Information on Lake of the Woods

by Al Halfaker

I might be prejudice, but for me Lake of the Woods is the most awesome, beautiful fishing and recreational boating lake in Canada or the U.S. for the statistical reasons listed below.

Information about Lake of the Woods:

Click here to see a map of the lake with information about resorts, anchorages, marinas, beaches, landings and hazards.

To explore a lake of the magnitude of Lake of the Woods entirely in the past was very difficult. It takes eight maps to cover all the islands, suggested routes, and boy markers which are numerous around the lake. Most inland water lakes need just one map to navigate a lake. There are various sites on the internet these maps can be ordered from. One good site is maptown.com. It is necessary to have eight separate maps to show all the details necessary to navigate safely on Lake of the Woods. A ninth map is an overview of the entire lake. In recent years with the development of GPS (Global Positioning Systems) it is possible with a good chart plotter that has all the nautical information installed on in its system of Lake of the Woods to explore this lake with all the islands and know where you are within 100 feet or less and use the paper charts as a back up. GPS and chart plotters have made it much easier to navigate a lake with 14,552 islands without getting lost.

There are approximately 85 resorts and lodges on the Canadian side and 38 resorts and lodges on the U.S. side. If you search Lake of the Woods on Google, these resorts and a lot more information will come up.

I have developed a Google Earth map with special place marks on the map of most US resorts and lodges and most Canadian resorts and lodges on Lake of the Woods. Some of them were difficult to place as they are on islands in the lake and their web sites do not give good directions pin pointing their exact location on the lake.

Also, we have created a Google Earth placemarks file which contains information about recommended overnight protected anchorages, remote sand beaches for swimming, marinas and public launch sites. In order to use this place marks file, you will need high speed internet and Google Earth installed. Clicking on individual place marks provides more information about the place mark.

If you are in to viewing large fish caught on Lake of the Woods, just click on any resort or lodge on the lake especially on the Canadian side. The resort web site usually has a section showing very large musky, northern, and walleyes caught in Lake of the Woods.