Lake Blue Heron Update

As of mid-April, Lake Blue Heron is experiencing a better start to the summer season that we have seen in 2 or 3 years. Normally by now, the lake was generally filled with large bright green new algae growths. While there are some at this point, the density is much lower than observed in 2017 and 2018. We believe the treatment in late December was helpful in keeping new growth down this spring — so far. Charlie Mesing has conducted a recent survey of the lake (last 2 weeks) and has the following observations/input in addition to the above.

• We observed a few different aquatic plants but they are not problematic at this time..Floating water fern is one to watch..It can expand like the duck weeds… No treatment is recommended at this time.
• The new filamentous algae (green balls) that is beginning to form appears to be of the Spirogyra species. This species is much easier to manage than Lyngbya. To ensure chemical treatments are as effective as possible, the first round of treatments will probably occur in late April or early May. The factors we watch for are water temperatures, water depth, and rain predictions. We want to minimize the chance of chemicals being washed out of the lake and we want the algae to be activep enough to take up the chemicals.
• We will be holding off on adding grass carp in LBH as we want to continue to encourage the continuing healthy shoreline plant growth and carp do not typically eat algae.

For those interested, the treatment solution used to minimize the algae is a Federally approved liquid chelated copper (Cutrine Ultra) mixed with surfactant (Cide-kick) to help breakdown the fibrous threads of Lyngbya algae plants. Fred Schmidt and others were concerned about possible impact on bedding fish and they were very pleased to learn that this chemical solution is not impactful to the fish, even during breeding, especially when applied in the fashion that Charlie Mesing utilizes.