Burt Lake

Burt Lake is the third lake north on the Inland Waterway — past Pickerel and Crooked, before the channel narrows into Indian River town and continues on to Mullett. At 17,120 acres it is Michigan's fourth-largest inland lake, five miles across at its widest, with a 73-foot basin that keeps the middle of the lake cold enough for lake trout while the shoreline stays warm and sand-bottomed for a hundred yards out. The lake also holds the state's lake sturgeon record — a fish that can live past eighty, caught here more than once. Indian River does the work of gateway town. It sits at the lake's southeast corner, where Burt Lake State Park runs 2,000 feet of public beach and a campground split between shaded loops and open lakefront sites — reserve the water-view rows if a boat is coming along. A short walk from downtown, DeVoe Beach and its Veterans Memorial Fishing Pier cover the same shoreline without the camping fee, and host the town's Fourth of July fireworks over the water. Burt Lake Marina works the mouth of the Indian River channel itself; Howe Marine and The Landings work the connecting river a few minutes north, close enough to put a boat on Mullett Lake the same afternoon. Downtown runs one main street — S Straits Highway — with Vivio's serving the same pizza recipe since the Vivio family bought the place in 1952, and The Station @ 310 pouring Michigan craft beer out of the old train depot, close enough to Burt Lake to walk. Wildwood Coffee Co. covers the mornings. May through September is the water season — swimming, walleye and pike on the drop-offs, pontoons out of three different marinas. Fall brings sturgeon-watching and the color along M-68 toward Cross in the Woods; by January, the lake supports its own ice-fishing traffic.