Platte Lake

Platte Lake is an all-sports lake: about 2,516 acres, up to 95 feet deep and around 24 feet on average, with no local speed or hour limits, so people water ski, wakeboard, tube and sail here. Launch at the DNR site and go after walleye, smallmouth bass, yellow perch and rock bass. For a lazy float, leave the paddling and river tubing to the Platte downstream.

Sometimes called Big Platte Lake to set it apart from nearby Little Platte Lake, it sits on the Platte River in northern Benzie County, south of Empire and northwest of the village of Honor. The river is both its main inflow and its outlet, and below the lake it continues through Loon Lake to Platte Bay.

The lake has a comeback story. After Pacific salmon were planted in the Platte River in the late 1960s, phosphorus from a state fish hatchery on the river clouded the once very clear water and fed algae. The Platte Lake Improvement Association and lakefront owners went to court, and over the following decades the state cut the hatchery’s phosphorus discharges sharply. By 2011 the lake was clearing as a result, as Michigan Public reported that year.

Much of the paddling and tubing on the Platte happens downstream of the lake, inside the national lakeshore.