Bear Island Lake

Bear Island Lake covers about 2,360 acres in St. Louis County, roughly 10 miles southwest of Ely near the town of Babbitt. It carries a Kawishiwi district designation, but the lake itself sits well outside the wilderness boundary: the nearest entry points, Crab Lake & Cummings Lake and the South Kawishiwi River, sit 10.9 and 14.7 straight-line miles away with no portage connecting to either. This is a lake you drive to and launch a boat on, not one you reach on a wilderness route.

The basin runs deep for its size, dropping to 62 feet at the bottom, while only about 37 percent of the lake is shallow enough to count as littoral zone, so open, deep water makes up most of it. The water itself runs brown and bog-stained rather than clear, with Secchi readings typically around 7 to 8 feet. Shoreline stretches nearly 28 miles, broken into bays that give the lake its irregular, many-armed shape.

Walleye are the primary gamefish, backed by state stocking of fry every other year, though survey catch rates run modest and growth is slow. Northern pike hold better numbers, averaging 21 to 24 inches with a strong year class from 2009 still showing up in nets. Rock bass turn up in above-average numbers along the rocky structure, and bluegill and black crappie both support a panfish fishery, with bluegill averaging 6 to 7 inches and crappie running 7 to 8 inches. Smallmouth and largemouth bass, yellow perch, and tullibee round out the rest of the fish community.

Motors are permitted on Bear Island, and there's no wilderness campsite quota here. Superior National Forest land along the shore carries a handful of dispersed backcountry sites, but they sit outside the BWCA permit system entirely. Development lines much of the lake instead: three public accesses (concrete ramps on the southwest and east sides, a gravel landing on the northeast) put boats in the water, YMCA Camp Northern Lights runs a family retreat camp on the shore with cabins and direct lake access, and Timber Wolf Lodge Resort operates cabins, a marina, and an RV campground on its own stretch of shoreline. Private cabins fill in the rest of the shore.

Bear Island suits a resort stay or a day of walleye and pike fishing out of Babbitt rather than a wilderness trip. It's a developed, motorized lake well clear of the BWCA, without the portages or quota campsites that define the lakes to its south.