Crooked Lake

Crooked Lake covers about 10,360 acres in the Kawishiwi district, running along the U.S.-Canada border with Quetico Provincial Park on the far shore. It sits several lakes and portages in from the nearest entry points, off the Echo Trail at Mudro Lake, Angleworm Lake, and the Stuart River.

The name comes from the French word for hooked, a fit description for a lake that bends and angles its way from Lower Basswood Falls at its west end to Curtain Falls at its east end rather than running in one straight line. Early surveyors seem to have mapped it a bay a day, and the names stuck: Sunday, Saturday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday bays still divide the lake today. Thursday Bay drops close to 100 feet, while the others stay shallow, and the lake as a whole reaches 165 feet at its deepest point.

Crooked Lake is paddle only now, though motors up to 10 horsepower were allowed here until 1984. Its long, corridor-like shape makes it as much a travel route as a destination, carrying traffic between Basswood Lake and the border water around Iron Lake.

Walleye, smallmouth bass, and northern pike define the fishing, and the rock structure along the border makes Crooked one of the better-known smallmouth lakes in the wilderness. Friday Bay is a popular spot for them, while the shallower western bays warm up earliest each season.

37 campsites are spread the length of the lake, enough that there's usually a spot whether you're passing through toward Basswood or Iron Lake or stopping to fish.

Just past Lower Basswood Falls, a granite wall carries pictographs of moose, cranes, canoes, and human figures, painted by the Ojibwe centuries ago. Table Rock nearby was one of the most storied campsites on the voyageurs' fur trade route, mentioned repeatedly in their journals.

Crooked Lake suits paddlers after a serious smallmouth fishery and a real sense of the old canoe-country travel route, set well back from any entry point.