u/No_End_3558

Every spring for more than 110 years, the same thing has happened on Gun Lake (Barry/Allegan Country... there are a lot of Gun lakes in MI fyi). When the ice goes out, the Gun Lake Protective Association floods rearing ponds and stocks them with up to 100,000 walleye fry from the DNR. By Memorial Day the fry are two inches long and get released into the lake. Then the ponds are drained, insects take over the mud, and their eggs become fish food for next year's batch. The association buys another 60,000 fingerlings every fall. They have been doing this since before the Titanic sank.

Stocking solves one problem. Cover is the other, a walleye still needs somewhere to live. So in 2022 the association went to the state with a plan: brush bundles, two to five per site, sunk in 10 to 15 feet of water at 37 sites around the lake, in five phases. EGLE stamped the plans Approved, and the work runs into summer 2027 as permitted.

I pulled all 37 locations out of the state permit file and checked them. Every coordinate matches the stamped plan to within about ten feet, and every point lands inside Gun Lake on the state's own lake-boundary layer, Waypoint files in GPX, USR and HWR, one per site, numbered. These aren't secret spots. The coordinates are sitting stamped "Approved" in a public permit.

Ride over these and trust your sonar, not the pin. This project is phased and ongoing. Before you keep anything: Gun Lake carries a mercury advisory — largemouth and smallmouth under 18 inches are one serving a month, over 18 inches six a year. Check the current Eat Safe Fish guide.

That is all.

Between 2012 and 2017, volunteers from the Elk River Chain lake associations dragged loaded sleds across the ice in the dead of winter and sank fish shelters at 63 documented sites across five lakes. Three structures per site, mixed from three designs: hardwood crates packed with brush and rock, slab trees, and stump clusters with the roots still on. All in 15 to 25 feet.

The associations published the coordinates. I cross-checked them against the state permit records, ran every point against the lake polygons to catch anything that had drifted onto dry land or into the wrong lake, fixed three errors, and built waypoint files in GPX, USR and HWR — per lake, plus a whole-chain file if you fish more than one.

These aren't secret spots — the associations published them because the whole point of sinking habitat is for people to fish it.

Figure about 80 feet either way, so idle over the mark and trust your sonar, not the pin. Divers checked the Torch structures in 2019 and the crates were holding up fine. One Torch site shows up at two different spots on two official maps, 298 meters apart, so I left it out rather than guess — you're getting 25 of 26 there. And these are only the documented ones; plenty of structure goes in without paperwork.

Heads up before you keep anything: several of these lakes carry consumption advisories — check the current Eat Safe Fish guide.

Between 2012 and 2017, volunteers from the Elk River Chain lake associations dragged loaded sleds across the ice in the dead of winter and sank fish shelters at 63 documented sites across five lakes. Three structures per site, mixed from three designs: hardwood crates packed with brush and rock, slab trees, and stump clusters with the roots still on. All in 15 to 25 feet.

The associations published the coordinates. I cross-checked them against the state permit records, ran every point against the lake polygons to catch anything that had drifted onto dry land or into the wrong lake, fixed three errors, and built waypoint files in GPX, USR and HWR — per lake, plus a whole-chain file if you fish more than one.

https://shorelinescout.com/fish-shelters/elk-river-chain/

everything's a free download, nothing to buy. It's my site.

These aren't secret spots — the associations published them because the whole point of sinking habitat is for people to fish it.

Figure about 80 feet either way, so idle over the mark and trust your sonar, not the pin. Divers checked the Torch structures in 2019 and the crates were holding up fine. One Torch site shows up at two different spots on two official maps, 298 meters apart, so I left it out rather than guess — you're getting 25 of 26 there. And these are only the documented ones; plenty of structure goes in without paperwork.

Heads up before you keep anything: several of these lakes carry consumption advisories — check the current Eat Safe Fish guide.

None of this is my work, really. Volunteers built it winter after winter; I just found the paperwork and cleaned it up. If the files are any use to you, the Three Lakes Association and the Elk-Skegemog Lakes Association are both still active and could use members.

Anyone fished these? The oldest are 13 years old now and I'd love to know which sites are still producing — and which lake I should map next.

mix dockside sludge, sell it, kill some people probably

https://arcadesquirrel.com/mountebank/

A little TD game where you colonize planets and collect asteroids to gain resources and defend your colony. Alter the "lanes" by changing the gravity using "buoys".

this is early, early but testing the core loop and would love feedback :)

https://arcadesquirrel.com/gravity-harbor/

there are a couple other games I build on my site also

Four years. One town. Twenty-two ordinances, three actions a quarter. Inspired by the game diplomacy. Built with Opus 4.8 mostly and a little fable for fun.

You don't decide what gets built. You decide what's legal, what's affordable, and what's connected to the sewer. The town does the rest.

Everyone in town holds four memberships at once — where they stand, what they own, what they do, what they believe. Every lever helps one and hurts another.

And they move. Cheap housing brings newcomers. Newcomers buy houses. Homeowners become preservationists. The bloc you build is the bloc that votes.

https://arcadesquirrel.com/market-street/

Every "games like Timberborn" list just returns other things tagged "city builder," which misses the whole point — it's the water routing, the terracing, the drought timer that make it Timberborn, not the genre label.

So I built a tool that compares games on what players say they *feel* like (from review text, not tags) and shows the comparison broken down by mechanic.

For Timberborn it landed on:

- **Whiskerwood** — the closest in spirit, apparently: same colony/resource-chain core but with full vertical z-axis stacking. Reviewers flag it funnels you into one optimal build order, though.

- **Against the Storm** — the production/survival logic, but as a roguelike run instead of one permanent town. Way more pressure, way less cozy (the tool actually scores it near the bottom on "relaxation," which tracks).

- **MicroTown** — a cheap, polished Settlers-style economy game. No survival pressure, cozier than Timberborn, but some say it runs shallow past mid-game.

What would you have expected it to surface that it didn't?
no ads, no sign in, its free

arcadesquirrel.com/games-like/timberborn/

Hey all — I run a free Michigan lakes site and one thing I've ended up maintaining is a webcam directory covering the shipping-relevant spots: Port Huron and the St. Clair River corridor (Marine City, Algonac, St. Clair), Sault Ste. Marie, the Straits (Mackinac Bridge, Mackinac Island, St. Ignace, Mackinaw City), plus Lake Superior harbors like Marquette, Munising, Whitefish Point, and Ontonagon, and Huron-side spots like Rogers City.

Some are embedded live, some link out to the operator — I've learned the hard way that link-outs that work beat embeds that rot, so when a feed dies I either fix it or point to the source. I check them regularly and there's a "report broken" button on every page.

I know most of you already have StreamTime and the boatnerd cams bookmarked — this isn't trying to replace those. It's more useful for the secondary harbors and for checking conditions along a boat's route. If there's a cam you rely on that I don't have listed, tell me and I'll add it.

shorelinescout.com/michigan/webcams/

Hey Kzoo — I grew up on the water in Harbor Springs and spent the last year building a free site that pulls together all the lake info I always wished existed in one place.

For the Kalamazoo area (Kalamazoo, Van Buren, Allegan, Barry, Calhoun, St. Joe, Cass counties) there are 179 lakes and 137 public boat launches mapped, with depth contours, DNR fish stocking records, species info, and connected waterways. A few you can dig into right now:

• Gull Lake — 110 feet deep with full depth contours, plus launch details
• Austin Lake, Long Lake, Gourdneck — the Portage chain, all mapped
• Indian Lake, Eagle Lake, Paw Paw Lake — launch details and depth data

The whole thing is at shorelinescout.com — no ads, no accounts, just data.

Curious what lakes people want better info on around here. Still building this out and want to make sure the SW Michigan coverage is solid.

Edit: Thank you everyone for the feedback! I've made the following updates/changes so far based on your responses, keep em' coming!

• Added Long Lake — shorelinescout.com/michigan/kalamazoo/long-lake-kalamazoo/
• Added Long Lake Boat Launch — shorelinescout.com/michigan/kalamazoo/long-lake-kalamazoo/long-lake-boat-launch-kalamazoo/
• Added Indian Lake — shorelinescout.com/michigan/kalamazoo/indian-lake-kalamazoo/
• Added West Lake — shorelinescout.com/michigan/kalamazoo/west-lake-kalamazoo/
• Added Pine Lake — shorelinescout.com/michigan/barry/pine-lake-barry/
• Added Lake Hill 'N Brook (Limekiln Lake) — shorelinescout.com/michigan/kalamazoo/lake-hill-n-brook/
• Added info to existing Lower Crooked Lake page — shorelinescout.com/michigan/barry/lower-crooked-lake/
• Added info to existing Upper Crooked Lake page — shorelinescout.com/michigan/barry/upper-crooked-lake/
• Fixed Union Lake depth map bug (site-wide: 40 lakes corrected)!