The Indiana pack covers two kinds of water and they do not boat alike. At the north end of it the lakes are glacial. Wawasee and Maxinkuckee sit up there with hard shorelines of cottages and piers, a bottom that has been where it is for a very long time, and enough weekend traffic by mid morning that the useful question is which end of the lake is quiet. At the south end the water is held behind a dam. Monroe, Patoka and Brookville fill valleys, so the shore is timber and hillside rather than lawn, the arms run back for miles up drowned creeks, and how much water is under you in the back of one of those arms depends on what the dam is holding this month.
The pack carries 4,338 charted water bodies. Of those, 1,322 carry a name, and 76 of the named ones cover more than a square kilometer. The largest it carries is Monroe Lake at 44.7 square kilometers, 11,046 acres, measured off the chart polygon itself rather than quoted from a sign at the ramp. Patoka Lake is next at 36.7 square kilometers, 9,069 acres. The water bodies come from the National Hydrography Dataset and the depth on them is built from state elevation surveys.
Count everything and the pack holds 4,338 water bodies, nineteenth of the 48 state lake packs. Ask only for the ones with a name and 1,322 are left, which is twenty-fifth. Ask which of those clear a square kilometer and you are down to 76, thirty-third. Read the three numbers in that order and you have a fair description of the water here. There is a great deal of it, and most of it is small.
The count is not padding. Between the big lakes sit farm ponds, old pits and quarry holes, park lakes, and the widening behind a low dam on a creek. They are drawn as water with a shoreline, which is what you want at the top of a long arm where the alternative is guessing at the pond you are looking at.
The gap between 4,338 and 1,322 is the unnamed water, and on the chart an unnamed pond is drawn the same way a named one is.
| Lake | Charted surface area |
|---|---|
| Monroe Lake | 45 km² (11,046 acres) |
| Patoka Lake | 37 km² (9,069 acres) |
| Brookville Lake | 18 km² (4,349 acres) |
| Lake Wawasee | 14 km² (3,410 acres) |
| Broad Pond | 12 km² (2,916 acres) |
| Salamonie Lake | 12 km² (2,866 acres) |
| Mississinewa Lake | 9 km² (2,150 acres) |
| Lake Maxinkuckee | 8 km² (1,903 acres) |
| Lake James | 8 km² (1,878 acres) |
| Cecil M Harden Lake | 7 km² (1,656 acres) |
| Coldwater Lake | 6 km² (1,581 acres) |
| Lake Freeman | 6 km² (1,557 acres) |
The twelve largest named lakes the Indiana pack carries, by charted surface area, measured from the chart polygon itself. The pack carries 4,338 charted water bodies in all, 1,322 of them named, and 76 named lakes larger than one square kilometer.
There is no NOAA chart for a reservoir. NOAA charts the coast, the intracoastal and the navigable rivers, and a flood control lake sitting in a valley is none of those. Inland depth in Helm is built from state elevation surveys instead, and the water bodies themselves come from the National Hydrography Dataset. That is the reason a lake like Salamonie is charted water in Helm rather than a blue shape with your boat icon floating on top of it, and it is what lets you lay a line across a cove and read it against your own draft.
An elevation survey measures the bottom. The bottom does not move much. The water on top of it does, because a reservoir sits at whatever level the people running the dam are holding it at, and that moves with the season and with the year. Summer pool through the boating months, lower after, and lower again on a lake whose job is to have room in it when the spring rain arrives. Morse and Geist are water supply, and a dry September shows on them.
So read a contour on one of these with the current pool level beside it. The basin shape is right. The old creek channel running up the middle of an arm on Patoka or Monroe is in the same place in October as it was in June, and it is still the deepest line up that arm. What changes is how much of the shoulder on either side of it is water at all. If you are counting on a foot of clearance over the flat at the mouth of a cove, what the lake is being held at that week is the thing to know before you trust it.
These are the largest named lakes the pack carries, with the area measured off the chart polygon.
The gaps between them are worth knowing, because an acreage on its own does not tell you how a lake handles. Monroe at 11,046 acres carries more surface than Brookville and Wawasee put together. Brookville at 4,349 does not quite make half of Patoka. Monroe and Patoka between them are bigger than the next four on the list combined, and they are the two with enough open length that a southwest wind on a July afternoon builds a chop you feel in the small of your back.
Lower down the list the lakes bunch up. Lake Maxinkuckee at 1,903 acres and Lake James at 1,878 are about twenty five acres apart, which is nothing, and yet one is a single deep basin and the other is water you run through on your way to the next one. Salamonie at 2,866 and Broad Pond at 2,916 are the same size on paper as well. Size sorts the list. It does not tell you what the day is like.
The list above stops at ten, and the twentieth largest named lake the pack carries is Geist Reservoir at 1,137 acres. In between sit Coldwater Lake at 1,581 acres, Lake Freeman and Turtle Creek Lake both at 1,557, Lake Lemon at 1,458, Morse Reservoir at 1,433, Hovey Lake at 1,359, Prairie Creek Reservoir at 1,260, and Dogwood Lake and Cagles Mill Lake both at 1,236. Below Geist another 56 named lakes still clear a square kilometer. That is where a lot of a season actually goes, on water you can cross in twenty minutes and still find a new stump field in.
The packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line, so a lake sitting close to an edge can be carried in two of them. The Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois packs are the neighbors here. If the water you run is near an edge of the box, the pack next door carries the same water, and pulling down both before you hitch up costs you nothing but wifi at home.
That download is the part to do the night before. The cell service at a ramp in the hills above Patoka is its own problem and has nothing to do with the chart on your phone once the pack is on it.
Inland lake depth comes from state elevation surveys rather than from nautical charts, and a reservoir sits at whatever level it is being held at that week. Treat the shape and the depth as a guide, keep a lookout, and verify locally.
Depth. Both are carried as charted water with contours and a depth reading on the water itself, built from state elevation surveys, since there is no NOAA chart for a reservoir. Monroe is the largest named lake the pack carries at 44.7 square kilometers, 11,046 acres off the chart polygon, and Patoka is second at 36.7 square kilometers, 9,069 acres.
Wawasee is in it, fourth largest of the named lakes the pack carries at 13.8 square kilometers, 3,410 acres. Lake Maxinkuckee at 1,903 acres and Lake James at 1,878 are carried as well. The natural lakes and the reservoirs are charted the same way, with the water bodies from the National Hydrography Dataset and depth from state elevation surveys.
Take the contour as the shape of the basin and the pool level as what decides where the waterline sits on it. A flood control lake is held at summer pool through the season and lower afterward to leave room for spring water, so the basin does not change but the amount of it that is wet does. The old creek channel up the middle of an arm is still the deepest line through that arm. Salamonie measures 2,866 acres at the polygon and Mississinewa 2,150, so both have enough flat shoulder either side of the channel for that difference to matter.
Helm Boating