Life On the Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

May 2007

SALUTING TEN YEARS AT THE LAKE

514

Opium crop coming in quite nicely, thank you for asking.

513

Last night it was raining. A lot of people quit fishing. Not this elderly couple. They simply snapped open their beach umbrellas and kept right on trolling. And the fish kept on hitting. They caught quite a few.

Our trout are small this year and average about nine inches. Quite a comedown from the fourteen-inch holdovers from a plant a year ago. Often fishers don't bother to cut their electric trolls when they hook a fish and haul the little guy in splashing over the gunwale. Many people release their catch today, and this leaves more fish to last through the summer and fall, which continue to grow through fall and winter.

Fish and Wildlife staff don't seem to realize the extent to which people enjoy catching and releasing trout, and cling to old management practices of catch and keep and eat.

This leaves more fish each year to be caught over and over again. But I've noticed that many fishers just can't put back a big trout. They seem to have a need to bring home and show off such a catch.

I understand this because, alas, it is what I used to do before moving to the lake and enjoying its rich abundance.

This tree was a gift from my daughter-in-law. She found it rooted from a seeding in her side yard  a year ago. Much smaller then, of course

512

Nature Writer Roderick Haig-Brown once said that the vine maple was his favorite tree. It is found growing along river reaches. When full grown, it can't be chopped with an ax but only cut with a sharp saw.

Who would want to kill such a tree?

If it is cut down, and aged a bit, Haig-Brown said it burned bright yellow and put out heat commensurate with anthracite coal.

Pink dogwood blossoms on the kitchen table of my daughter-in-law.
(Lisa's picture, too)

511

Spring is in full bloom, with all the garden in ardent competition to out-do one another. As the season comes on, azalea faces off with rhododendron, apples blossom with peach, and the lawn grows back after each mowing oh too quickly.

This week, first female mallard with her small brood in display, swimming down the near-center of the lake. The male wood ducks do not put in an evening appearance lately, and may be off molting. The female woodies are in the nesting box and will soon kick the ducklings out and down and into the lake, and we will get to glimpse the brood.

Then we count them, and  each day take roll call, and observe the ultimate slow attrition as various critters reduce their numbers, brood by brood, one by one.

Say goodbye, Cherry Blossoms, for another year

510

Pretty, but what a mess. In a day or two they will all be gone, and I'll clean The Three Otter Fountain and fill it with fresh water. Then I'll tear down the pump and get all the mushy crud out of it, and its base, and turn it on again, and see if there is anything to retard the fountain's flow. If  not, I'll run it for the rest of the day, till nightfall, and perhaps sit down and recite my mantra, if (a la Woody Allen) I  haven't forgotten it.

Gategate

Paragate

Parasangate

Bodhi

Svaha!

(Close enough. And "gate" is pronounced "gata, I recall.)

Anybody know where this is from?

Otter Fountain full of cherry blossoms

509

How short lived they are, the blossoms from the flowering cherry tree. Seems as though they burst forth just the other day. And now they are almost gone. From the knowledgeable Japanese might come a  very slight smile of  commiseration.

Oh, today, two days after the opening of the trout  season, Fish and Wildlife stocked the lake with three thousand legal-sized trout.

Something wrong with their scheduling, I guess. On Saturday past, there must have been quite a few disappointed anglers.

 I caught a couple of the holdovers, averaging about 14 inches. Catches like that will now  be a thing of the past. The new trout will average about nine inches, I suspect.