November / December  2008 Page 4

by Bob Andry

Every year the LakeWatch staff from the University of Florida treats their volunteers to an appreciation supper. The event is a really nice, informal get-together with the supper catered by Sonny's Bar-b-que and a desert pitch-in by the attendees. The food is good, the deserts should be illegal, and the fellowship with other volunteer LakeWatch water samplers is great.

The folks that run the LakeWatch program always bring a lot of printed booklets on aquatic subjects as well as samples of aquatic plants and bugs. This combines a evening of frivolity with a learning experience. They also bring and distribute the laboratory results derived from the water samples we submit. The Rodman results after eight years of accumulated data were interesting.

Often our short term data showed that Rodman's aquatic plant life removed as much as eighty percent of the unwanted nutrients from the water measured at the entrance of Rodman at Eureka to the water over Kirpatrick Dam. We knew this amount of good news couldn't be maintained over a long period of time because the physical conditions are always changing. For instance, during a drawdown there are practically no nutrients removed from the water as it passes through Rodman. During this time the water is pretty much confined to the old river channel and does not have the chance to flow through beds of plants.

Here are the eight year averages:

(Values are in micrograms per liter)

I can't give you the tonnage of nitrogen or phosphorous removed because I don't know the average volume of flow over the eight year period, but it probably doesn't make any difference because the numbers we have show us that Rodman is helping us clean up the water over the long haul, and this is a very good reason to keep the reservoir.

by Bob Andry

We're short of space this issue so let's make this short and sweet. Remarkably, the navigation channel between Orange Springs and Eureka is still open, however, the winds have removed plants along the channel edges between Cracker Landing and Orange Creek, so it is often hard to know if your are in the channel or not. Keep an eye on your depth finder, and stay in water ten feet deep or better and you should be O.K.

The east winds have blown drifting plants toward Orange Springs and Fort Brook and packed the River channel and the boat trails solid. It is best to make up your mind where you want to go before launching and use the appropriate boat ramp to reach your area. It would be almost impossible to go upstream by launching from Kenwood.

The water visibility is around three feet throughout the reservoir, but fishing hasn't been too bad. Folks were catching some nice specks from the reservoir side of the dam toward the east end during the last of September. Bass fishing has been normal, but some really nice catches were reported like thirteen from one hole using shiners.

The pennywort beds in the upper zones of the reservoir are great, but so are the mud fish in the area. The bass are there, but the mud fish are so aggressive that they often get the bait before the bass.

November is the month the tree leaves normally turn, so it would be a good time to give the wife and kids a treat and take a boat ride through the riverine zone some Saturday or Sunday. If we get a cold snap to trigger the change the place is gorgeous.

Gator Hunt

The '08 gator hunt on Rodman was productive as always. Rodman has a lot of fish, and wherever there are fish to eat you normally find a lot of alligators. Peter Wold of Casper, Wyoming, hunted with John Beach and Joe Mcquire of Odessa, FL. and were elated with their success. They had requested Rodman as their third choice for hunting sites with their hunting application, but after the great success they had this year, we hope Rodman is now their first choice. Below is a slightly out of focus picture of one day's hunt results. The gator on the boat is nine feet one inch long.