re: Why don't more people swim in lake Pontchartrain?

I never knew people where scared to swim in the lake. I’ve spent the majority of my life in and around the lake. I first started in the late 80s at a family friend’s Little Woods camp that my dad had been going to since the 50s. I remember the adults talking about how clean the water was since banning dredging for shells. I’ve never seen or caught a shark in the lake but I’m sure they are around. I’ve seen manatees and jumping tarpon.

I think getting “trapped under the seawall” steps is what people told their kids to stay out the water. Maybe it’s true, but in my experience is the ground is very firm off the wall and there isn’t a lip to trap anything. I’d worry more about stepping on a broken bottle.

I noticed last summer that the ground on the east side of the lake between the twin spans and St Catherine was as hard as a parking lot in several places and no more than 5’ deep. There is a large sand bar on the north side a few hundred yards from shore that’s no deeper than your knee. I don’t know what changed over the last few years, but it wasn’t like that before.

As far as being contaminated, my dog would swim in the lake all the time. She never got sick after drinking the water. She gets serious butt flu every time after drinking from a crystal clear Colorado stream in the middle of nowhere.

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and no one really knows where the riptide problems may lie.

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Seriously...

I had to collect samples in the lake for grad school and even with waders, I’d I didn’t go home and shower immediately, I would break out in a terrible rash. It was like 2010 so considered “clean”

Yes. Saw them happen from more than one camp.
It's something to watch a line of showers, as well, come west to east over the lake.

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Because they don't want to step on any syringes...

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That is no lie. They used to be all over the beach at the old Ponchartrain Beach site when we sailed there. Disgusting. This was late 90's into the early 2000's.

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Why don't more people swim in lake Pontchartrain?

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Used to train for triathlons in the lake back in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was a little funky.

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Trained back in 2008-2010 in the “swim hole” right off Lakeshore Drive. Was a few pilings lined out.

Bull sharks

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Yes, and they move fast as shite

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They are as bad or worse on Maurepas which is even more shallow than Pontchartrain. If you get caught on Maurepas you have to work the throttle like a mad man to keep from driving your bow into the lake bottom. The only lake I have ever been on in true confused seas. The weirdest and scariest thing I ever encountered was the opposite of a rogue wave, twice I had two troughs come together and the boat feel straight down off a swell. I have gained a lot of respect for those two little ponds.

I swam in the coffee grounds once.