Gabbro Lake

Gabbro Lake covers about 977 acres in the Kawishiwi district of the Boundary Waters, roughly 12 miles southeast of Ely in Lake County. It's reached entirely by open water once you're past the portages onto the lakes around it: a narrows connects it to Little Gabbro Lake to the northwest, and an open paddle continues the Bruin Lake corridor in from the South Kawishiwi River to the west. No portage touches Gabbro Lake itself.

At 50 feet deep, Gabbro holds real cold water for its size. Its shoreline runs nearly 24 miles for under 1,000 acres of surface, folded into enough bays and points that the lake reads more like a maze than one open body, with a sheltered stretch out of the wind almost always somewhere close.

Walleye and northern pike are the lake's main draws, with cisco running in above-average numbers for the area, a sign of how well the cold water holds up through the summer. Pike have thinned out in recent years, but the ones still around tend to run larger than average. That mix, cold enough to hold cisco through the heat of summer and still carrying two solid gamefish species, is part of what makes Gabbro a dependable fishing lake.

Nine campsites are spread around the lake's bays, enough that groups usually find room to spread out even though it's one of the more visited stops in this corridor.

Gabbro Lake suits paddlers after good walleye and pike water reached by open paddling rather than a carry of its own, tucked a lake or two past the portages that lead in from either side.