Memory Weeds

I remember this fish. I spotted it from the road, rooting on the bottom in a small bay. I clambered as quickly and quietly as I could down the rocks and managed to hook it without getting my feet wet. I also remember that the hook pulled and I lost the fish. What had me perplexed this summer was that the shoreline where I caught it, indeed most of the spots I have fished in the past, did not look like this memory.

This summer when I arrived, the shorelines were choked with weeds (mostly milfoil, I believe). I had to comb through old photos to see if my memory was wrong, but it was not. That fish was hooked in July. This year, also in July, that spot looked more like this:

My initial reaction was mild panic. Was this some new, ill-effect of climate change? Were mats of green goop going to be the new normal? It took a while for me to calm down. I located the historical data and discovered that substantial fluctuations in water temperature aren’t unusual. I suspect this has more to do with the winter snow pack many miles upriver in Canada than with local weather conditions. Undoubtedly climate change has and will affect all of this but I did not see any clear pattern. Some years, the river just warms up sooner, which leads to earlier growth of weed beds. The optimist in me thinks that the fishing will get good earlier in the year when this is the case.

But for now, heavy shoreline weed growth makes carp fishing more difficult. In the worst case, when the river level drops, I cannot even reach clear water on foot. When the water comes up, I will often find carp feeding in clear patches between weed beds but, even when I hook them, it is much more difficult to land them, especially the big ones.

So much of my fishing time recently has been spent looking for places that have less weeds – areas with substrates of larger rocks, or areas that are regularly scoured by heavier current. I suspect that many of the islands in the river, small and large, have shorelines like this, but those are inaccessible to me for the time being. I do have a couple of shoreline spots that fit the bill. Every once in a while it all comes together.