Weeds

Rice Lake has a bit of a reputation of being a "weedy" lake and this is part of the reason the fishing is so good here.

It's quite shallow, the maximum depth is 27 ft., but by and large it's no more than about 13 ft deep. A shallow lake bottom means lots of sunlight penetrates to the depths, and the weeds grow tall and close to the surface. There are huge mats of weeds out in the lake right now. The surface looks mat and brown instead of shiny and blue. By all accounts the weeds are as bad as anyone has seen them in a long time. Normally they retreat deeper in the lake when the hot summer weather and sun beat down on them, but this year we haven't had any of that extreme heat except for one or two days.

As boats cross these beds of weeds, it's not uncommon to get the prop tangled up in the long strands. You see boats chugging forward. Stopping. Reversing. And continuing along their way. Kinda like a boat conga line. They also tend to carve paths through the weeds as they pass. These free-floating weeds, pushed by the wind, drift towards shore. Our shore, for one.

We had so many floating weeds around the dock this weekend!

All along the west shore of the island it looked like this.

The Captain and handy Dad hauled rakes out of the garden shed to skim them out, but they're so heavy (uhm - the weeds, not Dad or the captain), the best they could manage was to push them off to the right.

I'll need to go buy a comb rake, I think, so we can drag those up onto the shore. Ideally I'd like to haul 'em up to the fire pit and burn 'em. I can't imagine a mound of rotting seaweed (lake weed?) would smell very good on the shoreline.