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Nature has a way of keeping balance
The water is in the bushes at our local reservoirs, and I have a hunch this is a good thing for anglers as our spring season draws near.
A “normal” winter would have the water low at most of our Northeast Ohio lakes. That’s a good thing, too, because the exposed lake bottoms get a good rinsing from winter runoff, resulting in silt being cleared from large areas of gravel and sand.
The rinsing actually already occurred at Berlin, especially, as it was low throughout the autumn and early weeks of winter.
Lake level drawdowns help perpetuate the cycle of silt removal, and the clean bottom that is exposed is great for fish spawning and feeding activities.
Lakes such as Mosquito and West Branch aren’t subject to the same kinds of fluctuations as Berlin, so the aquatic vegetation has become well established in both. The greenery is great for nursery environments. The young of many species use the leaves and stalks to help conceal them from predators, and they feed on the algae in the weed beds.
Baitfish populations thrive in such environments, and the game species modify their behavior to capitalize on the predictable locations of their preferred food fish.
At Berlin, however, aquatic vegetation is nil. Many of the shallow-water species therefore must rely on other kinds of cover.
The alternative to vegetation in lakes like Berlin is wood. It comes in the form of logs, limbs, brush and such.
The drawdown that Berlin undergoes each year thanks to its dedicated mission of flood control and water management for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also contributes to the ongoing deterioration of wood cover there.
Impounded in the early days of World War II, Berlin formerly was studded with stumps and trees. But the annual ups and downs of the water level have resulted in relentless rotting of the wood cover.
Stumps and trees that remain flooded for 70 years still might be in good shape. But virtually every fiber of wood that was in the lake when the Mahoning River started backing up behind the Berlin Dam is long gone. Exposure to air in September, October, November, December, January and February every year is the culprit.
But today (and actually for the past week or more), Berlin’s level is way up in the bushes, in places where the rabbits, squirrels and deer typically would be.
The chore of bottom rinsing was accomplished by Mother Nature months ago. Now she’s put water up in the brushy flats and wooded areas, where it is floating the trees and limbs that litter the land around the lake.
Soon the level will recede, pulling the new stockpile of twigs, branches and trunks to what will be the water’s edge come spring.
So the toppled treetop you will be dabbling for crappie in April may very well be a byproduct of this winter’s torrent of rain.
The laydown log you spinnerbait for largemouths may just now be floating off the oak-leaf floor of a drain coming into the Mill Creek arm.
Wood where you will work your jig-and-minnow for walleyes on the banks up toward Ohio 225 soon will be fortified.
Nature has a way of keeping things balanced. So a lake like Berlin, a definite have-not when it comes to green cover, gets a friendly hand from whatever force decides there’s still some good to come from the tree that falls in the forest.