Northern Pines Camp (where we stay) is located on Fish Hook Lake ---just north of Park Rapids in Hubbard County. Fish Hook has a surface area of 1,632 acres and a maximum depth of 76 feet. There are county-owned public accesses located on the southwest shore of the lake and on the Fish Hook River south of the lake in Heartland Park. Fish Hook is a popular lake and receives a fair amount of fishing and recreational activity year around. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has classified Minnesota's lakes into 43 different types based on physical and chemical characteristics. Fish Hook is in lake class 27. Other area lakes in this same classification are Upper Bottle, Garfield, and Lake George.

Fish Hook is an excellent fishing

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lake and is known as one of the best "multi-species" lakes around. "The Hook" has good water quality, bottom substrate, and aquatic vegetation that provides excellent habitat for a variety of gamefish species. Important emergent aquatic vegetation such as hardstem bulrush are found along the southwest and north shores. Good beds of submerged aquatic vegetation such as claspingleaf and whitestem pondweed ("cabbage"), coontail, and northern milfoil are common and found out to 20 foot depths.

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