Lake Glenn Shoals is a 1,250-acre (5.0 km²) reservoir located in Montgomery County, Illinois. Created in 1976 by damming the Middle Fork of Illinois's Shoal Creek, it was built for recreation, sport fishing, and water supply purposes. The lake is 4 miles (6.5 km) long and 0.4 miles (0.6 km) wide. The nearest town is Hillsboro, Illinois, south of Springfield, Illinois and northeast of Saint Louis, Missouri.
Lake Glenn Shoals is managed for bass, bluegill, catfish, crappie, and tiger muskie. The lake is managed in two halves, north and south of the Irving Township bridge, with boats able to go as fast as 35 mph (55 km/h) south of the bridge but only 5 mph (8 km/h) north of the structure. The nearest interstate highway exit is Exit 52 on Interstate 55, near Litchfield.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency classified Lake Glenn Shoals in April 2006 as an "impaired" lake, due largely to the large quantities of phosphorus, suspended silt, and algae in the lake. These findings could be connected to the significant use of the lake's drainage catchment area by commercial farmers.
The municipality of Hillsboro operates the lake and keeps it stocked with fish. A city permit is required for boaters seeking to use the lake.
Famous quotes containing the words lake and/or shoals:
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)