I plow the lake access on lake pepin,and keep it up so you can get on and off easy,and i plow the pond were there are quite a few shacks and tons of people from out of town use both roads, I know its a little different on mille lacs,all i could really see people paying for is launch fee if thats all they need,if they want somthing plowed extra$,want gas extra$,its pretty simple.
Hey guys, I understand what you’re saying, and agree with you, the resorts don’t own the lake, but you will find that if you use the roads up there, you will be asked to help finance their upkeep. Plain and simple, and I don’t think thats an unfair expectation either.
That said though, a resort owner would have every right to charge you to cross any bridge he builds across any of the many cracks or ridges that are on the lake.
In the end, if you want to access the lake with a wheelhouse thru a resort, you will have to pay what they ask, and if that is not what you are willing to pay, go somewhere else that charges what you are willing to pay. All I know is if you want to fish the flats, and the only place you can find at the price you’ll pay is Dickies in Isle Bay, you have one heck of a long drive ahead of you with a 20MPH speed limit on the lake.
Ducksmuggler,
Why should we have to write a contract and pay all that money. I for one, pull a wheel house up there and have been doing so for about 8 years. I don’t need the resort to plow me out, I take care of myself. Most the time I’m nowhere near the roads that they plow anyway. And yah, there are times when I will go onto the lake, pay my $10, and come off 3 days later. I’ve never had a problem, but the way I see it, you are paying your $10 to drive on the lake through the access and off the lake through the access. There are years when I will be there the whole year and I will buy the year pass, but most years I will fish there for a week or two and then leave. It would be stupid to have to pay a ton of money to fish for a week.
Heres a few out of the box thoughts.
1.) Has the actual act of fishing become over commercialized in relation to resorts & plowed roads.
2)Should roads even be plowed on lakes? Some resorts consider their roads assets to their business, we’ve all seen the snow barriers placed strategically in attempt to keep others from crossing.
3) What would it be like with no plowed roads? It doesn’t mean you can’t go fishing, you’d just have to find a way easier than hopping in your geo metro and doing 45mph to your house.
4)If you have a fish house, lincense, or boat, you’ve already paid your access fee….its the public one.
5) I’m surprised no one has said the word capitalism yet.
As long as long lake access isn’t monopolized, Let them charge what ever they want. I don’t want anyone telling me to run my business (capitalism)
5) think of the fishing without plowed roads. I’d bet on an improvemment. I’m an outdoorsman I don’t like sitting next to a for lane highway on the lake.
6) If you disagree with my no plowed roads idea, relate it to the woods. Should businesses be able to cut roads to everyones deer stand?
Fox 9 news will be airing the story on access fees and wheelhouses on Mille Lacs this Sunday at 9pm…….Tune in and see what trouble is made from this story? who know’s maybe it might be good.
Oh boy…..has anybody seen the Prevue for Fox 9’s news story on access fees and wheelhouses on Mille Lacs yet..?
I just caught the tail end of it, it sounded like the news reporter was accussing the resort plow truck driver of doing something Illegal….?
We are definatly going to TIVO this news cast.
I’ve seen it a couple times now………..it’s going to be a good one. tune and see…….
Here This may be the answer we are all looking for How about you pay $10 to get on the lake public or private. The resorts plow Roads all over the lake like city roads. Then when you come off they charge what they want…. You will have to pay what they want to get off, Kind of like the troll under the bridge.
Then the State can tax them for the roads they plow on the lake that belongs to the state.
Or maybe the Indians will plow the roads and then not charge anything and that will make them look even better in the eyes of some fisher man. Then they could buy a few more resorts and have more free accesses.
For real I can see they need the money because things havent been well up there for them the past 10 years but looking greedy through negative media will not help them one bit. I hope for their sake that they work this out.
Should be some new posts on this 2-14! Watch Fox 9 tonight. We were out there fishing when some of that was being taped.
That should be good for business up there. Nothing like a freindly reporter to set you up to look like a 
. On the other hand it didnt look like it took much to make some of these guys look that way.
Got to love that one sided reporting.
The report from Fox 9 news tonite had some interesting view points. It might shed a new light on things around the big pond. Guess it can be a little more hostile in certain areas….. 
It was not the owner of the RED DOOR resort they are really nice people, It was the biggest JERK [censored] ice man on the lake,I forget his name but he’s an [censored] and often threatens people.
One of his favorite lines “I’ll run you over with my plow truck” or “if you put your house any where near my house I’ll burn it.”
Yep that’s him… 
It was fitting the only 2 people on Mille Lacs I can’t stand were the star’s of the show…. 
if the resort owners were not pulling the crap they are channen 9 would not have been up there
channel 9
Here is a link to the story from Fox 9.
Ice Rage
Each year millions of Minnesotans fish our state’s lakes, rivers, and streams. But some of those anglers are catching more flack than fish. And in some cases, they’re catching fists, on one of our most famous bodies of water.
The fishing’s kind of slow on this part of Mille Lacs. But a few miles away, the bark is worse than the bite. “You’ve been warned!”
The man you’re looking at is an employee of the Red Door resort on Mille Lacs. And he’s not happy about two fishermen driving around on the ice roads he’s plowed. “All you guys do is come, you don’t spend the money, take advantage of our plowed roads.”
From the air, Mille Lacs looks like an urban freeway, with long stretches of ice roads, side streets and even on-ramps. Most are plowed by resorts, which charge access fees if you cross their property to get to the roads.
But they can’t charge you for using the roads themselves. The roads are public property. If you can get to them, say from a nearby public access, you can use them. “Once they hit that water or onto the ice, I can’t control nothin’.”
But that won’t keep some resort owners from trying to stop you. You see, some are a bit territorial about their roads. “He told me to get the “F” off the lake and he didn’t want to see me out there again.”
“It’s kind of like instead of road rage, it’s ice road rage?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
Ice road rage? Don’t laugh. It happens.
One week ago Sean Kurth pulled a wheelhouse along roads plowed by the Sunset Bay Resort. He says a raging resort manager nearly rammed his truck.
“Was he mad?”
“Oh man. There’s this big vein sticking out of his head. His eyes were all bulged out and he’s like, ‘Where’s your access fee?’”
Kurth had bought a season pass from a resort for his permanent fish house. But didn’t think he needed to pay more for the wheelhouse he was trailoring to another spot on the lake.
“It took me a while to calm down. I was pretty mad. I’d never been treated like that. Ever.”
Could it really be that bad? The Fox 9 Investigators went undercover too find out how far some resort owners will go to keep you off their ice roads. Threats, intimindation: we saw it all. That, by the way, is called “angler harassment”, and it’s against the law.
We begin by renting this wheelhouse. Then, we hook up some hidden cameras, and head out on the big lake.
At Dickies Portside, Fisherman’s Wharf, Twin Pines and the Red Door, the Fox 9 crew buys access passes.
So we can get to the ice roads from their property? Once on the roads, we remove the passes from the rearview mirror. That’s so we can see how the non-paying folk are treated.
On the roads at the Red Door, our crew spots a plow driver clearing snow, then stops to ask him where we can set our house down.
“I don’t want ya parkin’ next to any private shacks or rental shacks and drillin’ out.”
Then he notices we don’t have an access pass.
“Well, we’re spending thousands of dollars on vehicles and gas and everything and you guys just come out and go wherever the goin’s easy.”
“Well no, I mean we just intercepted the road you know, I mean.”
“I’m just saying, I just don’t want you drilling by any shacks.”
Remember, this is a public lake. He can’t tell us where to fish or drill. But to make his point, he calls out another plow driver who won’t let us pass until he’s written down our vehicle description.
And if we try to get off the lake at his resort? “You’re not to cross that property and if you do they’re looking for ya. The owner lives right next door and he’ll f****in’ run ya down with that uh, he’s got that Hummer, I’ll tell ya.”
“He’ll run me down with the Hummer?”
Run us down with a Hummer? When did ice fishing become a contact sport? No hummer in sight when our crew leaves the lake several hours later.
But when we go back to the Red Door a few days later, things are still volatile. “Is this how you are when people drive on your ice roads sir? Sir?
Fred Dally owns the Red Door. “Why slow him down on an ice road that you admit is completely public property?”
“Good question.”
Next stop on Mille Lacs: Fisherman’s Wharf, where we meet resort owner, Daron Stenvold. Listen to what he says about anglers who don’t pay to use his ice roads. “Well, you wouldn’t intentionally plow anyone in though, would ya?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Really?”
“Do it all the time.”
“I shouldn’t say all the time, it’s just two.”
Stenvold takes delight in his form of payback. “There’s banks about this high all the way around the house.”
“Are they still out there?”
“Oh, they’re gonna be there for a long time.”
Just kidding,Stenvold says. When we go back to talk to him a few weeks later, this time he knows he’s on camera.
“Have you ever plowed anybody in?”
“I’ve never plowed anybody in.”
But wait: let’s listen again to what he told our undercover crew.
“You don’t remember saying that?”
“Yeah I do remember saying that. That’s a scare tactic to get people not to do it.”
Scare tactics, threats to keep people off their roads. It’s all angler harassment, according to the DNR.
“So what do you do when you see somebody out there who’s obviously on your road and hasn’t paid?”
“Ignore them. I’m a nice guy.”
Not as Jim cooper sees it. Cooper and his wife fish a few miles out from Fisherman’s Warf.
“When he told me he didn’t want to see me on the lake, that pretty much set the mood for the rest of the year; I was mad.
They use the ice road Stenvold plows. But they don’t pay to get on the roads at Fisherman’s Warf. Instead, they plow a short road from a nearby public access. From there they can jump on the warf’s ice road system and drive for miles.
Cooper says Stenvold harassed him. And retaliated by plowing shut the intersection between the public access road and the resorts’ ice roads.
If you see that road is open to the public access, have you ever just deliberately plowed it shut? Just to plow it shut? No.
“He’s been out there when I’ve sat out there and watched him and so has my dad and he’ll drive a skid steer out and he’ll push snow up and dump it in the road.”
It’s gotten so heated that local conservation officer, Dustier Heaton, stepped in.
“Any type of blocking roads beyond normal plowing is angler harassment. It looked excessive to you?”
“Yes it did.”
There’s a reason resort owners are so touchy about their plowed roads. Money.
“Last month just on this truck alone the diesel fuel was $1,400.”
It costs a lot to clear snow off the ice. “I’ve got a backhoe, I’ve got five guys working, and we are constantly maintaining that landing so that people can drive out on the lake.”
“Three to four thousand dollars a week to keep the roads open.”
That’s a lot of cash for small resorts struggling to survive.
Many of the anglers we talked to say the resorts provide an important service and should be paid.
“The resort owners do a job out here that helps people out to the lake.”
Go it alone without the roads. And you could find yourself in a jam like this. And don’t expect any help from the guy in the plow. “You’d like to think they could all be adults and think about it and say, ‘Okay, what’s fair here?’”
Saw that last night the wife was so pissed she wants to get permits from the township and go picket these places. They do not own the lake. Yes they do own there landing and can charge whatever they want. But once they are on the lake its public property. If they really want to make it exclusive stop plowing the roads and take that money and buy Bombadirs and drive their clients out on to the lake.
Very interesting thread. Some very good comments on both sides. I understand the resort guys frustration seeing a fisherman using “their” road, but I personally don’t think they have the right OR legal grounds to charge them a fee if they catch them on “their” roads, unless they crossed the resort’s private property to get there. The reason the resorts plow roads is for their “permanent/seasonal” fish house business. They charge “x hundred” dollars to store it and pull it on and off and supply gas etc etc……..So they have to plow the roads regardless, if that’s the business they’re going to run. The daily $10 access fee or whatever it is, is like a bonus on top of the “regulars” the resort puts out. I have lots of people that launch here at Everts Resort when they could launch at a free launch and I appreciate that. The people that manage to get into the free one may stop in and buy bait and tackle and that’s great! I would never go over to the public launch and plow it shut. That is just inconceivable.
I do think that if somebody enters the lake on a West side resort and leaves on a East side resort….the East side resort has every right to charge them their daily access fee. If somebody launches a boat here on the river at the public launch and decides to drop their buddy off at the same launch to get the truck and drive to this resort here to load up for the day because the free launch is too busy or has an icy ramp, I charge them a daily launch fee. It’s not fair to the guy that paid in the morning to have to wait for a guy that did not pay and just wants to load here. Some people will launch here in the summer time to go on a 3-4 day camping trip and they leave their vehicle here. I charge them the $7 launch fee for each day the vehicle sits here (on private property) where it is more safe than parking in the dark “party place” public launches. The fish house sitting on a lake for a weekend or even weeks is not costing the resort anything and the resort has no “out of pocket” expense for that house. The resort makes $10 or so when they access through their property and another $10 or so when the leave days/weeks later.
I don’t know, it’s a frustrating deal i’m sure, but I just can’t see charging someone to use a road on a lake that they accessed freely or from another resorts road. That’s like me saying “hey, I took a chainsaw and cut up that tree that fell accross the entrance to “hot hole bay….If you want to take your boat in there, you have to pay me because I made it accessible.”
Very long post that could have been sooooo much longer, sorry! I don’t know the answer, and maybe if I was the one plowing the roads and paying the high maintenance costs I would see it differently. I completely understand that these resorts need to make a living in a very competitive market. I agree that a few bad apples are spoiling the bunch. I bet that lots of people that get asked to pay for using the roads say…”no problem, what ya need?” and pay it. I was at a lake by Willmar a couple weeks back and the bait shop guy there plows open the PUBLIC access and the entrance onto the lake and that’s it. He has a jar on his baitshop counter asking for donations. I put a few bucks in it and it was full! Most fisherman are willing to pay for ease and comfort of accessing the lake or river they love to fish.
Well said…..Sounds like you know how to run a resort can’t wait to visit, someone just gave me a link to your place it looks great.
I think any resort owner can charge what they want to access the lake through their property.
My situation is a little different then people who actually sneek on the lake and take advantage of the Resorts.
I like to hear your thoughts on plowing people’s fishouse’s In.
And when the owner of the resort who was caught lieing to Fox 9 news says quote “their going to be there a while” he’s not kidding, the owner of the resort has plowed me in 3 Times, it does take a while to shovel out.
I live 4 doors down from a certain resort he thinks I should Pay him, I drive out of my property that I own and pay taxes on. The roads he plows on Mille Lacs “public property” block me from 95 percent of my GPS/Fishing spots….. 
The guy who did the undercover work on the story is a friend of mine and producer for ch.9 and i gave him the idea for the story. from personal experience and all the stories i heard on-line. i think he did a good job and hopefully fisherman harrasment will decline in the future. 
pig-hunter
I don’t mean the full amount I pay , becuase like you said you mite move be it a week a weekend and so on and you don’t need them to store you house in the summer.
but it would be saying that useing their access and services you will put down a little more that a road pass
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