Turtle Flambeau Flowage

About Turtle Flambeau Flowage

The Turtle Flambeau Flowage is a made thing. In 1926 the gates closed on a dam at the meeting of the Turtle and Flambeau rivers, and the water backed up over more than a dozen natural lakes, several river beds and thousands of acres of forest and marsh. What came out of it is 12,943 acres with 197 miles of shoreline — an extraordinary amount of edge for a water only ten miles across — and hundreds of islands.

In 1990 the state bought roughly 12,000 acres around it along with 114 miles of that shoreline and 195 of the islands, which is why the flowage still reads as undeveloped country rather than a ring of cabins. All five public landings belong to the DNR: Fishermans, Sportsmans and Springstead are concrete and marked accessible, while Murrays is a grate ramp and Sturgeon Bay is gravel.

The state manages it for musky with natural reproduction plus stocking, and for walleye with stocking plus natural reproduction. Walleye is what most people come for; musky and smallmouth account for most of the rest. A flooded landscape means structure that does not appear on a contour line — old shorelines, drowned timber, the beds of the lakes that were here first.

The flowage turned a hundred in 2026. Check current DNR regulations before keeping fish.

Written from Wisconsin DNR hydrography and fisheries data, and from Turtle Flambeau Flowage turns 100 — Wisconsin State Journal, History of the Flowage — Turtle Flambeau Flowage & Trude Lake Association, Turtle Flambeau Flowage — Travel Wisconsin.