Farm Lake

Farm Lake sits at the eastern edge of the Kawishiwi district, a few miles by water from Ely. It's part of a small reservoir formed by a hydroelectric dam at Garden Lake's outlet, so most of its water, along with South Farm and Garden lakes, lies outside the wilderness boundary. Only its eastern reach, where the Kawishiwi River's north and south branches come in, is inside the BWCAW. Entry Point 31 puts in there, with motors allowed up to 25 horsepower on that stretch and paddle only once you're past it onto the river itself.

At about 1,292 acres, Farm Lake is broken up by the channels that link it to Garden and White Iron lakes, so it reads more like a set of connected basins than one open sheet of water. It reaches 56 feet in its deepest holes, but more than a third of that acreage is shallow enough to fish from the surface down. Nearly 20 miles of shoreline are folded into those channels and bays, which means there's almost always a quieter stretch of water even when the main body is running rough.

Walleye, northern pike, and smallmouth bass are what most anglers come for, with cisco holding in the cool water below the surface and serving as forage that helps produce the occasional big pike or walleye. Bottom substrate runs mostly boulder and rubble, with muck and sand in the back bays, and aquatic plants stay sparse and shallow. Wild rice is about the only one that grows here in any real quantity.

Only one campsite is mapped here. That's light for water this size, and it says something about Farm Lake's role: most people cross it rather than camp on it. Traffic tends to be motorized boats running between Garden Lake and White Iron Lake, or paddlers working from the public access toward the quieter river channels that lead into the wilderness interior.

Farm Lake reads more as a corridor than a camping destination. With just one site on nearly 1,300 acres of water, it's a lake people pass through on the way to the river country beyond it, not one they plan a night around.