Between the ever charging wind down the lake and my crazy schedule, June 25th allowed me my maiden voyage for 2022. Earlier in the month I found the conditions to patrol were just right too early in the morning or too late in the day with the sun not high enough to see the lake’s bottom. And today I made it.
The sun was out and the wind remained just tolerable enough to allow good visibility through the water. I stuck close to the shoreline and toured most of Zone 7, basically hugging the shoreline by 2 grids out, around Deane’s cove, to Gull Rock and Maidens of the Mist, then straight across to Wily Cove and back home.
I saw a great quantity of algae clinging onto almost every stalk available, mainly Floating Hearts, Lily pads and young Bladderwort. In almost every algal mass there seemed to be what looked like light brown pollen. Perhaps there was a lot of that but, when a handful of it was dropped into the white tray, I also found larvae of a crazy number of tiny darting insects along with distinct fish larvae that stood out. Also found a few clusters (formed like ropes) of eggs that closely resembled what Gitch had posted in October 2021: Chironominea, a group of non-biting midge, probably caddisfly in particular.
Otherwise, there were early stages of: Pickerel weed, bladderwort, Robbin leaf pondweed, Tape grass, Thin leafed pondweed, Quillwort and Pipewort.