Some impressive finds in Zone 14; very little at top of Zone 13

July 26th offered another morning of bright sun and calm waters that just had to be taken advantage of. I headed out and even tried my hand at dropping some pins during the patrol to mark where I had some interesting finds...outside of the first one I was almost on target. The second and third landed almost on top of each other. (More practice needed.)

The aquatic plants I found in Zone14 offered few surprises. That said, given it is relatively early in the growth season, I feel what I did find could be considered almost robust. At the northern most pin, Grid #474, I was impressed by the amount of Elodea growing inside the small bay. It was very thick, about 6-8ft long, 2-3ft wide with nothing much more mixed into it outside of wispy Flat-leaf Bladderworts. Further south more was found at the shallow water by the Cove campground beach: at the northern end of grid #469 a robust patch of green Water Naiad, and at the southern end of #469 another large and thick patch of Elodea. Throughout the zone I saw clumps of Grassy Spike Rush, Thin-leaf Pondweeds and Tape grass. Everything on the lake floor was well coated with algae which had me needing to take many plant samples to correctly identify what they were.

Afterwards, with a little more time left, I continued into the first part of Zone13 and did not find anything of note.  In fact, plant growth was very sparse.