Apostle of Pickerel
His 35-year mission to create a fishing lake continues
By Jon Kerr
Cliff Timm is nothing if not persistent.
Scrambling up and down the gravelly railroad bed running across Pickerel
Lake in Harriet Island/Lilydale Regional Park, he moves more like a hungry mountain goat
than an 80-year-old. But he really gets going when a listener asks the West St. Paul man
what has kept his obsession for the area running almost 35 years.
“Just look at it! Is this beautiful or what?,” Timm says, with a
sweeping, passionate wave of his hand, before turning to his main point. “If we could
just dike off the river and raise the water level a couple of feet imagine what it would
be like for these kids in the area. ...Say, look at those sunfish down there. I could
catch something there.”
The shallow, spring-fed, 90-acre lake on the border of Ramsey and Dakota
counties seldom gets much official attention, compared to nearby Harriet Island - which is
currently undergoing an $11 million renovation. But the Lilydale area is not forgotten by
a number of nature and fishing-lovers who appreciate both the rustic atmosphere and the
proximity to surrounding urban areas.
“If they could get quarter-pound sunfish outta here, you’d see
100 or more people out here even in the winter,” said Timm, noting the lake’s
already obvious popularity with youth and especially minorities. “What could be more
wonderful?”
Timm has preached about the popular benefits of a dike over the past four
decades to almost anyone who’ll listen. The retired glass and metalworker’s
crusade to redevelop Pickerel Lake as a game-fishing preserve uncontaminated by rough fish
and pollution from annual runoff of the nearby Mississippi has carried him from group to
group and official to official.
Not all have seen the wisdom of his arguments, with critics noting both
financial and environmental costs to his diking proposal. Some have not always appreciated
Timm’s outspoken approach and feistiness.
“He can be kind of obnoxious sometimes,” notes Hokan Miller, a
West Sider and river boat pilot who has often clashed with Timm over the environmental
impacts of the proposed levee around Pickerel. “He might be trying to do good but he
doesn’t see that anytime you constrain the river you send a high water problem
downstream. ...Levees stop the river from doing what’s natural - which is spreading
out over the floodplain.”
But Timm refuses to be deterred. After surviving prostate cancer and the
death of his wife last year after an extended illness, he plans to carry the cause to the
grave - and beyond via trust funds built from a lifetime of work and a keen eye for
investments.
“I guess I am out of order most of the time. But I’ve got blood
in me that’ll stick to it if I’ve got a good idea,” said Timm with a laugh.
“These people, the have nots that don’t have a boat or things and need a place.
...I’m more for this thing than ever.”
A lifelong river rat, who grew up swimming and fishing on the Minnesota
River near Mankato, Timm came to Saint Paul in the 1930’s with only his trumpet and
some $40 to his name. But the country boy never forgot to use his fishing pole.
About 1965 however Timm remembers a qualitative change in the Mississippi.
“I used to catch some nice walleye. But they started tasting so oily
I decided we had to do something,” he said, remembering how his avocation began.
Contacting city, state and even federal officials, Timm began developing what he thought
was a simple plan for an area that had only recently seen its entire human population
removed and the old Lilydale community bulldozed into an embankment that is still visible
from the pot-holed roadway nearby.
But Timm’s call for a relatively low-walled dike, raising of water
levels, restocking of the lake’s fish, and other improvements that would encourage
shore fishing around Pickerel kept encountering its own hurdles that included
environmental tests and multi-state agency permit requirements - not to mention the
construction costs of the project.
“It’s been frustrating for him cause it always seemed like it
would work and then something would come up or they’d change the laws. It’s been
a multi-headed monster,” said an obviously sympathetic DNR Fisheries Regional Manager
Duane Shodeen, who became familiar with Timm’s efforts in the early 1970’s.
“I remember it was really close for us a couple times. But things kept coming
up.”
The nearest miss was probably in the mid-1980’s when the Metropolitan
Airports Commission was ready to meet required wetlands remediation requirements by
constructing Timm’s proposed dike around Pickerel. But internal disagreements about
the validity of replacing waterfowl areas near Holman Field Airport with improved fish
habitat foiled the deal.
Another
disappointment came after 1991 when St. Paul officials failed to push for funding of
provisions in the new Harriet Island/Lilydale Master Plan that included much of the
Pickerel concept. And MAC two years ago finally met its requirements by cleaning up the
former Lilydale brickyards adjacent to Pickerel without addressing the lake itself.
St. Paul’s nearly maxed-out usage of floodplain areas under federal
law has now become the major issue facing Timm’s plan, along with a new
environmentalist approach that emphasizes allowing the entire river’s natural
ecosytem to work and scorns even well-meaning manmade changes.
“It’s a waste of money. Those river fish belong. The reason
it’s called Pickerel Lake is because the fish come in from the river,” said
Miller.
It is a philosophy that Timm obviously has difficulty accepting.
“It would be wonderful if we could swim in the river too, but
you’ve got illegal polluters and things,” he said, comparing the Pickerel
proposal to ongoing DNR’s fish stocking efforts at Snelling Lake or at Lake Rebecca
in Hastings. “When you’ve got good water you should try to save it. This lake
should have priority over the river.”
After recovery from his own health problems and his wife’s death,
Timm is clearly again ready to make that his main focus in life.
“Now I’m back swinging for the fences again,” he said with
a laugh and another sweeping wave of his hand toward Pickerel. “After I’m dead
maybe people will say ‘hey, he was pretty nice guy after all.’”
Shodeen doesn’t give Timm’s campaign high odds of success but
notes his continued admiration.
“I’ve kind of gotten worn out with it. But as long as Cliff Timm is out there,
there’s a chance.”