2024, Family, holidays, Uncategorized

Lake Life

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I grew up in Rock County, MN, one of four MN counties with no lakes. We have gravel pits that have been stocked with fish. Luverne has renamed a gravel pit in town as “The Lake” and is developing it as a city park.

My father loved to fish, and “going to the lake” meant a trip to Lake of the Woods where we stayed with my Great Uncle Albert and Great Aunt Ella in their rackety farm house near Baudette. It smelled of decay and mice. There were raspberries growing wild, and I helped Aunt Ella catch her cow and milk it right there in the pasture. Uncle Albert left southern Minnesota in the 1920’s after he and his brother Herman got into an argument over money and Herman shot at him. He didn’t live on the water but was close enough to lakes as well as the Rainy River for my dad to have great fishing.

Husband and I and our son and his family spent Labor Day Weekend in an Airbnb on the northern shore of Ottertail Lake, near Fergus Falls. It was lovely, and the first time I ever experienced “Lake Life”. Grandson caught and released eight bluegills off the dock. It was quiet and peaceful. It was fun to hear people in the stores compare the kinds of fish they caught and the bait and lures they used. People had pontoons, kayaks, speed boats, and paddleboards all over the lake.

I can’t imagine the amount of work and money it would take for upkeep of such a place and a boat or watercraft. After we move back to Rock County, grandson can catch bluegills in the gravel pits.

What are your Lake Life experiences? What is the first fish you ever caught?

32 thoughts on “Lake Life”

    1. It’s kind of a funny thing around here. There are so many Iowa license plates here in the summer, especially around Waterville. Kamp Dels is full of them. I tried my first fried bullhead at Bullhead Days in Waterville. I knew I had to do it. They’re actually pretty good deep fried, as long as you get them in the spring when the water is still cold. Later in the summer, they get mushy. They have a firm white flesh, which is good deep fried.

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  3. I grew up on Cannon Lake, just west of Faribault. The first fish I caught was probably a bullhead, but it might also have been a crappie or a perch. I don’t remember. We used cane poles, as shown in Bill’s photo. We also had big, puffy, orange life jackets similar to the one Bill is wearing. We usually just dropped our lines right off the end of the dock.

    I was really used to the sound of waves outside my bedroom window. I took it for granted. I was eager to leave home at 18, but I have always missed the sounds of the lake. Sometimes loons would pass through in spring or fall, their unearthly calls letting us know they were there. In the fall, as the air temperature dropped faster than the water temperature, there would be stunningly beautiful misty mornings, with the sun rising behind the mists across the lake. I learned to swim, and I swam across the lake and back once. I was a strong distance swimmer, and a lifeguard at 15. I’ve always missed those things.

    I became fascinated by lakes, especially by the smells, sights and sounds associated with lakes. The first time I saw Lake Superior, in my early 20s, I couldn’t believe it. All that water! I’m helpless in my fascination with lakes and lake ecosystems. I guess there are worse fascinations, but that is mine. I must have my dose of the big lake. That’s why I bought my little timeshare condo in Two Harbors. It’s not permanent, but I get a little dose. I’m looking forward to my week in November. I’m hoping for a gale. (Just a little one so nobody gets hurt.)

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      1. Every eighth week. I’ll be up there next weekend and the following week until Friday. Then November, right after the election. The next time after that is in early January, which will be interesting.

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  4. In the 90s Husband’s sister had access to a cabin on Sweet Lake, part of the Upper Eau Claire chain of lakes in NW Wisc. We got to have several family gatherings there – we had our VW Camper so had our own “bedroom”…

    I remember being out on the lake in the early morning, as Krista described above. And someone had a tiny sailing vessel that would hold two people at most…
    Gotta run, more later.

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  5. Grandson’s pole worked quite well. The pole was hollow, and the line was threaded right through the inside of the pole so it couldn’t catch on anything. When Husband and Grandson bought bait (wax worms and night crawlers) the bait shop guys gave Grandson a poster of all fish in Minnesota waters, and invited him back to the store to tell them what he caught. We took him back the next day so he could tell them about his bluegills.

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  6. My dad had clothes lines strung along the basement ceiling with his dozens of lures hanging from them. He loved fishing, and took me to the gravel pits to catch sunfish when I was little.

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  8. During the years e lived near the St. Croix, my sister and I did a little fishing in a small inlet that we just referred to as The Little Lake. It was mostly enclosed by sandbars, but was open to the river. There were perch and sunnies and minnows. I doubt if the larger fish species lived there. I don’t recall what the first fish I caught would have been. Probably perch. We had cane fishing poles too.

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  9. One of the things about Sweet Lake was it was so tiny, motors were not allowed, so no jet skis, no big show-offs. It was just this pristine little lake with maybe a dozen cabins scattered around it. The shoreline was shallow enough to put up a volleyball net, and there was a pontoon boat for an evening ride. Each family took responsibility for putting together one meal… Life was good.

    Fishing – I do remember going out in a rowboat with my dad and Grandpa on Storm Lake (Iowa) when I was 6 or 7. No recollection who, if anyone, caught anything, but it would be my first connection with fishing. My dad then took Joel fishing when we visited them in Texas Hill Country, where they wintered for a while. There is a great photo of 14-year-old Joel holding up his first catch.

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  10. Confirmed city girl, raised in a city with basically no lakes, by confimred city mom and city dad. We did visit the Upper Eau Claire near Hayward a lot when I was a kid (dad has extended family there) but never fished. The few times that fishing happened if we were out on the pontoon, I was never moved to try it. My only growing up lake experience.

    One of my besties owned a nice cabin on Pine Lake in Wisconsin for a few years and I adored visiting. Every night we would do a cruise around the lake on the pontoon. My favorite memory was one gorgeous summer morning on the boat. We made tortilla roll-ups with masses of fresh fruit and whipped cream and ate them on the boat along with champagne and hot coffee. It was almost enough to make me wish I had a place on a lake. But then I think about my other bestie who has a cabin and the amount of work is more than I”m interested in for a place where I’m supposed to be escaping from the real world!!

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  11. The photo of me up top was at Western Fox Lake, up near Brainerd, where my parents and paternal grandparents used to go in the early ‘50s. In the later ‘50s we spent a week each year at a resort near Detroit Lakes. Then, when I was about 10, my parents bought a piece of lakeshore on Lake Waverly, adjoining Waverly, Minnesota, which had the advantage of being only about 45 minutes from the Twin Cities, and eventually they built a cabin there. So did several of our neighbors from back home. In the summer the mothers and kids would stay out at the lake for weeks at a time and the Dads would commute out after work. Through my early teens I fished and swam and waterskied on the lake but by the time I was in my mid-teens I was more interested in hanging out with the other teens in Waverly. Maintaining the cabin and the beach was a lot of work and in the ‘80s my parents sold it.

    Shortly after we were married, Robin’s parents bought a cabin about three hours north near Macgregor, MN. Robin’s Dad was an avid fisherman and the lake on which the cabin is located has only a few cabin sites, the rest of the shore being state land, so it maintains some of its wildness. We used to go up there quite often and over the years have put in a lot of work to maintain it but it’s more a fishing lake than a swimming lake and the shoreline is unimproved (clearing it would require DNR approval). There’s nowhere to hike from the cabin except along the road and the community nearby has nothing to offer. The family still owns it and some of Robin’s siblings use it but in my opinion it’s a money pit and I haven’t been up there in about 10 years.

    Robin and I much prefer spending our time on Lake Superior at places other people maintain. No matter how expensive a week or two at one of those places might be, it’s infinitely cheaper and more relaxing than supporting a cabin.

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  12. Before we headed to the lake last Friday, Grandson watched a PBS Kids show, Wild Krats, all about bass and their habitats. He was hoping to catch one, but was excited about the bluegills.

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  13. sunny was my first fish
    then carp in the minnesota river
    my grand parents on my moms side had greatgrandfathers leach lake property that was heaven but family was hell so we never went there
    i still own a lot up there on the wold rice paddy side of the penninsula next to dnr property. i will build a container home there within the next ten years
    our summer lakes experience was fargo cousins 4th of julys for three weeks or so
    loved loved loved it . one cousin caught the fishing bug. he called iowans striped whistlers. i asked him why and he said they all wore those blue and white striped bib overalls and would ask “how much for them worms” when told worms were a dollar theyed all whistle and say “that sure is a lot for worms

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    1. Once when I was a girl, a friend and I were out riding bikes. We rode around the lake to the public water access. We were hanging out there when this big old pickup truck hauling an ancient wooden boat with peeling paint pulled up. Two heavy men got out and walked over to the access. They were both wearing pin-striped overalls and seed caps. They looked at the access, then asked us, “Where’s the bullheads?” That was in the early ‘70s. You’d never see a boat like that anymore. It was way too heavy and the paint was really peeling. The truck had Iowa license plates.

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  14. I have been so unbelievably lucky to have had several friends with cabins or cottages on various lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin that they have generously shared with us. The cabins we have visited most often are on different lakes on the Iron Range, so we have explored that area quite a bit.

    My favorite cabin belonged to Ken and Shirley Olson – both long gone now – on lake Vermilion. In addition to the beautiful cabin itself, there was a small guest cabin that also housed a wood fired sauna. The guest cabin was actually the original cabin, erected so they had a place to sleep while they were building the main structure, an octagonal wood structure with large windows facing the lake. In front of the main cabin, on a small promontory that jutted into the lake, was a screened-in gazebo. The gazebo was a great place to eat lunch, lounge with a good book in the afternoon, and the perfect place to enjoy a glass of wine in the evening listening to the loons. Set back behind the guest cabin, tucked into the edge of the woods, was a pole barn-like structure that housed Ken’s pottery studio, complete with pottery wheel, kiln, and display shelving. Once they retired, they spent the whole summer there.

    The first fish I was a cod, caught from dad’s motor boat in a northern sound of the Baltic Sea.

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