Life On the Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

July 2007

SALUTING TEN YEARS AT THE LAKE

Bluegill close-up, picture by my friend Sean

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At dusk, about inning seven of a Mariners baseball game, I sneak away for about fifteen minutes flyfishing off the end of  my dock. There are bluegill redds in the shallow water just off from shore, and these I try to avoid fishing near because the  male fish defending the nest is aggressive in chasing away all intruders, including my swiftly moving small nymph. But I still manage to catch one of these beautiful small fish fairly regularly in deeper water--say water seven or eight feet deep.

They have tiny mouths and often don't get hooked; all I feel is a tug and then the line goes slack again. But most nearly every night I get one or two, and then I have to disengage the small hook from inside their mouths. Micro work if anything is. I use forceps to go this and am as gentle as possible in my surgery in the  near dark. I am most certain in most instance the fish is not seriously injured.

Occasionally there is a surprise on the end of my line. One of the abundant rainbows still left in the lake after it being hard fished for several months will take the fly and fight hard. Because of the warm water they have become lethargic, almost inactive, so it is a big surprise to me, and I am sure to them, to suddenly be involved in a tussle.

Serious rainbow trout fishing will have to wait until the cool water of October to amount of much of anything. And by then the bluegills will have become inactive again, at least from a fishing standpoint.

(I see very few entries in this website for the month of July and promise to try to do better next month. But see how I hedge my bets.)

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Here they are again, the Goose Family Ketchum. Nothing shy about them, they go just about wherever they please. I remember when geese used to be an oddity. Then, in Seattle anyway, they became a plague, a plague of geese. The strong family connection and bonding caused rapid proliferation. And we have our share. But I rather like them--their strong family ties, their bonding, and their boldness.

Try to back them down and you'll probably fail. And my two large Labs can only chase them a few yards into the lake, where they resume their rule.

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Okay, so there is another remarkable rose, one blooming right a long side the featured one. and the color is special to me, for it repeats after many decades the chrysanthemum I bought my wife when she had given birth to our son, some forty-five years ago.

To find a rose with the same salmon colors is, well, a lucky find. Of course there have been others, over the years, but most of them bloomed their little hearts out and, alas, died.

Last year this rose was nearly eaten up by aphids. None of the blooms was worth photographing, unless it was as an illustration of what not to let happen. But this year is a blessed one, from the stand point of rose-growing.

And I'd like to share it with my website readers. The photo is a thumbnail, which means if you click on it it will download to your image browser and then to your color printer. Most people have them now and they get cheaper by the year.

So Happy Fourth to you from Life at the Lake.