Don Yurewicz

I paddled from our home to the town beach and back covering Zones 2 and 3 with near perfect conditions - it was sunny day with minimal wind. Zone 2 covers most of the northern shoreline along Mudgett Rd and is shallow and sandy with fairly sparse vegetation. I did see some floating fragments of native naiad and purple bladderwort, some aquatic moss along the bottom, and the usual floating plants. The naiad was easy to identify as the native form by simply grabbing fragments as I paddled...

The surface of the lake was smooth and the sun was out, so it was a perfect day to be able to look below the surface and check aquatic plant growth. I paddled all of Zone 17 and adjacent portions of Zone 1 and 16. Portions of the shallow shoreline were rocky and plant growth was sparse except for floating lilies and pondweeds. But I found areas with spiral pondweed, purple bladderwort, aquatic moss, tape grass, pipewort, grassy spike rush, ribbon leaf pondweed, watershield, and robbins...

Paddled Zone 2 today and all looked good. Noted lots of submerged blobs/clouds of filamentous green algae. These create bubbles of oxygen and if trapped in the algae it will float to the surface of the lake. See photo below. Made a detour from my patrol to photo the north shore loons and chick. Filamentous Green Algae Native Water Naiad - can be distinguished from the invasive form by the smooth edges of its leaves.