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Steve McComas: Some detective tips for investigating lake history in Minnesota

The Minnesota DNR's LakeFinder tool has lake health and water quality data often going back 40 to 50 years, and fish survey data are available for many lakes as well. (Stock photo)

In Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes, it could be 21,871 lakes if all water bodies over 2.5 acres were included. That’s plenty of potential cases for me to investigate, while still leaving plenty for interested anglers or other users to conduct their own investigations.
Here are some tips for when you’re doing background checks on a lake’s history. I combine old-school sleuthing with updated digital approaches.

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