Ten Mile Lake Ice Beginning to Break Up, Signaling Spring Arrival in Otter Tail County

The ice on Ten Mile Lake began fracturing at the edges near Dalton this week, and few people were watching the daily changes more closely than Mike and Linda Schultz. Their family has operated Ten Mile Lake Resort on the lake's shores since 1906, now four generations deep, and the moment ice clears enough for a boat to cross open water marks the start of everything their season depends on.

That moment, by historical standards, arrives around April 25. That is the median ice-out date for Ten Mile Lake according to Minnesota DNR records tracked under LakeFinder ID 56061300, though the range is wide: the earliest ice-out on record was March 29, 2012, while the latest came May 18, 1996, a nearly seven-week spread that underscores how unpredictable spring can be in Otter Tail County's lake country.

The DNR defines ice-out precisely: a boat must be able to navigate from any shore to any other shore without being stopped by hard ice. That standard matters not just for open-water fishing trips but for the safety decisions that precede them. Ice conditions can deteriorate rapidly in April, and the DNR cautions that ice-out dates should not be used as a measure of ice thickness. Anglers who drove snowmobiles or trucks onto the lake through the winter months need a different calculus in early April, when daytime temperatures swing and ice can be deceptively honeycombed beneath a solid-looking surface.

Minnesota Sea Grant's Lakes Thaw Tracker, which draws on more than 15,000 historical ice-out dates collected by the DNR, gives shoreline residents and resort operators a broader picture of what to expect season to season. Regional reports from earlier this spring pointed toward a normal mid-to-late April ice-out for Ten Mile Lake.

For the Schultzes, that timing shapes everything from staffing to supply orders. The resort's 13 rental cabins and more than 90 seasonal campsites draw anglers from across the region, many of whom plan trips around the first open-water weekend. Ten Mile Lake Resort sits just off Interstate 94, roughly 10 minutes south of Fergus Falls, a pet-friendly property between two lakes that serves as a natural gateway into Otter Tail County's fishing season.

The county holds 1,048 lakes, more than any other county in the United States, and the Otter Tail Lakes Country Association markets the area on that superlative. Spring ice-out, rippling across that many bodies of water in sequence, is what sets the season in motion. On Ten Mile Lake, the thaw has arrived. The Schultzes have been here for 118 years of them.