Jonny

UPDATE - March 29th. No water at all coming through the chutes at the Sturgeon Falls Dam today, just the flow through the penstocks. The water level in the lake in the past few days has risen only very slightly. This afternoon, the ice out on the lake went from white to gray.

I drove a 2005 Matrix for 4 years without a single problem - not even a tiny one. Im on a 2010 model now. Love the interior space with the back seats down, the mileage, the looks, the general comfort and utility.

I'm seeing ATV's travelling the sand flats out front regularly here on Nipissing. Which normally wouldn`t cause me any concern, but like I said in the other thread, I think the spring run-off is done, done, done. Boy do we need rain, but we`re almost at the end of the month and we`ve had only about 1% of the normal precipitation for March! April will have to be real monsoon weather! The ice is working on Nip today - you can hear it cracking and rumbling.

My wife and I just saw "Crazy Heart" last night - pretty damn good movie, and an excellent sound track. Jeff Bridges can sure play a guitar and sing a mean country tune. And Colin Farrell - who woulda thought! Bridges got the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance... and probably deservedly so, although I can't recall who else was in the running. Three excellent songs, written for the movie, and performed by Bridges: Hold on You I Don't Know Fallin and Flyin (my favourite) They're as good as country gets. Written by T Bone Burnett, I think. Anyone interested in how to get the sound track... PM me.

Moi?

No, sorry. Yes, that Public Works site tends to sound encouraging, but if it's not read carefully for what it doesn't say it can be misleading. Also, I can't for the life of me see that the lake at this particular time is a foot above any long term average, even for the end of winter. I'd be able to walk half way to North Bay!

Yes. Never stand directly in front of a unicorn.

I've looked around and couldn't find anything about why they're caught much more often in the winter. Here's some other interesting stuff though --- ...and an interesting article on care and keeping of mud puppies: http://aqualandpetsplus.com/ Look down the left column for "Mud Puppies". The page won't link directly.

As I understand it there is a binding agreement in place that guarantees a maximum and a minimum water flow to stakeholders on the French River. (Apparently put in place when the Chaudiere Dam was built?) There is no such guarantee for stakeholders on Nipissing. That has an impact as well.

Dan, your fish looks about half-way between a "standard" carp and a mirror carp. Nice catch! I've never caught one.

I never listen to music while fishing in the summer. In winter, in the ice hut, I'll have a pocket radio turned on at times, but mostly tuned to CBC FM.

I'm pretty sure that if that happens in Ontario (maybe all of Canada) you can get a permit from the MNR and have the bird or animal mounted. The mud puppy is doing well --- excavated himself a hidey-hole in that coarse gravel you can see in the picture! Either a strong or determined critter, or both! He'll be back in the lake in a few days.

I hope you're right and that the upper part of the drainage basin still has a significant supply of run-off. But we need the lake to rise about a meter, which is a hell of a volume of water for a big lake like Nipissing.

Thanks, Rick. Much improved! I did not know that little trick.

I checked into this. I use Windows Vista Home Premium and the latest Firefox. My only option is to change to my own font for ALL the sites I visit, but I don't want to do that as this new site install is the only one that is giving me a little trouble. The OFC site font tends to clump "i's" and "l's" very close together, something I don't get elsewhere. I think the old site font used to be Times New Roman or something very similar.

Eastern falls today (March 24th): This should normally be at a rolling boil around this time.

I stopped at the Duchesnay Falls today to take a couple of pictures. The water in summer only comes down a western falls, but in spring it opens up a channel to an eastern falls as well. In spring the western falls is usually a raging torrent for a few weeks, and the eastern falls has a LOT of water coming over it as well. But right now, the western falls is already tailing off, and the eastern falls has almost dried up. Western falls today (March 24th):

Thanks, TMH, that's the site that I got the graph from. It's very useful for recent conditions, but disappointingly it only gives active graphs for the lake for this year and last year.

I was hoping the topic would be of interest, and you gentlemen (and Lady) did not disappoint! The posts about endangered species and regulations for keeping species for study were constructive and informative; thanks for that too. The mud puppy is in the goldfish bowl all by itself - no plans to add anything else, nor to keep it for very long for that matter. A few good pictures of it are enough of a keepsake. Catch and (delayed) release. If I let him go right now, he'll never make it to deep water. The crows and gulls are patrolling the low-water sand flats out in front of my place continuously and the water is only a couple of inches deep.

Thanks for the info, DW. I looked up a graph which illustrates what worries me. Apparently the current inflow is above the long term average but that is because normally the heavy melt is usually just beginning, whereas this year I think that the melt (such as it has been) has already taken place. Looking at the steepest rise in lake level for 2009 (corresponding to the heaviest inflow), it was about the first week of April 2009. I tried going back to 2008 for more comparison but the graph wouldn't load. I'm afraid that what we'll see this year is almost a "flat-lining" of the lake level. The dam at Sturgeon Falls only has one chute open, and if I recall correctly the Sturgeon River accounts for about 60-70% of all inflow. Duchesnay Creek's usual spectacular waterfall is a fraction of what it usually is when the spring runoff is heavy, and it's already diminishing. There's no more snow in the bush. I think the heaviest inflow is already over. Click to enlarge:

"Here" I think for you is the Soo, right? I don't fish all that close to North Bay so I'm just guessing, but I think that as long as you can make it out through shallow water near the shore, the pickerel will be doing what they always do, just maybe in different spots because of the lower water levels. Your depth finder will be your best friend. Here where I am, I'm mentally preparing myself for insufficient water to launch my 16' fiberglass boat, and hoping that my 15' aluminum won't be too much trouble to get out. The picture in the lead-off post is taken from my front deck; from that you can get an idea of what we might have to contend with. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though, and trying to hang on to some optimism!

Low water level here on Nipissing is giving me a good opportunity to do some shore clean-up. Mostly I'm walking in water no more than 2" deep --- finding lots of dead frogs and crayfish --- the seagulls and the crows are cleaning them up. I came across a little creature that I thought at first was a minnow trapped in shallow water. Looking more closely I thought it was a salamander. Anyway, I picked it up and put it in a container until I was finished my chores. It was then I noticed that the critter had gills. I spent some time looking it up, and turns out it's a 1 year old mud puppy. It's about 8 cm long, 4 legs, external gills and a tail like an eel for swimming. My little grand-daughter loves insects and creatures, so this "baby dragon" is inhabiting a goldfish bowl for a few days until we release him back into the big cruel world to do whatever mud puppies do.

Like I said, it's not particularly unusual that the water level is low right now --- it often is at this time of year. However, if I'm judging it correctly the strongest spring run-off is already over, when usually it hasn't even peaked yet. We have NO snow left in the bush, and in all of March so far we have had ONE day of light rain! Other people who have been living at the lake longer than I have are worried as well.

It's nice to have the option to turn off members' signatures in their posts - it reduces the clutter and makes for cleaner reading. I don't know if that feature was there in the old software, but I found it and took advantage of it now.

Sorry, one more thing I just noticed. We used to be able to see where members were posting from; now that seems to be gone. I always found that interesting and I would hope there's an option to call it back.