Chemical Treatment Tonka

Did anyone else hear if there was a chemical treatment for weeds on lake Minnetonka and in which bays that occurred?

I stopped by Wayzata bait last week on my way to fish Tonka, this was what they told me. “Go to Waconia, the DNR destroyed Minnetonka and chemically treated it for weeds. It is terrible and will never be worth fishing again.” At first my brother in law and I thought the guy was joking about how terrible Minnetonka is/will be, but maybe he wasn’t.

I doubt this will ruin the lake. I have seen the DNR treat milfoil on lakes near my cabin and also treat curly leaf pondweed on one of my favorites.

They will have orange bouys in the areas they treat marking it and typically they say something to the effect of do not eat fish out of this area for a certain time period.

It will hurt some of the favorable weeds for the short term, but they will return. Not an end of the lake!

They’ve treated the lake my brothers cabin is on for years as well. Why they do it when the lake turns green with algae every year, I will never know. Seems like you want more weeds to combat that. But Tonka doesn’t have the algae problem and I digress.

It can make fishing a little less pleasant. The anticipation of going to a spot only to find it sprayed. Then you fish it and the debri from dead and decaying plants gets annoying.

I assume they have been spraying Tonka for years if not decades?

Yes, I heard about the treatment at Wayzata bait as well. I have been to tonka twice this year, and the western bays had a lot of loose f weeds making crank bait fishing tough. Then I was on North Arm and that didn’t seem bad. And it was easier to find some biting fish.

pullintubes wrote:

Yes, I heard about the treatment at Wayzata bait as well. I have been to tonka twice this year, and the western bays had a lot of loose f weeds making crank bait fishing tough. Then I was on North Arm and that didn’t seem bad. And it was easier to find some biting fish.

I wouldn’t suspect most of the weeds floating are from chemical treatments, especially in Minnetonka. That lake has a lot of Milfoil and it has a lot of boats, pleasure and fishing. With all that boat traffic there is a lot of Milfoil being cut up every day.

The floating weeds have been a issue on Minnetonka for a long time and I think that most of them are directly related to major boat traffic rather than chemical treatments. As others have said I doubt this is the first year for treatments, and it won’t be the last so I won’t be worried about the sky falling.

P.S. I not a big fan of chemicals being used in lakes. I don’t think it’ll stop anytime soon though. When you factor in the lawn chemicals and everything else that gets washed into the lake it’s just another factor in the health of the biggest lake in the metro area.

Id also say the floating weeds are from all of the boat traffic.They seem to clear up a bit after the weekend but alot depends on which way the wind blows.There is usually allways somewhere to pull or pitch cranks thats relativly weed free.Go out there on a Sunday evening after a weekend of nice weather and some calm winds and you will see weeds everywhere.