Spring Lake

In early June, my wife and I ended up on Spring Lake after the put in for Longhurst Lake looked too gross. You can find instructions to the public put-in here. There was a bit of storm sewer construction along the public access (which made it easy to follow the route to the lake!).

Water levels were lower this year than last (and it was low last year) so there was some bum scooting to get through the mud flats (which were a bit smelly). There is a dock about 30m north which offers you a different approach.

Once on the water, we had the lake to ourselves. This is basically what you get: reeds that give way to aspen. There is some accessible shoreline on the southern edge and the island (which is a loon breeding area) is also accessible. The north part of the lake is very shallow (like 8-12 inches even 40 feet from shore).

The bird watching was amazing. The grebes were on their floating nests and there were loons and ducks everywhere.

Above us, three or maybe four osprey were fishing and we saw one get a good-sized fish.

In the southwest basin, there were a bunch of pelicans.

These guys were chilling on an old beaver lodge with a bunch of cormorants.

It was windy as hell that day (at least 35kph, with gusts over 50) so the boats got blown around a bit.

One of the reasons I choose Spring lake as our backup was because it is so shallow that even pretty extreme winds don't generate much for waves. The waves below are in a deeper part of the lake (between the island and the RV campground) and you can see there is hardly any chop.

We did get a bit of spray coming around the eastern end of the island as we turned north to the launch. No big deal, though. 

The exit was mucky, mostly for the boats and we ended up going to a car wash on the way home (more pressure than my garden hose). Overall, nice enough and way better in high winds than another lake would have been.