Information about our meeting held at Bill and Mary Padgett's
home on Saturday, August 4th, 2007

There were about 12 people at our first meeting to organize a group interested in the welfare of the natural resources in the Soo Lake environment.  Bill and Mary Padgett and their very helpful children hosted the meeting on the deck overlooking the lake.

Discussion topics were

1.)  Watch for invasive plant/fish species and distribute handouts

2.)  Slow no wake reminder... all present were in favor of the slow-no-wake idea.  Mike Backes reminded us that the town of Newbold has on record an ordinance making Soo Lake a slow-no-wake lake; this has been a township ordinance for about seven years.  It is understood by the property owners that on occasion an outboard motor may need to rev the RPMs to keep the engine running (at idle) efficiently.  As well, if anyone needs to avert a storm, or has stayed out fishing too long and is late for supper, personal safety allows for high speed return to the dock.

3.)   Transfer of boats/bait buckets/fish from other lakes into Soo Lake.  Everyone agreed to be vigilant.  Phil and others agreed to allow guests/visitors to use the property owner's boats rather than allowing the guests to launch their own boats into Soo Lake.

4.)  Discussed possibility of a “fish study” where we can tag fish, record and email data to the website for survey purposes

5.)  Discussed catch and release on bass and muskies. Some are kept on occasion for a traditional Musky meal. Are beavers being a nuisance?  Most of those present expressed the view that the beavers must be kept to low numbers due to the destruction of softwood trees.  Phil Frasier family will take charge of going further with this topic to see what can be done to control beaver numbers; there were several offers made to assist Phil with the beaver study.

6.)  History… A request was made by T J Dunn that anyone with old photos/maps/archived lumber era info would make that historical data available to our group for our enlightenment and possibly to place on our website.   Dave Frasier stated his daughter Kimberly would look into digging up some historical data for us.

7.)  Mike Backes on behalf of Mary Lewandowski highly recommended that we become a certified lake association so we can have access to available resources and to establish credibility and strength-of-numbers in the event that legal or civic matters warrant an organized statement of our position as property owners.

8.)  Discuss the website… www.SooLakePropertyOwners.com

The plan is to post photos, questions, concerns, ideas, history, recipes (we need Bill's "fish" chowder recipe, Phil!), fishing logs, unusual animal sightings and other information within the site for all of us to share.

 Informal discussions took place as we left this enjoyable meeting.  We thank Bill and Mary for their hospitality and refreshments and at the moment the plan is to meet the first Saturday of August, 2008.  

Larry Kleinschmidt called from Minnesota and said he and Judith look forward to meeting other property owners and are in favor of our group keeping the environment as healthy and pleasant as possible.

Please email anything you'd like to see posted to this site to  tjdunn@newnorth.net

Please send us links to your favorite lake/environmental/conservation sites.