What type is your lake?

Your lake is different from every other, of course – no two are alike, even in a place of many lakes like Wisconsin, where I live, or Minnesota. Still, it’s possible to place lakes into categories, and there are various ways to do it – by the way they were formed, by their level of nutrients, and by how they get their water, to name a few. Let’s start with this last classification.

The number of lake types based on source of water depends partly on who is doing the defining. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources lists four types, but there is a fifth that many geologists mention. Here are five basic lake types commonly found in Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan:

Drainage lakes. On these lakes, a stream brings water in, and a stream takes water out. That is, the lake has an inlet and an outlet – and in some cases more than one of each. The water level in these lakes tends to stay fairly constant – think of a bowl into which you run a slow flow of water from the tap. (Lakes created by a dams fit the descrption of drainage lakes, although they are usually classified as impoundments). 

Spring lakes. These lakes have no inlet on the surface, but they do have an outlet. They get their water mainly from groundwater flowing in. Many streams originate in spring lakes, which are quite common in northern Wisconsin.

Drained lakes. These lakes are like spring lakes in that they have an outlet but no surface inlet. They differ in that they are not fed by groundwater – they get their water almost solely from precipitation and runoff. For that reason, their levels can fluctuate: high in rainy times, low during droughts. During long dry spells, the streams flowing out of these lakes may dry up. Drained lakes are the least common type in northern Wisconsin.

Seepage lakes. These lakes have no stream flowing in or out. Their water comes mainly from rainfall and runoff, sometimes supplemented by groundwater. Their water levels are therefore cyclical.

Perched lakes. These lakes are truly landlocked. They have no inlet, no outlet, and no contribution from groundwater. In fact they sit on relatively high ground, above the water table, with a dense bottom sediments that hold the water in. Water levels in perched lakes can drop dramatically during long dry spells.

Which type is your favorite lake? If you don’t already know, consider doing some investigating to find out.

How We Met: Birch Lake

My memories of summer vacations on Duck Lake in the Upper Peninsula stayed with me and ran deep. And so I wanted to create a similar tradition with my own family, wife Noelle and kids Sonya and Todd. We tried week-long vacations at cabin resorts on Moon Lake (Duck’s neighbor in the UP) and Presque Isle Lake in far northern Vilas County, Wis. But I was looking for a place we could return to year after year, and for various reasons neither of those two quite fit.

The next year, in 1987, when Sonya was five and Todd two, we wrote to the Oneida County Chamber of Commerce for information on housekeeping cabins. Dozens of brochures came by mail; the one that appealed most was for Jung’s Birch Lake Cottages, near a place called Harshaw that we had never heard of, about a dozen miles southeast of Minocqua. We bought a week in a cabin called Bayside, sight unseen, for $400 (enough money back then to ensure, pretty well, a quality experience).

It was love at first sight. Noelle fell for the cozy two-bedroom cabin, with new furnishings, knotty pine walls and, as bonuses, a fireplace, microwave oven, and deck – in her words, “all the comforts we don’t have at home.” For me it was about the lake, 180 acres with expansive beds of cabbage weeds on the edges of which I could catch walleyes, bluegills, perch, and the occasional largemouth bass. The romance was sealed when, on our first night, I caught a 38-inch muskie right off our pier. There was a nice swimming area for the kids, and all the Northwoods icons were there -- loons, ospreys, eagles, deer, raccoons.

We visited Birch Lake for a week almost every summer thereafter, usually staying in the Lakeside cabin, right next to Bayview. Then in 2009, a wooded lot came on the market, straight across the lake from the cottages. We closed on the lot in December of that year, parked an RV trailer there, and by fall 2011 had our own cottage. The way we came to buy the land is a story in itself, for another time. Suffice it to say our relationship with Birch Lake has bloomed into something deeper and longer-lasting.

How about you? How did the romance with your favorite lake begin? How did you two meet?

How We Met: Dinner Lake

Dinner Lake, my second love, lies in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula about three miles over the treetops from Duck Lake. I discovered it on a side trip from the Duck Lake cottage, just a random exploration for more places to fish. I was about 24 then and feeling a little constrained just fishing one lake. I had no boat, but at the time that didn’t matter.

I just headed north on Highway 45 from Land O’Lakes, saw a plain wooden “Dinner Lake” sign at the first side road, took a right in the direction of the arrow, and followed the signs from there. The roads twisted back into the trees, first nice smooth asphalt, then much rougher asphalt, and then a skinny, bumpy gravel road for the last quarter-mile or so. The road dipped sharply down and bent around to the right, revealing the lake, a small blue jewel in a wooded hollow. Logs lay in the water on both sides of the boat ramp, and among them small bass hung motionless. I broke a piece off a twig and tossed it onto the water; a fish darted up, took it, and spat it out.

The boat ramp was on an almost circular bay, a narrow outlet giving way to the lake proper. I couldn’t see much of the lake itself, but several bare logs jutted out from the bay’s shore – great-looking cover. I hung around for a few minutes teasing the baby bass with bits of twig, then drove away, filing the spot in memory.

The next summer I bought a used blue fiberglass canoe. On a June weekend my friend Ed and I strapped it atop my 1964 Plymouth Valiant and drove north. We tented at the National Forest campground on Lac Vieux Desert and in the morning drove over to Dinner and slid the canoe in. We immediately found smallmouth bass among the logs, more than willing to smack a floating plug. As it turned out, loggy cover nearly surrounded the lake. We caught dozens of bass, about half of them above what was then the legal size of 12 inches.

I’ve returned almost every year since, with friends or alone. In time I discovered a rocky hump just off the east shore that is productive even when fish have deserted the shoreline cover. It’s a quiet lake, about 150 acres, ringed by small, well-kept cottages, most occupied just sporadically. I’ve never been able to spend an evening or weekend on the lake. In the early years there was a private campground on the east shore, but that soon closed. So it’s a lake I simply fish, once a year (with rare exceptions), almost as a matter of principle. After all, I discovered it. I don’t tell many people about it. My stock comment about it is: I’ll take you there, but I won’t just tell you where it is.

How about you? Where did your romance with your favorite lake begin? How did you two meet?

The Otter in Winter

Before the snow got too deep for easy walking, I took Freckles (our springer spaniel) for a daily winter hike on the ice of Birch Lake, near Harshaw, Wis., where we built a cottage last summer. One day we came upon the track of an otter following the very edge of the ice. The clawed paw prints and the belly imprint (or was it a tail drag?) in the snow made clear whose track we were following. Freckles did not seem to find a scent, so the trail must have been cold. We followed the trail along the shoreline, then across a bay, to where it led into the trees. Backtracking a long distance, we found a 6-inch hole in the ice near the marshy spot where a creek exits the lake. The snow on the shore near the hole was littered with scat.

I had seen otters (technically river otters) in the wild before, but never on Birch Lake, and I had never felt quite so close to one, although the animal was not present. Otters remain active in winter. Where they can find openings in the ice, they will enter the water to hunt for fish, clams and other prey. This otter clearly had made its own hole (the ice next to shore was thin). Otters can remain submerged for long spells and can breathe in the space (if it exists) between the ice and the water. I'll be keeping my eyes open for otters on the lake this winter, and maybe I'll be lucky enough to spot one while taking a snowshoe walk toward evening or on a moonlit night. I’m glad to know they live here on the lake we now call home.

One lake, many worlds

It’s easy to think of a lake as a pool of water in which to drop a fishing lure or on which to float a boat, canoe or air mattress. But your lake is really a collection of worlds, each in its own way teeming with life. There’s the water’s edge where otters prowl the sandy fringes, where deer slip out from the cover of the trees to drink, and where eagles and ospreys perch in tall pines and scan the wavelets. The air above the water is another world, of those big raptors soaring and circling; f buzzing dragonflies, silent and delicate damselflies, and flying insects of many descriptions; of mallards and mergansers arrowing overhead.

On the surface we find ducks and loons skimming; the occasional muskrat dragging strands of cattail leaves; clusters of darting black beetles; water striders floating on surface tension, propelled by oarlike legs; ephemeral mayflies with wings raised like sails; and painted and snapping turtles, snouts poking skyward, sipping the air. Beneath the surface the lake is a thin soup of microscopic plant and animal plankton, base of the food chain for fish, not just those we like to catch but for many small and secretive species we rarely see, even if we peer into their world through a glass mask while snorkeling.

The bottom sand and muck are marked with the serpentine trails of clams and mussels and speckled with the curled shells of snails and the molts of crayfish. Buried in the sediment lie an assortment of worms, along with immature forms of various flies and other insects, metamorphosing. And that’s not even counting the different zones of vegetation; the variations in bottom character (rock, gravel, sand, muck); the dropoffs, flats and mid-lake humps; or the temperature-related strata of the water itself. Or, for that matter, the way these and all the other worlds change with the seasons.

Yes, every lake is much more than what appears to the casual viewer. And every lake rewards those who look closer and deeper.

How We Met: Duck Lake

Every romance story starts with how they met. How did your romance with your lake begin? My story begins with Duck Lake – I have known it since I was eight years old. It lies in the big woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, just over Wisconsin line from the little town of Land O' Lakes. It’s about two miles long, shaped something like a plump L with a short horizontal stroke.

A co-worker of my father owned a cabin on Duck Lake. He and his two sons took my dad, my older brother and me there for a visit on a Memorial Day weekend. It was there I saw eagles and loons for the first time, and heard the hammering of pileated woodpeckers deep in the forest. How to describe the allure of the North? The trees are taller, the white pines especially standing in majesty. The wind sounds different. Storms loom larger; thunder booms across the vast stretches of woods and water. The night woods are full of animal noises, rustles and footfalls. Loon calls ring out over the lake – what benignly demented sort of deity would create such a creature as a loon?

My family rented that cabin one or two weeks each summer until I was in my early 20s. A great fishing spot lay just a few dozen oar strokes out from the cabin. We fished there morning to dusk, two or three of us kids in each boat with mom or dad. As I grew older, I took a 14-foot wooden rowboat on fishing explorations from one end of the lake to the other. Since then I’ve fished Duck once or twice a year almost without fail and have come to know it well. The public boat landing is right next to the old cabin property; that spot in front of the cabin is still the best spot on the lake.

In future posts I’ll tell you about my other two loves, Dinner and Birch lakes. Meantime, what’s the story of your favorite lake? How did you two meet?

Growing to love your lake

I have three mistresses. My wife not only knows but approves. The mistresses are Wisconsin northwoods lakes, two just far enough north and one just far enough south to be spared most of the tourist noise. I've carried on affairs with each for at least 25 years, in one case for more than 50. Their names are Duck, Dinner, and Birch. My relationships with them are somewhat one-dimensional: Mostly I fish them. And yet, through the years, I weigh each visit less in fish caught than in ambience, comfort, memory. I promise not to stretch the romance metaphor too thin, but I do love these waters.

You may have a  favorite lake, or more than one -- a place where you vacationed as a child, where your family owns a cabin, where you rent a summer cottage year after year, where you go on a ritual long-weekend camping trip with friends. It's easy to love a lake, especially one you found on your own fairly early in life and have known for decades. What is love, after all, but genuine concern for someone or something outside ourselves?

What I hope to do here is help you love your lake even more -- by getting to know it intimately, as I have come to know mine. I've finally chosen one lake -- my wife and I have built a cottage there that one day may become a home. So I'll share with you what I observe about my lake and what I've learned about lakes in general, through experience, observation, reading, and even lab, field and classroom study. In the process, because for all their differences lakes have much in common, you will learn more about your lake and come to appreciate it more.