Tame Fish Lake

Not long after the Vogt brothers purchased the property on Long Lake, they noticed the large number of fish in the lake. An early survey of the geology of the region noted that black bass were abundant in this area. While feeding ducks, Hugo Vogt noticed the fish attracted to bread crumbs as well. With great patience he spent months and months coaxing the spirited bass to come closer to the dock. After two years of effort, Hugo trained the braver sunfish to eat from his hand. After another four years of training he convinced a big bass to snatch a frog he dangled in the water.

The reward encouraged other fish to come close. When Hugo added a stimulus of ringing a bell, the fish learned to associate the sound with feeding time. Whenever the bell was rung, the water near the dock churned with expectant fish. By 1931 the Vogt brothers and their remarkable tame fish and garden had become locally famous. The postcard photo below shows Hugo feeding a frog to a "pet" bass leaping from the water. It seems unlikely that the photographer could have captured such a clear image of the quick fish in motion. Instead the fish in the image appears to be a skillful painting or perhaps even a photomontage of a picture of a taxidermied bass added to the photo of Hugo on the dock. The image appears in a 1932 Lincoln Star newspaper story about the Vogts, so the postcard likely dates to the summer of 1931. That the Vogt brothers had printed postcards in 1931 suggests that the gardens had become a somewhat commercial tourist attraction by that time.

After some selfish anglers took advantage of the incautious fish, in the fall of 1931 Arnold Vogt convinced the Minnesota State Fish and Game Commissioner to declare the lake off-limits to fishing. Hugo tried to educate the fish about the dangers of fishermen by placing lures without hooks in the middle of the lake, to teach them that these things were not edible prey. In 1942 Long Lake was renamed Tame Fish Lake.

Visitors to Ak-Sar-Ben were allowed to feed the fish at Tame Fish Lake by purchasing a live frog for 10¢ to dangle over the water as Hugo is doing in the photo above. Other visitors could hold their hands under the water to cradle a tame sunfish. For nearly forty years the descendants of the first fish tamed by Hugo continued to come to the dock to bravely eat from the hands of visitors.