Fremont Lakes is eastern Nebraska’s pick-your-own-adventure fishery: twenty former quarry pits turned into clear, spring-fed lakes, each with its own personality and its own boating rules. Want to chase muskies? Lake 20 gets 250 twelve-inch muskellunge stocked every other year, and it’s one of the few lakes here open to gas motors. Want easy trout? Lake 2 gets 5,000 rainbows each October and March.
The rest of the lakes are electric-motors-or-paddle only, which keeps them quiet and clean — ideal for kayaks, canoes, and bank anglers working the shorelines for bass, crappie, redear sunfish, and channel cats. Several lakes were renovated and restocked in the 2010s, and the fishing has benefited.
It’s one of the most popular recreation areas in eastern Nebraska, so summer weekends are busy — come on a weekday morning for the best experience. Check the lake-by-lake boating rules before you launch; they vary, and the rangers do enforce them.