Paddle away on Waverly Lake

What better way to practice social distancing than to spend a sunny afternoon on the water?

Catch some rays, get a little exercise and get up close and personal with a giant duck as you leisurely cruise around Albany’s Waverly Lake in paddle boats during these summer months.

The boats run Wednesday through Friday from noon to 6:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., until Sept. 6. Cost is $5 per half hour and each of the boats can hold up to four people. Six paddleboats are The paddle boats offer a quiet diversion on the five-acre lake, a former rock pit, that offers fishing, walking paths, picnicking areas and an oversized Wood Duck decoy, which has greeted visitors to Albany for several years and has become the city’s unofficial mascot.

The duck, made by a spray-foam company just north of Albany, greeted visitors to Albany in the 1980s until it was pulled from the lake in 2007 in severe disrepair. A fundraising effort helped resurrect the faux waterfowl, and with the help of volunteers and the work of Main Auto Body, the Waverly Duck was repaired repainted and relaunched in the summer of 2017.

So, get on a paddle boat and get close, but please don’t touch and help keep Albany’s iconic bird floating for years to come.

Beyond the duck and paddle boats, Waverly Lake serves as a great little fishing hole, too. Bring the fishing poles and try your luck for some of the trout planted each spring and early summer by the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, including some brood trout that tip the scales at over 10 pounds.

Waverly Lake is one of three Albany-area lakes stocked yearly by the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.

Fishing licenses are required for any person 14 years of age or older and can be purchased at most sporting goods stores in the area.

For more information and a weekly fishing report, call the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife: 1-541-757-4186.

Ringed by an accessible walking and biking path, Waverly Lake may be enjoyed by landlubbers as well who are looking to get out and about on a warm summer day.