Does anyone know where I can get the DNR fish sampling survey for the BWCA? It was around last year when I planned my trip but I can't find it anywhere.

I used to think that every lake pretty much had the same basic fish until I researched more and realized that the reason why I couldn't catch fish in certain lakes was because there either weren't any or the species I was after wasn't in there.

Go to the MN DNR Lake Finder page. Enter the lake you want to view, it helps if you know the county…I believe the counties for the BWCAW are Lake, Cook, St. Louis. Then click on the fish survey link.

A lot of those surveys are really old or incorrect. It is difficult to survey BWCAW lakes as the DNR has to follow the same rules we do or use a float plane. Many of the survey methods they are stuck with will not sample bass for example.

T

keep in mind , some lakes in the BW havent been sampled for many years and some reports can be a bit vague as 1 never knows how much time the survey crew was able to spend on any given lake (wind) 1 lake i checked out ,, only 3 lakers were netted and all on the smaller side , did a spring trip to this lake and seriously killed the lakers nothing big but over 40 lakers were caught

DNR website, look for lake finder and find the drop down for that lake. It will give you a general idea but probably old data.

Even the lake I live on is only sampled every 10 years. We asked for every 5 years because our lake association has stocked a million walleye in the last 4 years and we want to see the data moving forward. They are low on manpower to do this every 5 years.

I would recommend the MN DNR Recreation compass.

It allows you to explore in the map mode and when you click on lakes you can open them in lake finder to get the fish survey data. Just click on the lake and then at the top the name of the lake will be blue with a hyperlink so just click on that and it brings you straight to the lakefinder information on the lake you're looking at.

You can also set the basemap to satellite view(bottom left corner), so sometimes you can get a good idea of how deep, shallow, weedy, or rocky a lake is before you even click on it.

DNR's fish sampling is only a guess of what is in a lake. It works well for shallow lakes or lakes with limited visibility but when used on a deep clear water lake their nets don't go deep enough and they miss a lot of the fish. For example, on a local lake that I have fished their nets got no walleye pike. The walleye were simply deeper than their nets.