Calendar

May 6 Office opens with summer hours
May 13 Fishing season opens!
May 27 Guest fishing begins (Saturday of Memorial Day weekend)
June 10-25 Submit bids for boat auction (see below)
June 29 -July 1 Ramona closed for the Kids Fishing Contest
July 22 Fishing Member Meeting, 10AM, POA Bldg

Headlines

Water Status - We wrapped up 2022 in fairly good shape for winter storage at all our lakes except Erie. You'll see Hiawatha is down considerably due to filling the lower lower lakes last fall. We have started running water with the early runoff, however, it will take an above average runoff this spring to fill the lakes.

Brook trout stocked at Nokomis, May 2023 Fishing status - All the lakes have been stocked this spring, with at least 10% of each load being trophy sized. Last fall we stocked all the lakes except Shagwa, Erie, and Nokomis. We were unable to do our bi-annual stocking of walleye in Apache due to supply issues. However, we stocked an extra load of catchables and trophies in Apache. We also stocked a few brook trout in Nokomis. We were unable to procure browns last year, but we committed to a source for this year. As for dealing with the explosion of perch at Nokomis, we're attacking them with a similar approach that we used at Apache about 12 years ago. One, it's open season on perch, if you catch any - keep or throw them away, do not return
perch to the lake. Second, stocking more large predatory trout. To that end, we stocked 250 pounds of trophy sized browns, brooks, rainbows, and tiger trout in Nokomis in early May. These are expensive fish - so please handle them with care!

Boat Auction - We have 21 boats, canoes, kayaks and even a couple peddle boats to auction off! We'll be holding a sealed bid auction for members only to bid on this variety of boats we've collected from the lakes through 2021. The boats we collected last fall are not part of this auction. We'll open the boat area for bidders to examine the boats Memorial Day weekend and the weekend of June 10. Bids must be submitted between June 10th and 25th. We'll post the list of winning bids on June 28th. For further details, see the instructions and bid form.

Dues Increase - The stockholders approved a ~14% dues increase effective for the 2023 calendar fishing season. Initiated memberships will increase $60/year, uninitiated $100/year, and day passes by $5. This is our first dues increase in 5 years, which during that time saw inflation increase by ~19% and fishing costs increase by 22%. We're also increasing ice fishing to $90/year and ice fishing day passes by $5, the ice fishing prices were effective January 1st. Boating memberships will increase $30 and boating passes by $5. There were no increases for child/grandchild permits or child guest passes.

Fall Projects - We completed a number of small maintenace projects last fall - another round of work on the upper and lower Bellaire ditches, upper Mitchell ditch and road work, the Hiawatha fish trap, removing all the old fish feeder stands at Papoose and Sam's pond, repairing both sheds, road work going into Erie and along the Snake ditch, and cleaning out the toe drains at all the lakes.

Boat Cleanup - We removed 5 boats from the lakes at the end of last fall's fishing season. Only one of the boats was properly stickered. If you forgot to remove your boat, you can arrange with the office for a time to come to our boat yard and identify it and bail it out for $200 + $5 boat registration. We want to thank everyone who removed their boats last year, this was the fewest boats we've ever had to deal with at the end of the year.