Pleasant Lake

Pleasant Lake provides excellent water quality for coldwater fishes and should be managed for brook trout, lake trout, and salmon. Management for brook trout requires the maintenance of continued free passage into the inlet spawning and nursery areas. The brooks principally concerned here are Dark Cove Brook, Horse Hill Brook, Second Brook, and Mile Brook. These brooks all have good populations of young trout and they are the main source of the lake's trout fishery. Management for lake trout requires that lake levels be kept stable during the fall and winter so that eggs spawned on shallow shoals will not be exposed by falling lake levels. It is not probable that unfavorable water level changes will occur at Pleasant Lake. Routine salmon stocking will be required to help maintain the salmon fishery.  It is unfortunate that three warm water species; yellow perch, white perch, and smallmouth bass have gained access to Pleasant Lake. The most recent of these introductions is the small mouth bass. All three species are now firmly established. The presence of these warm water fishes will undoubtedly reduce the coldwater fishery to some extent through competition. However, the center of population of the warmwater fishes is mainly in the isolated, northeast part of the lake known as Dark Cove. The habitat conditions in Dark Cove are quite different from those found in the main part of the lake where the center of population of the coldwater species is found. It is quite probable that natural segregation of the warm water and coldwater fishes by selection of preferred habitat will minimize the effect of warm water competition on the coldwater fisheries.