Ogishkemuncie Lake

Ogishkemuncie is one of those lakes that rewards paddlers willing to put in a few days of travel to reach it. Sitting deep in the BWCA interior near Ely, it covers about 760 acres but feels bigger than that — nearly 24 miles of shoreline means the lake folds in on itself in a tangle of bays, points, and narrows that you can spend a full day exploring without retracing a single stroke. On windy afternoons you can almost always duck into a sheltered bay while the whitecaps roll through the open sections.

The fishing here is as good as the setting. Lake trout and lake whitefish hold in the deeper water, which drops to 75 feet, and northern pike and walleye work the shallower edges closer to shore. The water is clean and clear the way you hope a BWCA interior lake will be, and the fish populations reflect that.

Campsites are spread around the shoreline and the interior position of the lake means you're unlikely to be competing for one. Point sites tend to pick up enough breeze to keep the bugs honest in midsummer. Most people hit Ogishkemuncie as part of a longer loop rather than a destination trip, which keeps it quieter than the lakes closer to the entry points — the kind of place where you might have a whole bay to yourself for the night.