Horseshoe Lake Stats
- Acres: 398
- Max Depth: 57 feet
- Mean Depth: 20 feet
- Bottom: 40% sand, 0% gravel, 0% rock, 60% muck
- Shore length: 8.58 miles
- Water Color: Medium Brown
- Water Clarity: 4.8 feet
- DNR Contour Map
- Google Maps Location
Fish Species in Horseshoe Lake
- Largemouth Bass (Common)
- Northern Pike (Common)
- Walleye (Present)
- Black Crappie
- Yellow Perch
- Bluegill
- Pumpkinseed
- Rock Bass
Watch us fish Horseshoe lake in mid May
Boat Landings on Horseshoe Lake
The boat landing is on the southwest end Horseshoe Lake. Its in a small park with a separate entry and exit road.
Its all gravel except for the boat launch, which has a concrete pad. There is a nice dock too, which had some people fishing from it.
The layout of this landing is kind of weird. Its not clear where you should park, so everyone just picked a random spot in the grass. I did not see any other amenities such as bathrooms or picnic areas.
Commentary on Horseshoe Lake
Horseshoe lake is not one of the top fishing spots in the area, but it does offer some decent bass and panfishing, without the competition.
According to the Sportsman’s Connection fishing guide book (which I highly recommend you get one), this lake used to be a good walleye lake, but they had low survival rates after stocking them, so they focused on making this a bass lake instead.
It also says the bluegills in here are stunted. I would have to disagree with that after catching many good sized ones. On the other hand, all the bass we caught were on the small side.
Here is a map of where I would recommend you fish. The spot with the “X” on the north side was suppose to be a hotspot, but it was so shallow that I couldn’t get my boat in there.
You can see the small opening that goes into that shallow bay. It was so windy this day, that I didn’t want to even attempt it. There were too many rocks right there.
A good portion of this lake is very deep, in the 40 to 50 foot range. The north end is where you will find the shallower areas where you can catch bass and bluegills.
The shorelines are filled with nice homes. A tornado had recently passed through here, and it looked as if many of the houses have been remodeled because of it. It also left a lot of downed trees in the water which make for good structure that the fish can hide in.
Fishing Experience on Horseshoe Lake
Reggie and I fished here early in the season on a cool day. We started on the south end just off the landing without any luck.
Then we tried that deep bay on the north side just up from the landing. We didn’t catch anything there either. You can see the steep shorelines from the picture above. From there we drove straight up to the north end and worked our way back.
I put my spinnerbait away and put on some Gulp Honey Worms (which work great by the way). We immediately started catching bluegills. you could se them spotting at the surface out in the middle. It was only about 4 feet deep out there.
The water had a green tint to it, but had a nice bed of weeds at the bottom. Its a great place for fish to be roaming around. There were some swimming rafts that we fished around too and did pretty good at.
We found some fish beds up close to the shoreline just south of the north end. The bite was hot, and we often had two on at a time.
We caught mostly bluegills, with a couple pumpkinseeds in the mix.
Here is another example of the nice bluegills we caught.
We did catch a few bass. All of them were about the same size, around 11-12 inches. I saw some guys in kayaks fishing for bass and they caught some the same size too. So even though there are a lot of bass in here, it might be hard to find a lunker.
What really surprised me was that we didn’t catch any northern pike. We don’t find too many lakes where we don’t catch one. They apparently are in here, we just didn’t see any. If you do fish for them, check the special regulations. Currently they have a bag limit of two, and minimum length of 26 inches.
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