the dock no worries. Had it booked for August last year, but had to change sites at the last minute to Namakan.
I will send ya a PM in a bit with some ideas, maybe one will help.
We had a good week of fishing even with a consistent E or NE wind all week. The rock bar around the green 39 buoy was active all week with better size fish than other areas. The red buoy west of that was consistent too, there’s a 20’ hump just E of that buoy we did well on with slip bobbers during the evenings. The best spot we found was just west of the camp site by the rock buoys. Better numbers of fish here but smaller. We found fish from 4’ to 30’ and everything from casting to slip bobbers , Lindy rigs and spinner rigs. We used shiners and leaches with equal success. Bass and pike were slow for us. We did eventually find the bass very shallow, next to shore, with topwater lures.
Thanks for the report! Can’t wait to get up there after the 4th.
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