2026 Lake Vermilion Loon Camera Live Stream

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It’s Time for Spring Cleaning… to protect our Lake Vermilion loons – April 26, 2026
By Noel Sederstrom, VLA Volunteer

Lake Vermilion, Minn. (VLA) – The harsh winter wind is a distant memory, and when the lake ice melts away our loons will rush back to their favorite places on Lake Vermilion.

Just like their human friends! We can’t wait for the open waters either.

Those of us on the VLA’s Live LoonCam team are getting ready to deploy our sophisticated Axis P1465-LE camera, our sensitive parabolic mic, and all the ethernet cables and switching gear. This will be our sixth year livestreaming a loon family’s almost every move from their nest on Lake Vermilion. Wish us luck.

Calling All Procrastinators
While we’re waiting for the Fishing Opener, there’s something important some of us need to do right now—a tackle box spring cleaning. There’s been proof for 40 years that a lot of loons are dying because of what some of us do when we go fishing. Nearly a third of the loons that don’t survive the summer months were poisoned by ingesting tangled fishing tackle, sinkers and jigs made of lead. Yes, you’ve heard this song many times before. But in spite of all the public awareness campaigns to “Get the Lead Out” waged the past three decades, loons are still being poisoned.

When Mardy Jackson sent the results of our Loon Survey to the DNR in 2001, members of the Sportsmen’s Club of Lake Vermilion got the first direct appeal. We were asked to protect our loons by stopping the use of lead sinkers and split shot on our fishing lines.

“Please help us eliminate this hazard to our precious wildlife,” urged Carrol Henderson, then the Non-Game Wildlife Supervisor of the Minnesota DNR. Let that sink in for a moment—that was 25 years ago.

Since then, in this very newsletter, the same plea—in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. Then new pitches, in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. From Mardy Jackson, John Myers, Bob Pearson, John Yocum, Lori Ptak. This may well be “preaching to the choir” but I’m going to reach out to all those who just don’t get it yet.

Calling all procrastinators: this year’s top Spring Cleaning task is to sort through all the old tackle boxes and get rid of all the sinkers and jigs manufactured with lead. We are all good at putting things off. Without a resolute personal decision to get this done, it’s not going to happen. Even with good intentions, it’s quite confusing!

How exactly is a person supposed to go about this–? Let’s dive in; I will take you past the PR slogan and show you how to start. We begin with a look in the mirror.

Those Old Tackle Boxes
I somehow have collected four old tackle boxes on a shelf in the garage. When my kids would gift me a new Rapala, it always went in the newest one that I take to the cabin. Then 12 years ago, I inherited my dad’s old tackle box when he passed away, along with one that appears to be my grandfather’s. Really old. There’s also an old rusty metal tackle box full of random stuff I picked up for a song 25 years ago at a garage sale. I know some of the old sinkers inside are made from lead, because it says so right on the outside of one package. But 99% of this stuff is unmarked. It’s high time to go through this.

The old gray sinkers and old painted heavy jigs are undoubtedly made of lead, cheap and malleable, still a manufacturer’s go-to today.

The Rapala lures declare they are “Made of Balsa” so that’s a relief. The metal spoons, I’m guessing, are steel because they jump on to my large magnet. The plastic lures and wood bass plugs should be OK…no? How can you tell? Look for dull gray metal.

That’s the first clue—lead is not magnetic, so it’s easy to verify my suspicions on sinkers and jigs with my big magnet, and start a box for the County Hazardous Waste Collection Site. There may be some larger trolling lures with zinc, brass or lead in them, but the experts say the real danger to our loons is with those smaller weights that resemble small pebbles.

If all of us could just focus on replacing these with non-toxic sinkers and jigs made from tungsten, tin, bismuth or steel, we will have done our part.

I also found lead sinkers built in to long metal stringers; those will have to go too. For anyone who hasn’t heard why… I will go through it with updates on all fronts.

A Massive Problem that Hasn’t Gone Away
The Michigan DNR estimates that 470-million lead sinkers are produced each year for fishermen in the U.S. That’s an estimated 2,700 tons of lead. It takes just one lead sinker or jig to kill a loon after it mistakes it for a pebble on the lake bottom. Loons use pebbles in their gizzards to help grind up their food. By instinct, they will seek out small pebbles (or swallow a sinker or jig on or near the lake bottom).

In February 2026, at the Tufts Wildlife Clinic in Massachusetts, veterinarian Dr. Mark Pokras completed the 5000th loon necropsy he’s performed since 1987. Over nearly four decades, Pokras found 28% of the dead loons had been poisoned after consuming lead sinkers or jigs. Researchers are finding the rate of poisoning is similar across multiple northern states including Minnesota.

Dr. Pokras’ conclusion: if we can convince people to stop using lead sinkers and jigs, we can significantly improve the survival chances of our loon population.

Fishermen want to get their bait down where the fish are swimming, and for decades, lead sinkers and weights have been their perfect solution and have been the industry standard. Experts estimate we are spending $87.5-million each year in the U.S. on lead sinkers. Even though there has been an urgent push encouraging sportsmen to switch from lead to non-toxic weights like tungsten or tin or bismuth for decades, it has been slow going. That’s because lead is cheap.

Lindy Tackle moved to the front of the crusade in May 2024 by pledging to go lead-free with all of its tackle products by 2027. Northland Tackle of Bemidji is also in a transition away from lead, and now features a lot of products made from tungsten, which is non-toxic. For a manufacturer, tungsten is four times more expensive than lead, so prices at retail are going to be higher. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) now has a website list of 157 manufacturers and retailers with links to help you find new lead-free tackle. You can buy replacements on-line.

New Sinkers and Jigs
Let’s say you really prefer to do this in-person, so you head to the store intending to go non-toxic. Can a person actually find a sinker or jig that doesn’t have lead in it? I phoned ahead to a couple of retail clerks near Lake Vermilion to ask about their inventory. (This is what you’d call an unscientific survey.)

At the Y Store south of Lake Vermilion, the clerk on duty said “I honestly have no idea” if the sinkers on the shelf there were lead or tin or tungsten. After going over to look at what was for sale, he said “there’s no labelling at all” other than the description in English, followed by a version in Spanish.

At Odegaard’s (Fuel & Food) in Tower, a clerk said he knows the store has “tried to move in that direction” to get rid of fishing tackle products with lead. “But I’m sure some of the older stuff back there might have lead in it.” This is why.

If you’re one of those people who head to their local big box store hoping for the best prices, this is what you’ll find. Dozens of bags of inexpensive jigs and lures of all kinds, and virtually every one of them had a warning that it either contained lead or a substance that might cause cancer.

Some of the jigs were simply balls of lead with hooks attached.

But in a far corner, there was an area featuring sinkers made of tin and steel, made by Eagle Claw. This is real progress!

Even many of the more elaborate lures came with cancer warnings. My big takeaway—lead tackle is pervasive in our stores. A retailer like Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops might have a better selection of tungsten, tin or steel tackle on display.

Searching online is less frustrating. VMC Rapala offers tungsten jigs and the typical range is $7.49-$11.99 each. Cabela’s offers a 72-piece case of split-shot sinkers with four different sizes for $8.99, and they are made of non-toxic tin.

If you’ll be staying at one of Lake Vermilion’s resorts this year, ask them to help you find non-toxic lead-free sinkers and jigs. In past seasons, some had their own tackle and bait shops, including Muskego Point Resort, Fortune Bay Marina, Gruben’s Marina & Resort, and Pehrson Lodge Resort.

“We have a few Tungsten jigs and sinkers in our tackle shop,” said Eric Hanson, the owner/operator of Pehrson Lodge Resort. “They do not sell well due to the high price. We get free samples from MPCA periodically which we give to people to help make them aware of non-lead options.”

Hanson said he takes part in the MPCA’s program to help tackle shops reduce the wholesale cost of nontoxic weights. His own observations: tungsten is still expensive, tin is a less appealing option because “it is much lighter than lead, but it does work.” He said bismuth is better, but expensive.

“I use tungsten jigs myself because they are nontoxic and I think they work a little better than lead,” Hanson noted. “The smaller profile to weight ratio lets them go a little deeper with less size. They also show up well on a depth finder, so I can see where my bait is. This holds true for tungsten bullet weights for Lindy rigging as well. It’s not easy to get people to spend more money, when lead is a tried-and-true cheaper option.”

What do we have to do to get lead sinkers and jigs out of our stores? Because lead is so much cheaper, evidently it will require novel ideas or tough laws. In 1987, Great Britain banned lead sinkers under one ounce in fishing tackle, and since then the endangered mute swan population has doubled.

Circling back to that Minnesota MPCA program Hanson mentioned. It literally has been paying retailers to help them make the switch to offer tungsten tackle, with 45% rebates, up to $3,000 per location. In all, 13 businesses benefited from the rebates to switch to the tune of $12,500 from 2020-2024, growing to an updated total of 22 businesses receiving $55,600 by this spring. The updated totals come from a Q/A Zoom chat with MPCA’s Steven Yang–here’s a link if you want to hear directly from him about the MPCA’s programs as of mid-April.

The first round of rebates was funded by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement of 2016. In the Cook-Virginia-Tower-Ely region, only one store had taken advantage of the rebates offered in that first 2020-2024 program cycle—Arrowhead Outdoors of Ely.

Yang noted the State Legislature provided continued funding a couple of years ago for the latest round of “Get the Lead Out” efforts.

“We try to guide people to lead-free tackle,” said Kris Winkelman of Arrowhead Outdoors. “It is more expensive. We try to explain why we’re doing it, fish health, loon health, other birds health. And we do get positive reaction. But it’s been difficult. It’s mainly the price.”

Kris, a cousin of renowned Minnesota Fishing Hall of Famer Babe Winkelman, said as an outfitter for people heading into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, it helps there’s an awareness lead tackle is strongly discouraged in adjacent Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario.

“The reason we used the rebates to stock lead-free tackle, is that our customers were asking for it,” said Steve Renneberg. “They had seen it on the news, that loons had been dying.”

Renneberg noted however that most stores won’t carry a product if they can’t move it in large volumes. And that’s why some stores don’t even carry lead-free tackle at all. There’s still not enough demand for it in 2026.

Warnings, Bans, Buy-back Programs, Tackle Exchanges
As Dr. Mark Pokras observes, we have known for 3,000 years that lead is toxic to living things. But there are different ideas on how best to confront this danger. California led the way with warnings on packaging about cancer-causing substances, but there’s resistance there to an outright ban on lead tackle.

New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and New York have all taken steps to ban small lead sinkers and jigs but they have different approaches. Vermont and New York have outlawed small lead pieces weighing 0.5 ounces or less. The other three have all targeted sinkers and jigs one ounce or less. Maine has been allowing the use of painted lead jigs so far but a total ban on them will begin September 1.

Maine Audubon is partnering with other groups to hold “tackle exchanges” to help get the lead weights out of tackle boxes. New Hampshire has been staging lead tackle buy-back programs, giving out $20 vouchers using donations from the Loon Preservation Committee.

Minnesota has tried that approach too. Using funds from that Gulf of Mexico oil spill legal settlement, the MPCA is again this year offering to help organizations willing to host tackle exchanges. Old lead tackle is collected for disposal, and sample kits of non-toxic sinkers and jigs are given out.

Even this idea is not new—back in July of 2006, Northwoods Bait & Tackle in Cook held a lead tackle exchange. But alternatives to lead tackle have not won out—even there. “People don’t want to pay that crazy price (for tungsten)” said one fisherman in Cook.

Climbing a Steep Hill
Loon protectors face a steep uphill climb on the threat posed by lead in fishing tackle.

It’s a marathon. We can’t see the finish line. But we can put one foot in front of another.

Let’s do a little spring cleaning for the loons’ sake.

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Ice is melting away on Lake Vermilion – April 24, 2026
By Noel Sederstrom, VLA Volunteer

Lake Vermilion, Minn. (VLA) – It’ll only be a matter of days now until the lake’s ice will be completely gone. Once that happens, our loons usually fly back from their southern U.S. “Snowbird” homes within days.

This is what our loon family’s usual home looked like on April 24. Thanks to Bill Michaelson for running over to get the photo!

In early May, our Vermilion Lake Association’s Live LoonCam team anticipates powering up our surveillance camera on a post in the water, along with our parabolic dish mic so we can also listen to the lake.

The images will get out to the world thanks to our internet partner, Access Broadband of Virginia. Watch for it!

To see all of our archived LoonCam coverage from Summer, 2025 or earlier years just click on the links below—there you’ll find articles, photos and video clips about our loon pair’s determined effort to hatch new chicks on Lake Vermilion.

 

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2025 Lake Vermilion Loon Camera Live Stream – ARCHIVE

2024 Lake Vermilion Loon Camera Live Stream – ARCHIVE

2023 Lake Vermilion Loon Camera Live Stream – ARCHIVE

2022 Lake Vermilion Loon Camera Live Stream – ARCHIVE

2021 Lake Vermilion Loon Camera Live Stream – ARCHIVE

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In March, 2021, the Vermilion Lake Association launched a team to design and build a live camera system that could stream a live view of a loon’s nest during the summer months to our website and to YouTube, also creating content for our Facebook friends.  Thanks to our members whose annual dues paid for the equipment, and to Access Broadband of Virginia, MN, for the WiFi service that makes this possible.  It’s our intent to keep the location of the live LoonCam unidentified to protect the privacy of the loon family and their human neighbors.

For more information on our loon population and loon stewardship, please visit https://www.vermilionlakeassociation.org/other-programs/loon-information/.