Readers share their favorite photos and stories of Madison's Yahara lakes

My husband, Merle, grew up with boats on the Chesapeake Bay, so he's always been attracted to floating on water. And I grew up in Portage, canoeing many rivers and lakes in Wisconsin. He moved to Madison in 1976, and me in 1978.

Back in the early '90s, my newlywed husband bought a small wooden boat for his 20-something son, and we decided to take it for a test ride on the lakes to celebrate our anniversary. We used the dock at Olin Park and went on our way to go through the Tenney Locks, to Lake Mendota, to the dock at Mariner's Inn. After a fabulous dinner of steak and tail, we saw the light show to the west, of a storm coming in, and thought it might be a good idea to head home. When I say this was a small boat, consider how it had a 3-by-5 foot cargo space behind the two seats. It also meant the engine was small ... so we hurried as best as we could to beat the storm, and got to the Tenney Locks before the storm hit but not through the Yahara River. We ended up anchoring and catnapping until 2 a.m. under the Johnson St. bridge until this storm passed. Then we felt safe enough to find our way back to the Olin Park dock on Lake Monona.

I grew up off the North Shore of Lake Mendota when it was rural, cleaner and wonderful. Out back was the lake with a wetland, that we lovingly called "The Swamp," between our house and the water. There were ducks, Canada geese, an occasional whitetail deer, all kinds of birds, lots of aquatic critters and tons of mosquitoes but not sandhill cranes.

Whenever there was a colorful sunset, it was magical. The reflection over the water toward the western shore was breathtaking. Even in winter over the ice it was amazing.

Near the shore of Lake Mendota, right where Ingersoll Street meets Sherman Ave. there is a huge dredged area; it was about 75 feet deep in the late 1940s-early 50s. I grew up in that neighborhood and went swimming off the pier behind a large gray and black stone house on the lakeshore. ... In the 40s and 50s the dredged area was home base for many carp.

Some of the older kids in the neighborhood, including my brother, came up with a plan for a fun way to fish. They purchased some bow and arrow fishing arrowheads and attached the fishing line from a rod and reel to one of the arrowheads. Next they took the shaft from an old golf club and fit it, not too tightly, into the arrowhead. One kid would then take the golf club shaft, swim down to where the carp were plentiful, and spear one of the carp.

As kids, our family lived on Henry Street in Downtown Madison during the 1940s and 1950s. We led an idyllic existence in the summers, running from one lake to another, carefree and with no thought of “stranger danger” or any other adverse conditions.

The lakes and the entire Capitol Square were our playground and we made full use of all of it. Our father, Stan Smyth, was a friend of Alex Jordan, the architect, who lived at that time at the corner of Henry and Langdon streets. Alex gave our dad permission to build a pier at the foot of Henry Street and we swam there over many summers, swimming up and down the lakeshore and making pests of ourselves on the UW piers. We must have really been a thorn in the side of students attempting to study on the lake.

My father-in-law bought a lake home on Lake Kegonsa in 1955, an hour from home. It was a two bedroom cottage and an outdoor privy ... at this time (there was) no sewer around the lake, but finally after several years it came and a bathroom was added. Finally bathing children in a tub. 

Jack's parents passed away and we added more bedrooms and more bathrooms − and then we bought a cottage three doors away and tore it down and built a Swiss chalet. Now all our children, married, with families, all have homes on the lake. 

As a child, my family always took me to Borchers Beach on Lake Mendota for a two week summer vacation. That area was quite rustic in the 1940's.

We spent much time hiking the adjacent hills. We found Indian mounds, picked bowls full of wild raspberries, black berries of which Mother would bake into a delicious pie. Of course, we were in the water a lot. We swam, rowed the old wooden row boat and sunned on the wooden pier.