Life On a Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

First day of summer

313

I'm not much of a sailor, admittedly, but there are moments when I wish I was. Such as this one, when a visitor to the lake comes ripping by at a surprising rate of speed for a semi-calm day.

He is of retirement age, his companion an aging dog of indeterminate breed. And this day, far across the lake, he capsizes. I see him floundering and call out, with megaphoned hands, "Are you all right?"

He calls back, "Yes, I did it on purpose."

And I think he is perhaps being sarcastic. He drifts along with a soft eddy and I wait for him to reach the public access area, where he launched. He does, then drifts right on past it. Now I know the current won't take him back to the launch area and he is well beyond it.

The more I think about it, the more I think he was being sarcastic and is in deep trouble. So I dial 911 and ask for the Cedarhome fire station. I am quickly connected. I describe the situation fully. (After all, I am a wordsmith.) The dispatcher asks for my name, phone number, and address. I am glad to supply them.

I return to the lakefront and see the old man struggling with his huge, bright sail, which is now underwater. Then--mirable dictu!--the boat snaps to the vertical and the sail . . . fills. Off he goes. Where the dog is, I have no idea. Then I see he has pulled the dog aboard. All is well.

I go to the phone and ask to be connected to the Cedarhome dispatcher. Quickly I am.

I identify myself. I explain I was wrong. The sail is vertical again and in no trouble. I half-expect to be bawled out for wasting the fire department's time. Instead I am thanked for calling back.

It is all in a day's work and I'm glad I reached them that second time before an aide car was dispatched.

We are still awaiting our first drowning in my eight years at the lake. May it still be far off, these warm summer now days, when the news reports drownings at many of the nearby lakes.

Biff, fascinated with a bluegill guarding its nest

312

I cant' take my boat out to fish, or whatever, because a pair of bluegill fish have taken shelter under its stern and have built a redd, or nest, just out from where I'd launch it.

That's okay, for I generally fish off my dock, whether with bait or fly. So I am only slightly handicapped in my leisure-time pursuits. Meanwhile, Biff (my male Black Lab) is eternally fascinated with the male fish, whose job it is to guard the nest until the eggs hatch out, and maybe a little further.

See the telltale blue spot just behind his eye and on the gillcovers?

I admit to pointing the fish out to him last year, and again this year, so I am largely responsible for exploiting this characteristic, which is inherent in the breed, especially with males. Biff's sister, Cate, is indifferent, though she likes to watch me play a fish off the dock;

Biff, though, if not restrained by a leash, will dive right in and insist on retrieving the fish, a trout, and generally does a good job of it, with his "soft mouth." But I generally don't let him because he occasionally bears down, and the fish arrives on the beach without so much as a wiggle left in him.

And this constitutes a big loss in the fishing game of catch and release.

Largemouth bass of the adult variety

311

The trout fly fishing at dusk drooped off suddenly and left me standing there, rod in hand, disappointed. Only a few feeding rises sprinkled the near lake and they were of small fish, no doubt spinyrays from last year.

Then, Saturday, I stood gazing into the water off my dock when there was a small stirring motion on the surface, as if small raindrops were falling. But the rest of the lake showed no such behavior. Then I looked a few inches beneath the surface and was astonished at what was gong on there.

Tens of thousands of fish less than an inch in length were schooling, much like pictures I'd seen from skindivers in the coral shoals of the South Pacific.

They were dense and wiggly, behaving almost as though a single body, moving up and down in the water column and off in one direction or another. Of ten they came right below the surface, and that is when the rainfall disturbance took place.

Now having seen the phenomenon, I would see it repeatedly; I could not take my eyes off of it.

"This year's largemouth bass have come out of the gravels," I told myself. But I wasn't sure. I needed specific evidence. (All amateur biologists tell themselves this.)

So I went for an old aquarium net I'd found on the beach of the Stilly and plunged it into the herd of fry. Missed. Missed again and again. Then, on the fourth try, I nailed about a dozen of the little critters.

Silvery on the bottom, dark on the top, and with that characteristic dark band that marks the largemouth bass, whether fry or adult. No doubt about it, I decided, but looked at them through a magnifier, just to make sure.

The their emergence explained why the medium-sized rainbow trout had stopped going after the midge hatch at dusk: they were gorging on the bass fry, a new treat. And of course they were still feeding steadily, daily, on the snails to be found on the shallow bottom.

Robert Arnold, Editor
rcarnold@direcway.com