BWCA - Caribou Lake

Greetings, does anyone have any advice re: camp sites, fishing, swimming, on Caribou Lake. Two adults and two kids. Caribou is near East Bearskin and Pine. We are also spending time on Pine Lake. Thanks to everyone for all the advice I’ve gotten over the years.

more than one caribou
there’s also one on the other side of gunflint, i was confused and gave you advise for tha one. must see johnson falls, trail on west end of pine just off the pine-canoe portage. the pine, canoe portage long, steep and rugged in places. not enjoyable for kids. never did well fishing that area, maybe someone else could help you there. ww

Caribou Lake… Which One?
Thank you, I already found out about two Caribou Lakes. The one east of the Gunflint is the one I’m looking for information on.

the above imfo is correct caribou
i’ve been all arround it but never to it. i figured out WHICH caribou after i briefly posted extensive imfo on the OTHER caribou that i know very well(lol)! ww

Caribou Lake
I canoed and fished that area extensively back in the mid to late 1970’s (1975 thru 1980), but I have only been back once since then. We always started at Clearwater Lodge on Clearwater Lake. We would head east on Clearwater and then portage into West Pike. West Pike was a great smallmouth lake with a decent walleye population as well. We caught northerns, as well, but no really large ones. From West Pike we would take the 1 mile portage over to Pine Lake, canoe to the western end of Pine and then portage into Little Caribou. As mentioned in an earlier post, you will want to go see the falls at the western end of Pine. We always tried to stay on Little Caribou rather than stay on Caribou. Little Caribou only has one site and I consider it to be one of the nicer sites in the whole area. Little Caribou used to have huge northerns, walleye, largemouth, smallmouth and perch. The fishing was good enough that we seldom fished Caribou. However, when I went back in the early 90’s, the site on Little Caribou was taken and we took the first site on Caribou after the portage from Little Caribou. In general, I ran into a lot more people and the fishing was not as good as it had been back in the 70’s. In this area, you must get a camp site early or you may not find one. You will have to work a little harder for the fish, but I would recommend trolling the shorelines in the daytime looking for walleye. If you catch one, stop and fish that area thoroughly with a jig and curly tailed grub. In the evening and early morning cast the reef areas with floating/shallow running plugs for smallmouth. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Dave

I returned less than 2 weeks ago
from a trip to the BWCAW that included Caribou Lake and Pine Lake. I have information on a map about recommended campsites and fishing areas that was provided by an outfitter that our group rented a canoe from. I scanned the area of interest and could send you the image file. E-mail me if interested…

Info.
Yes, I would appreciate the information and the help. Thanks!

Caribou
Thanks Dave,

Thanks for the advice. We’ll canm early.