articles from December, 1997 newsletter:
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President's Message
Happy Birthday, Sportsmen's Club!We'll be 30 years old in 1998.
Here is an excerpt from the club's first newsletter, dated July 15, 1968, quoted from the
message of the first president, the late Jay Mault, Vermilion Dam: We do not envision the
Sportsmen's Club of Lake Vermilion, Inc. as a one-shot effort to help our lake. Rather,
it is a continuing effort that will need your support for the years to come. To achieve
our goals, we will need to continue to push at every opportunity and keep a watchful eye
on any actions that may affect the welfare of our lake." I hope Jay would agree that
even after 30 years, we are still maintaining our tradition of stewardship on Lake Vermilion.
If you were able to attend our last annual meeting on August 9, you know what a great time
we had, with 175 members in attendancethe largest turnout we've ever had. Everyone seemed
to enjoy the new surroundings at Fortune Bay Resort, and we'll be back at Fortune Bay next
year for our 30th annual meetingon Saturday, August 15.
Among the resolutions passed at the annual meeting was approval for a $2 increase in all
membership categories. This is the first membership increase in the club's history, and
it was proposed by the board so that additional funds would be available for an expanded
water quality program and for additional day-use picnic sites on the lake. The membership
renewal letter that you will be receiving in January from Barb Shook will reflect the
membership increase. Virtually all the activities of the club are paid for by membership
dues, and your continued support is vitally important to our ongoing projects around the lake.
Unhappily, we have a good-bye to say this winter. Joe Cantrell, a board member since 1992,
will soon be moving to the Twin Cities area. Joe and Donna will be leaving their Pike Bay
lake home of 19 years for a new home closer to their children and grandchildren. We wish
them well, but will miss Joe's leadership in several areas, particularly the club's
scholarship program and his willingness to pitch in wherever he was needed.
As Dale, Barb, Rick and I put this winter issue together, the lake isn't frozen yetbut
its days are numbered. Every day when I drive by the end of Daisy Bay, I check for a
covering of ice and I'm sure I'll find it there by the end of the week. Outwardly I'm
ready for winter the dock is out, the snow fence up and the heat tapes turned on. But
my attitude has a little catching up to do, and I'm secretly hoping for just one more day
in the 50s so I can get the windows washed. Some folks just never learn.
On behalf of the officers and directors, I extend our very best wishes for a joyous
holiday season and a beautiful, peaceful Vermilion winter.
Paula Bloczynski
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Water Quality Program
Every August since 1983 the club has undertaken a lake water testing project, drawing
surface samples from around the lake. This year 38 samples were drawn on August 20 by
club volunteers Willis Irons, Rick Pearson and Marline Tahija. The next day the samples
were analyzed for the presence/absence of fecal coliform bacteria by the Bois Forte
Water Quality Laboratory at Nett Lake. Of the 38 samples, nine were listed for
continued monitoring.
Chris Holm, biologist at the Bois Forte lab, met with the board at their October 8
meeting and discussed the results along with future testing possibilities. At the
November 5 board meeting, directors reviewed the testing options and are looking
seriously at a testing schedule that would feature monthly testing from May to
September of the nine listed sites, plus the regular August testing of all 38 sites
so that we can continue to monitor for trends.
Director Willis Irons is serving as chairman of the club's water quality program and
will have a more detailed report in the spring issue of the newsletter.
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Historical Water Level Data
If you have spent much time at or on Lake Vermilion in the past year, you know it's been a
period of extremes. The lake was so high after ice-out that it was causing shoreline erosion
and damage to docks. By this fall, many of us could barely get our boats off our boat lifts
or boat ramps and were discovering "new" rocks with our props. I stopped by the official
gauge at the Sunset Creek bridge on November 7 and the lake level was at 1356.90, close
to the lowest I have ever seen it.
The water level extremes have prompted much discussion among residents and visitors who
were basing their opinions on their memories of past water levels. So how do this year's
water levels compare to official historical data? I contacted both Amy Loiselle with the
DNR Water Division and Duane Williams with DNR Fisheries. They supplied me with some very
interesting data, which follows in this article. These records are from 1950 to the present.
Since the dam above the Vermilion River was installed in the 1950s to moderate fluctuations,
readings prior to that date are no longer relevant.
A reading taken in June at 1357.79, was 1.43 feet below the record high of 1359.22. The 1996
high level at 1358.80 was just .42 foot below the record high. The low. Ievel so far this year,
read off the gauge at Moccasin Point, at 1356.78 is just .71 foot above the record low of 1356.07.
A summary of the historical data follows.
Dale Lundblad - Board Member
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources - Division of Waters
Lakes - DB Recorded Water Level Summary
Report Date: 10/20/97
Lake Name: Vermilion #69-378 County: St. Louis
Period of Record: 10/03/50 to 11/01/96
Highest Recorded: (06/14/70) 1359.22
Lowest Recorded: (11/28/76) 1356.07
Recorded Range 3.15
Number of Readings 7 13,118
Average AII Readings (1929 datum) 1357.38
Ordinary High Water Elevation (1929 datum).1358.35
Run Out (1929 datum) - 1356.60
Last Reading: - (05/20/96) 1358.80
Surface Area: 63.4 sq. mi (40,557 act)
Maximum Depth: 76 ft.
Estimated Average Depth: 20 ft. (by MN DNR Fisheries, D. Williams)
Littoral Area:
Water depth (15 feet)
Total Drainage Area at Lake Outlet: 490 sq. mi. (313,540 ac.)
The lake is 13% of the total drainage area (490 sq. mi.).
Pike River Drainage Area at Mouth: 191.7 sq. mi. (122,745 ac.)
Which is 39% of the total drainage area (490 sq. mi.).
23.5 sq. mi.... (15,039 act) 37% of total area
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NEWS of a lakeside magazine that will benefit our club...
In searching for a fund-raiser that would be both painless and beneficial for the
Sportsmen's Club and its members, directors looked at "Focus 10,000" Minnesota's
Lakeside Magazine. The publication is seven years old, is published in Aitkin and
covers many topics of interest to waterfront owners around the state. Many of you
may already be subscribers. Past issues of the magazine have covered subjects such
as exotic species control, landscaping, water quality monitoring, fisheries management,
wastewater treatment and lake association activities.
The magazine's editor, Marcia Baer, attended our October board meeting and shared
with us a proposal whereby $5 of the individual subscriber's $15 annual subscription
would be retained by the club to be used locally for our own projects. It looks like
a win-win situation for us. Financial benefits accrue to our club, and we're aided
in the effort to educate ourselves about the issues facing lake associations.
At our November board meeting when we discussed the proposal and decided to offer
the magazine to our members, directors also voted to earmark any subscription money
received for our water quality program.
Please consider subscribing to "Focus 10,000". A subscription form will be included
with the membership renewal letter you will receive in January.
Paula Bloczynski
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Just what do muskies eat?
(Reprinted from FOCUS 10,000Minnesota's Lakeside Magazine, July 1997 issue)
by Jeff Reed, Fisheries Research - Glenwood
"But the ?#!@% things eat all the walleyes." From the minute muskellunge, or muskies, are
introduced into a body of water, that is the usual response from anglers. They have concerns
about their fishing because the muskie is the top predator (with the exception of the angler!)
in an aquatic ecosystem. Muskies have a reputation for being voracious predators as well.
But do anglers have anything to be concerned about? Let's take a look.
What exactly do muskies eat? If you answered "Anything they want to" you pretty much hit
the nail on the head; however, they do have definite preferences. The size and shape of
the prey are important factors in determining whether or not it is prime eating for a muskie.
For instance, it seems that they really don't like bluegills. In a northern Wisconsin lake
that contained a tremendous number of stunted bluegills, muskies were stocked in great numbers.
However, the size and number of bluegills remained the same. Shape of bluegills probably had
something to do with this. Bluegills (as well as crappies and bass) have a body shape that
is deeper than most other fish. Combine that with some wicked spines, and you don't have a
really great meal. Muskies prefer a more slender, less prickly meal. They
also prefer to eat the largest possible prey item they can find so they don't have to eat
as often. This feeding strategy saves them a great deal of energy and may be why they are
more difficult to catch! Preferred forage of muskies varies from region to region, but
they all share similar characteristics. For example, in the St. Lawrence River, redhorse
suckers are a favorite meal; in Wisconsin white suckers are the main fish in the muskies'
diet. Here in Minnesota and into Northwest Ontario, whitefish and tulibees are the choice
of muskies. Notice, all of these prey species have several similar characteristics, they
lack spines and can be quite large.
What about walleyes? In a recent study conducted in Wisconsin, researchers looked at the
contents of some 224 muskie stomachs and found only one walleye (13 inches). Ah! So
muskies do eat walleyes! Of course they do, but not very often. In fact if you think
about it, because of their spines, even a modest-size walleye (>14 inches) is too big
to be eaten by all but the very largest muskie. Since large muskies are uncommon, even
in the best lakes, they aren't going to eat a great deal of walleyes. But what about
the small walleyes you might ask. Obviously, small walleyes are the most vulnerable to
muskie predation. Most likely, young walleyes eaten by muskies are mistaken for or are
eaten in addition to yellow perch. In the years which young walleyes are plentiful,
more are going to be eaten by muskies; that's just the way the odds are. Conversely,
when they aren't so plentiful, not as many are going to be eaten because the chances
of a muskie encountering a young walleye drops. This is just Mother Nature's way of
protecting the species. Sure, muskies eat walleyes, so do largemouth bass. Crappies
love small walleyes, as do predators! For young muskies, the tables are often turned.
Several studies have shown that largemouth bass just love muskie fingerlings. In fact,
as few as 10 percent of stocked muskies may survive the first year of life because
largemouth bass predation is so great!! Simply put, predators (man included) are
opportunistic feeders and take the excess of what nature has to offer.
Finally, there is another way to look at the walleye-muskie relationship. The fact is,
walleyes and muskies have naturally co-existed in the Upper Midwest and Southern Canada
since the last ice-age, some 10,000 years ago. If muskies ate, walleyes at the rate that
many proclaim, they would have finished the job centuries ago! Lake of the Woods, Leech
Lake and Mille Lacs all have world-class walleye AND muskellunge fisheries. Why? Because
they have excellent supplies of forage fish needed to supply muskies AND walleyes with
food. The fact that a lake can support both species indicates a very healthy fish community.
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Exotic Species - Even species we prize can mean trouble for others
The following article recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Lake Vermilion has
problems with Rusty Crayfish, but Lake Davis in California has big problems with.. .Northern Pike?
Residents protest poisoning of lake by Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times
PORTOLA, Calif. - Scores of California wildlife agents swooped down on this tiny eastern Sierra town
Wednesday, in an early morning chemical offensive against the notorious Northern pike, a steel jawed
predator that many fear will decimate California's dwindling salmon population.
But equally steely Portola residents fought back until the bitter end against a government they
claim is arrogantly poisoning their drinking water along with the sharp-toothed pike that has
taken over Lake Davis.
As more than 100 protesters cheered, a Portola city councilman and three other demonstrators
swam out into the middle of the icy lake before dawn and padlocked their wet-suited bodies to a
buoy in a last ditch effort to stop the state from killing all the fish in this premier trout habitat.
It didn't work. All four were cited for trespassing. Three were treated for hypothermia at a
local hospital. And by 8 a.m., 22 boats stacked with chemical barrels and manned by technicians
in head-to-toe protective gear streamed onto the lake and began pumping brown plumes of a
pesticide called Nusyn Noxfish into the water.
"I never thought we'd be here today," said Plumas County Supervisor Fran Roudebush, who has led
the effort against the chemical treatment and turned many of the 20,000 residents of this sparse
logging county into environmentalists in the process. "The thing that I find so sad is that I had
such faith in the government, that (Gov. Pete) Wilson would step in at the last minute. But the
ones who are not telling the truth won."
State wildlife officials suspect that a rogue angler introduced the Northern pike into Lake Davis,
about 60 miles northwest of Reno, Nev., sometime in 1994; the fish is not native to waters west of the Mississippi.
While this week's effort was believed to be the largest intentional fish poisoning in California,
wildlife officials treated nearby Frenchman Lake in 1991.
Biologists fear that if the pike were to escape from Lake Davis and migrate to the Sacramento - San
Joaquin Delta 100 miles away, the California aquatic industry would be in great peril.
"The cost (of the treatment) is $2 million," said Banky Curtis, regional manager for the California
Department of Fish and Game. "When you compare it to the billion dollar fishing industry in the state
of California, it's a reasonable cost.... We believe this will be a successful treatment.
We will kill all of the fish."
Local residents understand that the pike has already taken a huge bite out of the economically
important Lake Davis trout population. But they argue that the fish has already been found in
the Truckee River and in other nearby lakes.
They fume that, as a small town, they have been run over roughshod by big government, which has
ignored other options for controlling the pike, such as gillnetting, electrocuting and fishing
the lake until all the pike are gone.
But most of all, they fear that the 16,000 gallons of liquid poison and 60,000 pounds of powdered
poison will harm their children and their neighbors. The active ingredient in Nusyn Noxfish is a
plant-based chemical called rotenone, which causes all organisms that breathe through gills to suffocate.
It is not the rotenone that worries them here. It is the trichloroethylene, TCE for short and a
carcinogenic byproduct of rotenone manufacture, that has them up in arms.
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Wildlife - The First Environmentalists
WILDLIFE'S BIOLOGICAL VALUE Wildlife has many values. One, the biological value, describes the
ecological services performed by wild animals. Consider this partial list -
- Pollination of plants by insects and birds.
- Reduction in the potential economic loss caused by harmful rodents (mostly rats and mice) as a result of predation by mammals (weasels, foxes, etc.) and by raptors (hawks and owls).
- Reduction in the potential economic loss caused by harmful insects as a result of the feeding of many birds and insectivorous (insect eating) mammals (shrews and bats).
- Soil improvement (mixing, enriching, aerating by worms, insects, and fossorial (burrowing) mammals.
- Water conservation and flood control by beaver impoundments.
- Sanitization of habitats by scavengers (insects, vultures, crows, opossums, etc.) "recycling" dead organisms.
- Improvement in the overall health of prey populations where predators remove sick and injured individuals.
- Recovery of widely dispersed nutrients by various animals, especially oceanic
All of these functions are ecologically important. Life would be different, no doubt more difficult,
without them. Can you think of other biological values?
Some may be so obvious that they are taken for granted. Others may be so subtle that they are not easily noticed.
Prepared by Free H. Montogue Jr. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Perdue University
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Membership Letters
I thought I should share this letter with our membership. It is another reminder that
Lake Vermilion is a very special place. - Barb Shook
Sportsmen's Club of Lake Vermilion
Barb Shook
8721 Raps Road
Cook, Minnesota 55723
October 7, 1997
Dear Barb,
In August my son Tanner, daughter Callie and I had the pleasure of spending a week with my parents,
Jack and Harriet Kent, at their cabin on Schmidt Island. Here in Northern Idaho we have some beautiful
lakes, but nothing can compare to going home to Minnesotait even smells special! We had a wonderful
week of fishing, sauna-ing, swimming and watching and listening to eagles and loons.
One of the reasons I was in Minnesota was to attend the meeting of the North American Loon Fund as a
member of the Board of Trustees. The meeting was held at the University of Minnesota in conjunction
with the American Ornithological Union's annual conference. It was a fascinating weekend, with
13 papers presented by scientists doing research on loons. Topics included studies of loon feeding
behavior on the Gulf of Mexico in winter, parasites in loons (not the most interestingly, determining
if loons are really as faithful as we think (they areto their nest site, but not necessarily to
each other.), and determining causes of death in loons. They're finding one of the most predominant
is the ingestion of lead sinkers, so we're encouraging anglers to try some of the new non-lead alternatives.
As you can see by the letterhead, I'm also involved in the Panhandle Loon and Wetlands Project
here in Idaho. My involvement began with wondering why our lakes, similar in many ways to those
of Northern Minnesota, didn't have many loons. The total loon population of Washington, Idaho and
Montana combined is slightly less than that of Lake Vermilion. Happily, the numbers are increasing
here, and many dedicated folks are working hard to protect the loons we have.
So here's a reminder how lucky you are to hear the sound of midnight choruses, to see downy chicks
riding on their parents' checkered backs, to share your lake with loons. Keep taking good care of
them and their home. I hope to be back soon to get my dose of them!
Sincerely,
Jennifer Welch
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Old News
Submitted by board member Ray Harris, who found these articles in an old (1927) issue of the Duluth Herald newspaper:
ICE-MAKERS ON VERMILION LAKE ARE MUCH HAMPERED
Tower, Minn., Jan. 13 - (Special to The Herald) Ice-makers on Lake Vermilion this year have been having quite
a time getting ice heavy enough to be worthwhile cutting. None of the icehouses has as yet been filled, but
those in the business are now about ready to start operations.
It was necessary for them to clear the foot or more of water and slush ice from the ice field to allow the
frost to penetrate. A week or so ago, before this clearing was done, there was an average of only four inches
of ice, but 18 inches and better resulted on the cleared areas.
None of the bays is considered safe for team travel, great caution being exercised where teams are taken
across the smaller bays. At all of the resorts on Lake Vermilion and at the majority of summer homes
icehouses are provided and work of filling these will be started this week.
GOOD PROSPECTS FOR LAKE AREA BOOSTERS
Virginia, Minn., Jan. 13 (Special to The Herald) Prospects of forming a strong organization for the promotion
of the Lake Vermilion area at the meeting to be held here Jan. 31 are the brightest, it was said today by those
back of the plan, which is in no way to conflict with the Arrowhead association or the Ten Thousand Lakes body.
It is expected that there will be representatives present from all 14 of the towns and cities of the Tower
district, to whom Secretary G.C. Carlson of the Tower Commercial Club has sent invitations.
The idea is to add special promotion work for the Lake Vermilion country to that done for the entire Arrowhead
by the larger organization, and it will be the first of such individual campaigns.
Towns invited to join the association are Virginia, Cook, Eveleth, Angora, Orr, Gilbert, McKinley, Biwabik,
Aurora, Mountain Iron, Buhl, Chisholm, Hibbing and Duluth.
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WATCH OUT FOR THIN ICE
Before venturing out on the ice, take note of these guidelines from our DNR.
These are recommended minimum ice thicknesses and intended as rough guidelines for new clear ice only.
If the ice is 2 inches or lessSTAY OFF! The ice should be:
- 4 inches - Ice Fishing
- 5 inches - Snowmobile or ATV
- 8-12 inches - Car or small pickup
- 12-15 inches - Medium truck or van
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