Bay Shore Park Boat Launch

What the camera shows

The camera overlooks the lower level of Bay Shore Park, where a broad asphalt staging area for vehicles and trailers meets the water. Two launch piers reach into a basin protected by a rock breakwater, a small service building with a flagpole stands at the water's edge and, past the harbor mouth, the wide, open bay runs out to a distant shoreline. Brown County Parks runs the camera so boaters and anglers can check wind, waves and ramp conditions before hitching up the trailer.

A protected harbor on the east shore

The launch gives direct access to the bay of Green Bay from its eastern side. Its breakwater forms a calm basin where boats can be launched and retrieved out of the swell, serving fishing, sailing and pleasure boating throughout the open-water season.

Fishing on the bay

Green Bay, the long western arm of Lake Michigan, is one of the best-known walleye fisheries on the Great Lakes, and it also draws anglers after yellow perch, smallmouth bass, muskellunge and lake whitefish. Once the bay freezes over, anglers head out onto the ice in search of whitefish, one of the most characteristic scenes of the local winter.

The park on the Niagara Escarpment

Above the launch, the main part of the park sits atop the Niagara Escarpment, the rocky ledge that runs along this side of the bay. A wooded campground with around a hundred sites, picnic areas, a playground and scenic trails that follow the edge of the ledge make it a base for exploring Brown County and the neighboring Door Peninsula, about fifteen miles northeast of the city of Green Bay on Highway 57.