DeMontreville Access

My wife and I stopped by DeMontreville to get a look at the access, and it doesn’t look good.

The lake is down at least 4 feet. It’s amazing to see all the exposed shoreline. I was sitting on a log where I used to pull 20 inch Bass out. The first bay is already choked with weeds…in May! The low water levels and heavy weed growth have me concerned about future winter kill.

Anyway back to the ramp. There’s a big hole at the end of the ramp from people driving onto their trailers. Behind that hole is a big pile of sand and rock. It’s less than ankle deep on top. If you come in lined up with the cement ramp you’ll hit bottom and be stuck. The DNR put the dock in at an angle. Between the end of the dock and the rock pile there’s maybe a foot of water. However if you jack knife your trailer around away from the rock pile it will sit at an angle making it difficult getting your boat back on the trailer. As the water levels drop the rock pile gets closer to the end of the ramp so you don’t have a boat’s length of room to work with. I watched a guy come in with a Bayliner and he started churning up mud at least 75 feet out. From what I’ve heard, Lake Jane is even worse.

So what is it going to take to fill the lakes back up again?

Rootski

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From what I’ve heard, Lake Jane is even worse.

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I could not get the boat launched in that lake last year

Sounds like less fishing pressure on those lakes!

Maybe the fishing will get better. A winter kill might slow it down but might be good if it is mostly small ones. My buddies lake winter killed this past winter and the average size is better than normal.

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So what is it going to take to fill the lakes back up again?

Rootski

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Water?

Lakes around me are pretty bad too.

Still submit that the spring flood water we regularly deal with in St. Croix could be used to maintain lake levels in these low northeast metro lakes using:
*filters to remove invading aquatic critters.
*solar power
*energy from the river current (water wheels)
*unemployed Polaris workers with maintenance skills
*windmills including the hot air blowing from St. Paul. Might start with that mother’s son who inadvertantly parlayed the power of office for walleye improvement on his home lake. (Would a noose and treadmill be appropriate? More power to us all, pal!)
Our officials seem to be good at pipelining and networking, let’s put them and the technology to work on all that perfectly good melted snow and spring rain that the drillers are now using to mix up Brown Gulf Slurpies.

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From what I’ve heard, Lake Jane is even worse.

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In my opinion the launch is unusable as it is unless you have a 12-14 ft. flat bottom boat. The dock is sitting in the parking lot because the lake is to low.