Stuart Lake

Stuart Lake covers about 776 acres in the La Croix district of the Boundary Waters, roughly 21 miles northwest of Ely. It's the first lake reached on the Stuart River corridor, a narrow run of water lined with pink granite bedrock where rapids and waterfalls at the inlet and outlet cut the lake off from the water above and below it.

The lake sits in a bowl-shaped basin that drops to 40 feet and layers into warm and cold water most summers, holding a pocket of cold, oxygenated water underneath for fish that need it. The water itself runs more stained than clear, and the shoreline is mostly boulder and ledgerock with a little sand and muck mixed in. Plant growth stays sparse across the lake.

Walleye are the main draw, running a healthy average around 13 inches with some much larger fish mixed in. Northern pike here grow big, averaging two feet and topping out well past that. Yellow perch and a few largemouth bass round out the catch, and cisco hold in the cold water below even though they're rarely caught.

Five campsites sit around Stuart Lake. Reaching any of them means working through the Stuart River's sequence of portages first, which keeps this lake well off the routes most paddlers run.

Stuart Lake suits paddlers headed into the Stuart River corridor for solid walleye and pike fishing, rather than paddlers looking for an easy lake near entry points.