Winkelman Fishing Story About South Long Lake
(this picture of David Winkelman was in Canada 1979)
David Winkelman says: “I fell in love with Lower South Long Lake while fishing with my brother Babe, catching some of the largest bass and walleye in our lives up to that point in the mid 1970s. One day we caught two “double-headers” of 10 pound walleyes on a cold October afternoon, and caught another dozen or so over 5 pounds the same day, most of which we released. We were flabbergasted and did not want anyone to know about this spot. Little did that help. Some old guy was watching us with a telescope from their cabin on the lake and came over to the public landing and blocked our truck with his truck when we were leaving the lake. Excitedly, he came running to our boat and begged to see the fish. The old feller told us he saw us catch a bunch of big walleye and further described in amazing detail how Babe and I caught the last double header (two large fish together at the same time).
Upper and Lower South Long Lakes are on the Nokasippi River system and are real nice fish producing lakes. Totally stretching about 14 miles long, with a beautiful sand bottomed Nokasippi river running in between, it is one of the largest lakes in the area. The river changes the water in the lakes quite often and kept it from becoming too polluted, at least up until the 1980s. Nice Walleye, Large Northern, Great Bass, Lots of Crappies, Sunfish, Perch, Whitefish and Bowfin are still easier to catch here than in most other lakes. Back in the 1970s, the lake water was much less polluted. I looked for land there to build a lake home, but all of the hundreds of poorly planned 50 foot lots were already divided, bought up and built up with typically poor septic systems of the day. I finally found a home site up from the lake on the old lake shore road between the two lakes, which was the old County Road 23 before the 1972 flood. After the bridge washed out, they never reopened that stretch of road and built a new road around it. That’s where we live today, 9081 CR 23, Brainerd MN, where the old road and the new road meet.
Upper South Long Lake is just as good, and some say better, fishing lake of the two sister lakes. In the winter, hundreds of fish houses can be found near the center of the lake on several humungous school of crappies and walleye. The water is a little clearer in the Upper Lake, which is another reason to suspect the leaching septic systems on the Lower Lake.
There are thousands of residential septic systems leaching into this water shed and scores of farms with feedlots/fields within or adjoining the whole Nokasippi River watershed, polluting it further. During the drought years of 1988 and 1989, the nutrients pooled up and created an algae “factory” that filled the lake basin with about 6 feet of decaying algae. This massive bed of algae was visible on my sonar for several years and it changed the lake for decades. The available oxygen was used up by the decaying mass of vegetation and the fish could not live in the same deep-water structures they had been using. It became a “weed walleye” lake, meaning the walleye could only exist on the deep edge of the weeds because of oxygen depletion. Earlier, there was oxygen and oxygen producing vegetation (cabbage weeds) down deeper. It broke my heart and built my resolve to do something.
It can be cleaned up, but it will take a lot of work getting the septic systems functioning better, re-routing the run-off from nutrient laden farms and feedlots, cleaning out the lake basin in some manner and re-energizing the beneficial aquatic vegetation. Education is a key to this work and the South Long Lake Associations (one for each lake, Upper and Lower) are working diligently to make this happen.
We are raising money from our Concert for Conservation event as “seed money” to help clean up the lake and plan to let the lake associations wisely use the money for educational programs, incentives for better septic system “care and feeding” programs and inspecting a suspect septic system at an over populated RV park, where there are now over 100 RVs and campers leaching sewage into the lake.”
Please make as large a donation as you can to the South Long Lake Associations , and if you live on the lake, please work hard with your lake association to help put nature back into balance.
Here is a link to somethings you can do and workshops you can learn from: https://www3.thedatabank.com/dpg/529/pm.asp?id=78174&nav=1&aacwc=371565292749255078174259739134%20target=
Here are the contacts: Lower South Long Lake Association, Mike O’Brien, email at: mikeo@brainerd.net and Ron Trosvig, email rontrosvig@comcast.net for the Upper South Long Lake Association.
My email is winkelmansolar@gmail.com.
Thank you for your concern, help and donations.
© David Winkelman 2020
