Cross Lake visitors can gather at online community

Chris Ginn

During or just after a heavy rain is when Citrano drops everything to head to the Cross Lake to catch catfish that stack up in the bayous and drains.

After he started visiting Cross Lake on a regular basis about two years ago, Seth Winterer quickly discovered there wasn’t a whole lot of information about the lake on the internet.

"I think I found a Wikipedia entry and maybe a couple blogs," Winterer noted. "I work with an online marketing company, so I thought it would be a good idea to create an online community for Cross Lake."

Winterer began www.crosslakeshreveport.com in March of 2010. The site has quickly established itself at the top of result pages when searching for Cross Lake, and traffic has increased from 1,400 visits per month this time last year to 4,000 this year.

"I went through a couple different history books and poured over some maps that I found for Cross Lake," Winterer said. "And I’m constantly taking pictures of the lake. I guess the biggest challenge is to get other people to engage with the site and write comments for different posts."

To help increase traffic at the web site, Winterer also created a facebook page for www.crosslakeshreveport.com. He explained that the easiest way for site visitors to get content on the site would be to first post it at www.facebook.com/CrossLakeShreveport.

"I’ve got some fishing stuff on there, but anglers could easily post what they’re catching or what they’re seeing on the water on the facebook page, and then I would repost it on the Web site," Winterer said. "Both are works in progress, so I would love any suggestions or recommendations people have on what they would like to see more of."