Water safety is not something that the team behind the Ray Roberts Lake State Park system take lightly.
That’s because the state park staff have seen the danger of the water firsthand.
“There’s rarely been a summer that’s gone by where we haven’t had a drowning on the [Isle du Bois] beach,” said Robbie Merritt, Ray Roberts Lake State Park superintendent. “We took a really hard look at that the last couple of years.”
Water conditions of Ray Roberts contribute to the danger swimmers and boaters face when they are out in the water.
Although swimming is allowed anywhere in the lake, there’s an area at both Isle du Bois and Johnson Branch, where there are designated swim beaches.
“The problem with a line or a buoy or anything—if it’s there, it’s a target,” Merritt said. “People are going to try to swim to it. What we were finding with most of our drownings or near drownings was it was either [people] trying to get there or trying to get back, and they just ran out of gas and couldn’t make it.”
The solution: Bring the line a little closer to shore.
“It’s not so much how deep it is as much as it is distance that gets people,” Merritt said. “Once it gets over your head, it doesn’t matter how deep it is. And so we couldn’t change a lot of the depth out there, but what we could change and what we did change last spring was how big the swim area is.”
Moving the swim line keeps the challenge but makes it safer for visitors.
“Last year, we didn’t have any drownings,” Merritt said.”
The staff wondered whether the beach still would provide a large area for multiple patrons to enjoy on high-traffic days but found that there was no problem with that.
“Last summer showed us that it was just fine,” Merritt said. “The vast majority of people stick around the shoreline. You’ve got much fewer out in the middle and out along the swim lines, the same as it was before. It’s just less distance between them.”
A side benefit of the change at Isle du Bois is there’s now an area where park staff can encourage paddle boarders and kayakers to put in just past the swim beach, as those watercrafts are not allowed to pass over swimmers.
“We now have a pathway around that north side where they can actually get to shore, feeding paddlers around that way,” Merritt said. “A big problem with Isle du Bois is we did such a good job of rocking up the shoreline for erosion control years ago is that it doesn’t leave a whole lot of natural beach. What we’ve been working towards is that cove behind the swim beach area ... and trying to make it more and more of a paddling destination.”
New swim lines will be installed for both IDB and Johnson Branch as well, which will help make them more noticeable, Merritt said.
“If we ever get a day that we’re caught up and it’s not a hurricane out there,” Merritt said with a chuckle.
The Ray Roberts Lake State Park has also maintained its relationship with Cook Children’s for its Loaner Life Jacket Station program.
“It’s a big investment on their part for the structure itself and they give us an endless supply of life jackets,” Merritt said.
The hospital system provides jackets that fit people of all sizes with stands at the boat ramps.
Although the main focus is on providing options for children before they go out onto boats, there are life jackets of all sizes available.
“We recently went in with them last year for another round of those to install them at the beaches,” Merritt said.
Merritt encourages anyone who is going to get into the lake and where they could go under to use life jackets.
“One of the biggest mental challenges I think we have as a society is this idea that open water and lakes and natural bodies are the same thing as swimming pools, and they’re not,” he said. “A life jacket’s a good idea anytime you’re dealing with that kind of body of water. You can’t see in it. Rarely there’s a lifeguard that’s ready at hand in the places you’re at. There’s just so many other factors— wind, wave, temperature—that can play in, and once you go under, you’re gone. You can’t find them. ... Life jackets are highly encouraged.”
