Tuttle Lake Wildlife Area is an out-of-the-way kind of place known locally for its pheasant hunting and, recently, sneaky good walleye fishing. Its 1,500 plus acres is part lake, part wetland, part prairie, part floodplain, and part small savanna on the Iowa Minnesota border in Emmet County.
On this cool and breezy late August morning, the area is quiet except for Canada geese loafing in the floodplain, and pelicans and cormorants enjoying the slack water of the East Fork of the Des Moines River, all under the watchful eye of an adult red-tailed hawk soaring overhead.
“It has a little bit of everything here,” said Lucas Straw, wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Prairie Lakes Unit – Ingham office.
The rolling topography is mainly a mix of prairie and seasonal wetlands. The natural wetlands made it difficult to farm so much of the area historically, was kept as pasture.
“We think there’s some remnant prairie there and we’re managing it to see what will return,” Straw said.
Part of that management includes using prescribed fire to mimic what had occurred naturally. Prairie Lakes staff burned a quarter section this spring to rejuvenate the prairie plants and keep the woody vegetation from encroaching.
The most recent acquisition was northeast of the intersection of 510th Avenue and 120th Street and a portion of that was converted to prairie. The young planting is really showing itself.
Mountain mint, gray headed coneflower, hoary vervain, partridge pea, great blue lobelia, goldenrod, showy tic trefoil, Maximilien sunflower, compass plant, purple prairie clover, side oats gramma, false boneset, prairie onion, prairie blazing star, June grass leadplant and more. The prairie is buzzing with insects and grassland birds.
A neighbor, who is part of the beginning farmer program, assists with some of the work. He has handled the haying, and planting and maintaining the food plots for the past four years.
The largest feature of the area is Tuttle Lake at 2,300 acres. The shallow natural lake is on the state line with roughly 970 acres in Iowa.
While it is a larger lake by Iowa standards, it is shallow with a maximum depth of around six feet. Its 50,000-acre watershed feeding the lake helps to minimize fish kills even during severe winters.
Natural resources agencies in Iowa and Minnesota coordinate fish sampling and the Iowa DNR stocks the lake with newly hatched walleye fry. Residents of both states can fish the lake with a resident fishing license.
“The outlet is a popular wader fishing spot for walleyes in the spring,” he said.
The fry stocking has provided a more consistent product here, and walleye fishing has been good recently, but can have ups and downs because of winter kills and limited habitat.
The lake has a good population of channel catfish and bullheads, with crappies, yellow perch and a few northern pike available. The outlet is the headwaters for the East Fork of the Des Moines River.
The outlet is on the southeast corner of the lake and on the edge of Okamanpeedan State Park, a small day-use only state park with no modern facilities. Emmet County has a park on the southwest corner of the lake, with electrical campsites, restroom, a boat ramp and playground.
A state managed boat ramp and parking lot sits between the two parks. The ramp and parking lot are scheduled for improvements next year.