Let Mother Nature get on with her handiwork

The little municipal lake in my hometown is undergoing a tremendous drawdown this year, from 365 to 88 acres, as the local utilities commission puts in a new dam and prepares to put the wrecking ball to the existing one, which was built 100 years ago and is starting to, er, um, leak.

I check in there at least once a week, and every time I visit, I’m amazed at what’s growing on the exposed lake floor. As far as the eye can see, outside the small pool of water that’s left, it looks like a pasture that needs a good cutting for hay.

Fisheries biologists did an electroshocking survey before all the construction began, so they can come back when it fills back up next spring and see how the fish have been affected. They predict that the bass fishing should be amazing when the lake gets back to full pool, because the largemouths will be fat from having the baitfish corralled for a year, and they’ll be patrolling those grass beds. It will be a topwater bite to remember.

I can’t wait.

I was reminded the other day that the Santee Cooper lakes, Marion and Moultrie, are going through that “post-drawdown” stage. The drought several years ago shrunk those lakes a tremendous amount, and thousands of acres of bank grass grew up on the dry lake floor. Although that natural drawdown caused all kinds of hardships for owners of lakeside property and businesses, one or two voices predicted that the fishing would really take off after the water returned to its normal level.

Reports from fishermen who frequent Marion and Moultrie indicate that the bass fishing has been excellent this year, the crappie fishing outstanding, the striper fishing on the road to recovery and the catfishing still extraordinary. Those standalone voices who looked at the dry lake beds and saw some promise were dead on.

Mother Nature apparently takes care of her own quite well, thank you, when an out-of-the-ordinary event takes place.

That brings us to the situation with spotted seatrout (speckled trout). The extreme cold weather that invaded South Carolina the past two Januaries apparently did tremendous damage to speckled trout, a species that is very temperature sensitive. Get the water down into the 40s, and specks start to slow down. Get it into the low 40s or even into the 30s, and if fish cannot find deeper, warmer water, they’re going to be stunned and likely die.

So many specks died the past two winters that earlier this year, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources asked fishermen to voluntarily release any specks they caught up until Sept. 1, a move intended to allow the trout that survived the winter to at least finish their summer spawn before heading to the frying pan and the hot grease.

How much effect that will have on the population is debatable. Typically, it takes three or four seasons for a speckled trout population to recover from a big winter cold kill — if we can string together some mild winters. So if you run into a decent trout bite this fall, don’t be afraid to keep a few fish for the frying pan. They will have done their job by spawning at least once, and Mother Nature usually takes care of the rest of the details. Fishermen at Santee Cooper will attest to that.