Dear Friends & Neighbors,

While water skiing yesterday, Angela Garger hit a large partially submerged log that was floating in the lake. She damaged her slalom ski but she is OK. Her husband towed the log to shore. When I was out in my boat on Tuesday I pulled a white birch branch that was about two inches in diameter and eight feet long out of Knops Pond. The branch showed beaver damage at its base.

If you see large items floating in the lake please tow it to shore or if you can’t please let me know about it. And if you cut up a downed tree please make sure the log sections aren’t free to float into the lake. I must thank Joe Ferguson for recently removing some of these. If you want to see how big some of these floating logs are please stop by the public boat launch and look at the one stuck in the mud on the left side of the boat ramp. We haven’t quite figured out how to get it out of the water.

The water level is back to standard pool level and flowing over the top board in the dam. There are a lot of dead weeds floating on the surface as a result of the Sonar treatment killing off the invasive weeds and the water is somewhat murky because of the heavy rains and the fact that the weeds are decaying. There are also a few mud flats where Lily pads have pulled their tubers (i.e., their roots) out of the bottom.  You might also see some floating Lily pad tubers  that are a few inches in diameter. I pulled one out at the end of my dock and it was the size of a human arm.  I had heard that Lily pad tubers were large but I had no idea that they were that large.

So all-in-all what we expected to happen is happening. We predicted this in  Alex Woodle’s March 2013 newsletter.

Here is the excerpt from that newsletter:

“Post Treatment:
As mentioned above, early treatment has its advantages. Another major advantage is treating the weeds before they have grown too much. The Sonar attacks roots of the plants and as such we expect that as the treatment progresses, there may appear floating biomasses of weeds in heavily infested areas. Lily pad plants will also be effected (they usually recover in subsequent seasons) and their root tubers are large and may float to surface with mud.
These “rafts” of weeds may look like “islands” are being created, but we hope to remove some of this biomass with the harvester. If we are successful it will reduce biomass and nutrients released by the decaying plants. The uncollected weeds will eventually sink to the bottom.
Please do not freak out if you see mud flats rising to the surface – they will eventually sink to the bottom as the weeds die off.”

We have decided not to use the harvester since it is being used in Baddacook Pond and we are concerned that paddle wheels might create weed fragments of a few weeds that are not totally dead and these fragments could reseed themselves.

Regards,  Art