Swimming at Gilletts Lake

Missy - Brad - Jimio - Mindy

I will never forget the great times I had with my brother and sisters swimming at Gilletts Lake. We used to dive off the end of our dock [more like cannonball off the end] I'd pretend I was a shark and chase the girls around. Or sneek up underwater and flip over their rubber raft. When I was little, I'd hunt for crayfish and minnows with a small screen net and put them in a bucket and watched them swim around. A few houses down there was this small patch of land called Ives Beach. It was very sandy and went to about 6 feet deep. Near shore it was shallow so young moms could watch their toddlers wade in the water. Just before we entered into the bay there was a huge sandbar. Great for swimming and for catching clams. I always wore my mask hoping to find money or a diamond ring on the bottom. Never found a ring but I did find about 86 cents in change :] Then there was the Gilletts Lake County Park. They had boeys out there to show where the boats and rafts limit was but some swimmers [mostly with floatation devices] went beyond the boeys. A little Party Store at the county park sold these snowcones and I usually ordered my snowcone with "Tigers Blood". Very tasty. My favorite swimming spot was this 40 foot drop-off. I would take my mask, dive off the raft and see all kinds of fish swimming around. Once I saw this huge school of Perch. Must have been every Perch in Gilletts Lake that day. Once I was in my rowboat and found an old ice-fishing shanty in about 12 feet of water. It was fun going down and looking at that. Would have made a nice photo if I had a underwater camera. One year we had a drought and the water lever was so low it was like 15 feet of sand in front of our cement wall out to the shoreline. It was hard on motorboat propellors. Then one year we had a lot of rain and the water lever was like 6 feet up in the front yard and the dock was almost underwater. I wish I had a photo of that!