As we head into the holiday season and a new year, let’s commit ourselves to protecting Lake Beulah—our shared treasure—for generations to come. Together, we can ensure its waters remain clear, its shores resilient, and its community strong.

Educating myself on this issue for the past 4-5 years, I have learned so, so much. The one thing certain to me today as I write this letter – Wake Surfing is causing damage to our lake, its vegetation and its marl bottom! We now have secured a wake surf boat for conducting testing to better understand the effects of wake-enhanced surfing to our lake. We have incorporated divers (retired firefighters) who live in our community and share the same love for our lakes. They manage the park at Booth Lake, another lake where this topic is very controversial.

Lake Beulah‘s population of bluegills is strong and healthy; size and structure is excellent with many 8 to 10 inch bluegills being caught. Fishing pressure for bluegills is heavy; recommendations would be to only harvest as many bluegills as needed versus taking full limits. Observations on shallow water spawning bluegills, those spawning along the shorelines in less than 3 feet of water is the same as the last few years where shallow spawning bluegills have been disappearing. Recommendations for shallow spawning bluegills which are the easiest to target and catch, would be to limit targeting and harvesting those fish as they are a specific strain of bluegill and it would be helpful to let them reestablish themselves.

The old joke about the inevitability of death and taxes is funny because it’s true. Most of us want to delay both as long as possible. But many of us also want to make a difference for those people and things that we care about, and Lake Beulah is one of these for me and many of my friends.

As a Protect Lake Beulah (PLB) Board member for seven years, the end of my service this fall has me thinking about giving back and protecting this gem of a natural resource for future generations. That’s why I have proposed the establishment of Protect Lake Beulah Legacy (PLBL), a separate entity structured as a 501(c)(3) to capture donations large and small (including bequests) for investment that will grow over time and provide an annual income to Protect Lake Beulah to fund its evolution and initiatives.

A newly released Phase II study from the University of Minnesota’s St. Anthony Falls Lab reveals wakeboats in wakesurf mode can cause significant lake bottom disturbance—even in deeper waters. Underwater footage shows powerful prop wash uprooting vegetation and disturbing sediment at depths of 9 and 14 feet. Based on additional testing in 27 feet of water, researchers recommend wake surfing only in depths of 20 feet or greater (measured to the top of vegetation) to protect fish habitat and water quality.

It’s no secret the number of boats has increased on Lake Beulah over the last 20 years. So too has boat size and horsepower!! Whereas in the 1970s 100hp was considered a pretty big engine, nowadays we’re seeing 600hp boats on the lake, even pontoon boats powered by 600hp. New kinds of boats are quite common now, especially personal watercraft, and the number of wake boats goes up every year. How is all this boat traffic impacting the aquatic plants of the lake? And why should we care?

What was once the worry of only a few who realized how the new BIG WAKE technology ‘might’ be bad for the lake has increasingly become common knowledge. There is now a full-blown realization by many of what has already happened, and what the science shows will happen to our beautiful lake if we don’t curb wake enhancement now.

If you attended Protect Lake Beulah’s comprehensive forum on March 29th, you heard A LOT about what has already happening to the lake, but if you couldn’t make it, this article contains a Cliff Notes review of some highlights along with some other things to think about.

The first people to appreciate Lake Beulah were Native Americans who had many family-based settlements around the lake. Among them were Potawatomi Indians who settled in the area well before Wisconsin’s incorporation as a state in 1848. Evidence of their presence comes from artifacts found, Indian mounds reported in newspapers of the 1800s, and many informative documents detailing the extent of the lake’s early American history.

The photo in this article is from my History Committee colleague Beth Lanham’s collection of historic artifacts.