Basswood Lake

Basswood Lake is one of the largest lakes in the Boundary Waters, covering nearly 26,000 acres in the Kawishiwi district and stretching north across the border into Quetico Provincial Park. Paddlers reach it from entry points around Moose Lake, Fall Lake, and Prairie Portage on its eastern end.

The lake breaks into named stretches, Jackfish Bay, Pipestone Bay, Back Bay, and Hoist Bay among them, laced together by islands and narrows rather than running as one open body. It drops to 111 feet in its deepest water, though roughly a quarter of the lake stays shallow enough to fish from the surface down.

A 25-horsepower motor limit covers most of Basswood, so outboards share the water with canoes through the main travel corridor. North of Jackfish Bay and Washington Island, no motors are allowed at all, and the lake quiets down as you head that way toward the Quetico border.

Basswood carries real weight as a pike lake. The state's record northern pike, a fish just under 46 pounds pulled from Basswood in 1929, still stands as Minnesota's largest, and a protective slot limit now covers Jackfish, Pipestone, Hoist, and Back bays: any pike between 30 and 40 inches goes back, and only one over 40 inches can be kept. Walleye and smallmouth bass round out the fishing, with cisco and whitefish holding deeper.

128 campsites spread across the lake's bays and islands, enough that the corridor traffic rarely means competing for the same handful of spots.

The 1999 windstorm that flattened huge stretches of the wilderness's forest passed directly over Basswood, and much of today's shoreline is the younger growth that followed it. Pockets of old-growth pine and cedar survived, including one cedar on the lake believed to be over a thousand years old, among the oldest trees in the state.

Basswood suits paddlers heading toward Quetico or Crooked Lake as much as it suits anyone stopping to fish, with enough campsites and open water to work as a base for either.