Spiel

Township to dredge Beaverton Harbour to prevent winter flooding Sept. 22, 2009 Scott Howard / www.mykawartha.com The Beaverton harbour floor will be dredged this autumn to prevent a repeat of last winter's near-flood. The work will likely take place in late October or early November, says Brock Township facilities co-ordinator Mark Warvill. While the municipality has not yet settled on a contractor or a price, many members of council are anxious to see the project proceed. "It's urgent that it gets done this fall," said regional councillor John Grant. After nearly a full week of above-freezing temperatures and rain, a large ice jam formed at the mouth of the Beaver River on Feb. 12, blocking a tremendous volume of water from emptying into Lake Simcoe. Contractors were called in to punch holes in the jam, but the water levels in the harbour came dangerously close to spilling over the concrete banks. "The water levels were pretty much right up to the brim," Mr. Warvill said in an interview at the time. Several large chunks of ice spilled into the parking areas on both the north and south sides of the harbour. Upstream, the situation wasn't much better. Ice jams blocked practically the entire riverbed around Riverdale Road. A torrent of water raged beside the bed, making it look like the river was far more than 150 feet wide in some sections. Several residents reported that the situation was the worst they've ever seen. According to the Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority, much of the problem at the harbour was caused by what is known as frazil ice -- a collection of loose, needle-shaped ice crystals -- in the Beaver River, which flows into the harbour. A press release from the LSRCA explained that the frazil ice is floating downstream and is causing three potential problems. "The ice crystals are: 1) becoming trapped and snagged by obstacles and obstructions in the channel; 2) coming to a rest in areas of reduced water velocity, such as within the harbour and at bends at curves in the river; and/or 3) attaching themselves to projections on the underside of solid ice covered water," the press release read. At Monday's meeting, several members of council appeared confident that the dredging could at least partially solve the problem. "If we proceed with the dredging, it may alleviate the flooding issues we've faced," said Mayor Larry O'Connor.

Feds pump more cash into lake Sep 25, 2009 Laurie Watt / www.simcoe.com Barrie MP Patrick Brown presented a cheque to the City of Barrie Thursday to help keep Lake Simcoe clean. The money will be used to reduce run-off from parking lots and to install barriers to trap oil that may find its way into the lake from city roads. From left to right are Brown, Coun. Alex Nuttall, Kevin Richards, of the Lake Simcoe Fund. Stan Howe photo Three projects that will clean up the waterways at the edge of downtown Barrie mark the half-way point in the federal government’s Lake Simcoe Clean-Up Fund strategy. Barrie MP Patrick Brown handed over $606,000 Thursday for three projects: Kidd’s Creek watercourse improvements in the Donald and Eccles street area and oil and grit separation devices in the Maple Avenue and Spirit Catcher parking lots. “Kempenfelt Bay is the jewel at the heart of our city. The purity of its water is something we should not take lightly. Our federal government is not just making promises – we’re delivering real results for Lake Simcoe.” The $30-million Lake Simcoe Clean-Up Fund is an important part of a $93-million national water strategy, he added. This week’s announcements projects bring the project total to 23, representing $15 million. “It’s encouraging to notice that at the half-way point, we’ve had such noticeable and tangible improvements to Lake Simcoe, thanks to the partnership with municipalities and most notably, the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority.” Barrie Coun. Alex Nuttall , a member of the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority board, said the initiative has helped win the conservation authority international recognition for environmental stewardship. Last week, the authority won the International Riverfoundation’s prestigious Thiess International Riverprize, along with a $350,000 grant. The conservation authority estimates the projects so far have reduce the amount of phosphorous entering the lake by 15 kg each year, restored 3.5 kilometres of urban and rural stream banks and planted more than 6,500 trees and shrubs.

DEC destroys nests to manage cormorants WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009 MATTHEW CURATOLO / www.watertowndailytimes.com The state Department of Environmental Conservation has destroyed more than 1,300 cormorants' nests on the St. Lawrence River and the eastern basin of Lake Ontario as part of its management program. In an attempt by DEC to control the fish-eating cormorant population on the river and eastern basin of Lake Ontario, the agency received permission from landowners to remove nests and to destroy any eggs found on islands located on the American sections of the bodies of water. DEC fisheries technicians, hired seasonally, worked with U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife services staff during the effort. "We are done with management for this year. Management in the eastern basin and on the river will continue in 2010, but we have already begun to shift emphasis in the basin towards maintenance rather than substantial reduction," said James F. Farquhar, DEC Region 6 wildlife biologist in Watertown. "We still intend to lower basin numbers slightly, but are nearing our target population. On the river, we plan to continue with nest removal as part of an effort to reduce numbers, or at least prevent population increase." On the river, DEC worked on four private islands where DEC personnel reported approximately 450 pairs of cormorants attempting to nest and "most were not successful due to management," according to Mr. Farquhar. On Lake Ontario, DEC observed approximately 2,500 nesting pairs distributed between Little Galloo, Gull and Calf islands. Mr. Farquhar stated that cormorants on Gull and Calf Islands did not produce any chicks due to the management program, and on Little Galloo Island most were not successful due to egg oiling, the preferred method of killing eggs. "We destroyed 1,382 nests this year, 659 on the St. Lawrence River and 723 in the Lake Ontario eastern basin," Mr. Farquhar said. Persistent high-tree nesters that could not be reached by other means were taken down by shotguns. On those occasions, some cormorants were killed. DEC reported that 59 birds were taken on the river, while 799 were killed in the eastern basin. Cormorants can reportedly eat their weight in fish a day and anglers are concerned with their impact on the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario fisheries, especially the yellow perch fishery, which is a staple of the birds' diet. A 2003 report by DEC showed that cormorants on just three islands on the St. Lawrence River consumed an estimated 23.52 million fish over a three-year period.

A terrific read Rich. You have the address for those musky and next year they'll be bigger and hopefully hungry.

You mean something like this post here dated September 9th.

I'll tell you what I think, I think it was excellent!

eh.

posts,

more

Four

As a 30 year veteran of float fishing (center pin) I don't disagree with Roy's opinion.

A great trilogy of posts Wayne, I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. Moments of hardship and sorrow interlaced with hours of cottage life, family and friends. Thanks for taking the time to recap your summer.

Can't be a Ford, you'd still be chained to the tree.

Congratulations Brian, I'm happy for you.

No doubt I'd have been as delighted as your buddy. I'm glad to hear that the damage was minimal, live and learn.

I don't think I'd want to be borrowing that one and I could likely replace it for less than most.

I love seeing posts of old photos. Thanks for taking the time to put them up Rob.

That's an interesting assortment of fish Cliff, perhaps the next time you'll get those Kingfish, they do fight hard! I'm certain that you not ever going to see a report from me on the fishing in Beirut.

Jigging for walleye, is there any other way?

PEARLS UNSTRUNG For a while, the Great Lakes weren’t connected by rivers and Niagara Falls was just a trickle August 29th, 2009 Sid Perkins / Science News The thundering roar at the base of Niagara Falls is awesome indeed. On an average summer day, about 40 million gallons of water spill over the half-mile–wide Canadian portion of the cataract each minute. After falling over a cliff taller than a 16-story building, water pummels the rocks below, incessantly eroding the base of the cliff and triggering rockfalls. Before the 20th century, when engineers weakened the Niagara River by diverting some of its flow to produce hydroelectric power, the falls marched upstream an average of more than a meter per year. Niagara Falls is one of the last links in an impressive chain: Water flows from Lake Superior and Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, onward to Lake Erie, then down the Niagara River and over the falls to Lake Ontario and thence to the sea. Today the falls seem unstoppable, but scientists have learned that there was a time after the most recent ice age when Niagara Falls was a mere trickle and the Great Lakes were a little less great. During the ice age, which began about 100,000 years ago, a kilometers-thick ice sheet smothered the region. And Niagara Falls — or the ice-covered cliff that would become the falls —was located several kilometers downstream of its current site. Sometime around 13,000 years ago, the ice retreated northward, leaving meltwater to accumulate in gouges that were left behind. With the first flush of meltwater, lake levels rose and the falls raged. Studies show that as ice retreated and climate dried, however, the falls slowed to a trickle for several millennia, starting about 10,000 years ago. Scientists once thought that the falls slowed because the overflow from Lake Erie was rerouted to a different spillway when the landscape tilted and shifted as it was relieved of its icy burden. But now they are learning that some of the rivers connecting one lake to another simply disappeared during a long dry spell that started about 12,500 years ago. In the last decade or so, scientists have uncovered clues that the water level in Lake Erie — and indeed, the levels in at least some of the other Great Lakes — fell well below all natural outlets, rendering those lakes isolated bodies of water. New studies, including archaeological surveys and genetic analyses of fish, bolster the notion that today’s submarine ridges and nearshore shallows were once land bridges and lakeside beaches. Ups and downs Today, even small fluctuations in lake levels can have a big effect on the region. In a good year, vessels from the United States, Canada and other nations transport more than 200 million tons of iron ore, coal and other cargo on the lakes, says Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers’ Association, based in Rocky River, Ohio. For every inch (2.5 centimeters) that lake levels drop, he says, the 65 vessels represented by the trade group must forgo carrying about 8,200 tons of cargo. Instruments have tracked Lake Erie’s water level only since the mid-1800s, but in that time the level has, according to modern standards, fluctuated substantially. From 1900 to today, the lake’s surface altitude has varied by about 1.5 meters, says Gregory C. Wiles, a paleoclimatologist at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Although many people have suspected that human activity —dredging, engineering projects and the like — caused those variations, a study reported by Wiles and his colleagues in the March 6 Geophysical Research Letters hints that natural climate cycles are largely to blame. Today, average precipitation over Lake Erie is about 99 centimeters per year, the researchers note. But evaporation steals about 90 centimeters of that water annually; the surplus water joins the incoming flow from the upper Great Lakes and exits Lake Erie via the Niagara River, says Wiles. Water level in the lake depends on the balance between income and outgo: In spring, when snowmelt is prodigious and temperatures — and therefore evaporation — are relatively low, the lake’s level is typically at its high point for the year. In late summer and autumn, when air temperatures and evaporation are relatively high, the level sinks. Similarly, extended dry spells across the Upper Midwest cause lake levels to fall, says Wiles. The lowest recorded water level in Lake Erie came during the mid-1930s, near the end of the driest stretch of the Dust Bowl years. High lake levels from the 1970s through the 1990s may have resulted from weather patterns that brought higher-than-normal amounts of moisture north from the Gulf of Mexico. Data locked in tree rings offer a way to extend the precipitation record of the Midwest back in time. For example, tree ring data from forests along the Gulf of Alaska indicate that when winter sea-surface temperatures in the North Pacific were warmer than normal, the Upper Midwest received less precipitation. That, in turn, caused water levels in the Great Lakes to drop. This link alone can explain half the modern variations in Lake Erie’s level, Wiles and his colleagues report. Other climate cycles — including El Niño, the warming of sea-surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific —influence rainfall in the Great Lakes basin as well, the researchers’ analyses concluded. “The Great Lakes are a great dipstick of the region’s climate,” says Wiles. And climate will help determine the lakes’ future as well. A recent report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program states that, under a business-as-usual scenario for carbon dioxide emissions, Great Lakes levels will drop substantially toward the end of this century. Between 2020 and 2100, the water level in Lake Superior will decline about 15 centimeters, the researchers estimate. Over the same time period, water levels in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan will decline almost 50 centimeters, a change that could render parts of some harbors largely inaccessible. Wide swings Compared with today, water levels in the Great Lakes seesawed wildly after the last ice age, including occasional big rises. And evidence also suggests that some lakes were overflowing while others were evaporating away. In 2008, scientists reported that small spruce saplings buried high in an embankment along the northwestern shore of Lake Superior indicate that the lake’s surface rose at least several meters — drowning the region for several centuries beginning about 8,900 years ago — before levels sank again (SN Online: 10/9/08). But most known excursions in Great Lakes water levels, including those in the eastern lakes at the same time, have taken lake surfaces lower than modern averages, says Mike Lewis, a marine geologist emeritus with the Geological Survey of Canada in Dartmouth. Sonar scans of Lake Superior’s floor show kilometers-long troughs that were scoured by icebergs at the end of the last ice age (SN: 1/6/07, p. 14). Those features, as well as long-submerged beaches revealed by other sonar studies, reveal that water levels in the lake fell at least 70 meters below the modern-day average some time in the past 10,000 years or so, Lewis notes. What are now nearshore shallows would have been exposed during that era and could have been home to villages and broad hunting grounds for Native Americans. Sonar scans taken off the northeastern shore of Lake Erie also show relict, now-flooded beaches. And analyses of sediments extracted from one of those ancient shorelines, as well as cores drilled elsewhere in the lake, reveal new details of the lakes’ configuration after the last ice age, Lewis and his colleagues reported in Toronto in May at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Not only were the Great Lakes’ levels at the end of the last ice age lower than they are today, the researchers note, but also the lakes covered much less area. The relatively shallow western regions of Lake Erie, for example, were covered by marsh plants between 14,600 and 12,900 years ago — a sure sign that this area was mostly exposed as the last ice age drew to a close and that lake levels during this interval were far lower than they are today. Sediment cores drilled from the center of the lake reveal that the accumulation of mud there decreased substantially between 12,500 and 8,300 years ago. Finally, Lewis notes, a sediment core drilled from a now-flooded beach about 30 meters below the lake’s surface indicates that mud began to pile up on that wave-eroded surface only after 8,400 years ago. Specifically, water levels in Lake Erie were falling at the same time that overflow from Lake Huron, the nearest neighbor upstream, flowed to the sea via other routes. Today, between 85 and 90 percent of the water that flows out of Lake Erie has flowed in from the Great Lakes upstream. Dry up that source of water, Lewis says, and evaporation quickly begins to outpace the lake’s accumulation of precipitation. About 7,600 years ago, lake sediments also began to include hemlock pollen — a sign, says Lewis, that climate became wetter and stayed that way. Accordingly, lake levels gradually rose about seven meters in the centuries that followed. Finally, about 6,300 years ago, the overflow from Lake Huron again switched southward and spilled into Lake Erie, filling it to the brim and once again cranking up the faucets at Niagara Falls. Life in the old Great Lakes Not all the evidence regarding water levels in the Great Lakes has come from rocks and sediments. Archaeological and genetic evidence left behind in and around the lakes supports the idea that their surfaces were once dramatically lower than they are today. This landscape would have been vastly different for animals and early people of the Great Lakes. Earlier this summer, researchers reported that sonar and video surveys of a submarine ridge in Lake Huron revealed structures similar to those used to guide caribou by modern-day hunters in the high Arctic (SN: 7/4/09, p. 14). Between 8,300 and 11,300 years ago, the now-flooded ridge would have been a 16-kilometer–wide land bridge connecting the state of Michigan and Ontario, Canada. The find hints that other structures, possibly even the remnants of small villages, may be preserved on what was once prime lakeside real estate. The legacy of the disconnected lakes is seen in today’s fish populations as well. Despite an apparent lack of geographical barriers between those five lakes today, fish that inhabit Lake Erie have minor mutations in their genetic code that make them genetically distinct from their kin in the other lakes. Take, for instance, the smallmouth bass, Micropterus dolomieu. After the ice sheet covering the Great Lakes retreated, bass that lived in unfrozen rivers and other refuges — including the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Ohio and Hudson rivers — recolonized the lakes, says Carol A. Stepien, a fish geneticist at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Those diverse origins are preserved in today’s bass, she and her colleagues reported in Molecular Ecology in 2007. The fish in western Lake Erie are most genetically similar to those in Lake St. Clair, a small lake just upstream from there, the researchers discovered. And the fish in eastern Lake Erie are most genetically similar to those in Lake Ontario, which lies just downstream. In the eastern part of Lake Erie, smallmouth bass are also more genetically diverse than their western companions, and fish from areas in between have intermediate levels of diversity. These trends suggest that eastern and central subpopulations of bass were geographically isolated from one another at some time in the past — a scenario also supported by sonar surveys. The data suggest that when Lake Erie was at its lowest level, around 8,800 years ago, what is today a large body of water would have been divided into two largely separate basins connected by a small waterway. Smallmouth bass living in close proximity to each other might be expected to be genetically similar, says Stepien, because they typically don’t migrate and often spawn in the same nesting sites each year. But more surprisingly, genetic analyses of walleye —a fish that remains generally faithful to its nesting sites yet spends much of its life in open waters, mixing with walleye from elsewhere in the lake — show similar trends in diversity. So now findings from the disparate fields of genetics and geology, with a little archaeology thrown in for good measure, seem to be telling the same story: Once upon a time the Great Lakes, today one huge system linked by rivers and straits, were disconnected pools. “I’ve been studying the Great Lakes for a long time, and there have been many puzzles,” says Lewis, “but only now are things coming together and starting to make sense.”

Fish diversion net installed outside Pickering nuke plant September 16th, 2009 / Newsdurhamregion.com Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is installing a fish diversion net in Lake Ontario just outside the Pickering power plant. The goal is to reduce the number of fish dying after swimming into the plant’s water intake pipe. It will be a 610-metre long mesh net with half-inch openings. Residents may have seen divers working on the project outside the plant in recent weeks. “Work began on that in mid-July and it’s almost completed now,” said Pickering A senior vice-president Mark Elliott. The netting itself will be added in October once the other parts are in place. Boaters will be warned by 19 lighted buoys about the netting, which is located 77 metres out from the intake. “They’re asked to say stay well clear of that,” said Mr. Elliott. OPG plans to issue reminders about the net each spring when boating season kicks off.

Good stuff Doug. I'm glad this trip worked out for you and your dad, a memory you'll always cherish. It must have been pretty exciting for you watching your dad land all of those PB's day after day.

New Quantum Fishing Website Goes Live Sept. 14, 2009 / www.great-lakes.org TULSA, Oklahoma - The totally redesigned Quantum web site - www.QuantumFishing.com - went live last week with a new look and many expanded features and functions for the ultimate interactive experience relating to Quantum products, customer service, technical support and a wide range of fishing topics and know-how. The new site incorporates the latest in new media technology advances and puts them in an easy-to-navigate-and-search format that makes QuantumFishing.com extremely user-friendly, regardless of a visitor's level of Internet experience. In addition to general information such as FAQs, dealer locator, trophy board and media room, the site also contains a greatly expanded library of product schematics covering a wide range of years, as well as the most intricate details about PT products, including gear ratios, inches per turn, weight, drag strength, etc. Visitors can also get a behind-the-scenes look at engineering and quality testing that goes into every Quantum rod and reel by choosing one of the many video options. There are also numerous fishing tips videos by Quantum's elite pro staffers, including Kevin VanDam, Shaw Grigsby, Dean Rojas, Greg Hackney and several others, covering fresh and saltwater. The "On Tour" department follows the pros through their respective tournament participations. For customers wanting to communicate directly with the company's engineers and product managers, there's the Quantum Blog. The monitored blog will provide useful communication on most any fishing topic, and expect to find frequent postings by Quantum's pro staffers adding to the exchanges. Certain items, such as Quantum Signature Series PT rods and a variety of promotional clothing, can be purchased through the site's "buy online" areas. The Custom Shop houses all of the information about the rods.

Some beauties there Dan. I hope you'll be guiding me again next year when all is right again! Maybe I'll bring Fish Farmer if'n the ole boy can stay above the sod for another year....

LMAO....I forgot about the skunk trying to get in your boat, too funny. Obviously you were able to keep the skunk at bay (literally).