What a difference a few days make

It’s amazing how fast things change. One day your lake is an ice desert. A few days later the ice is gone, the race is on. The race to life.

The loons don’t even wait for full ice-out – soon as a suitable patch of water opens, they’re back, plying the water, calling. The lake, freed from its ice insulation, starts warming rapidly, especially when full sun hits the bottom in the shallows.

As the temperature rises, the fish spawning procession begins. It starts with northern pike, seeking out marshy areas as soon as ice melts along the shorelines. Male walleyes begin staging in rocky, gravelly shallows while the water is just a few degrees above freezing; females follow, and activity peaks as the temperature reaches the mid-40s.

Yellow perch closely follow the walleyes, spawning as the water reaches the high 40s. The females lay eggs in long, accordion-like ribbons of jelly that sink to the bottom, where males fertilize them. The egg strands may drape over plants or tree branches in the water; early-season canoeists might see them in the shallows.  

These early spawners don’t guard their eggs; the next groups of spawners do. As the water heads into the high 50s and low 60s, male largemouth and smallmouth bass start fanning out spawning beds over gravel substrate in water from a foot to several feet deep. Crappies like it a little warmer; bluegills a little warmer still.

Meanwhile, every living creature – amphibian, reptile, mollusk, insect – gets active. Sit on your deck at night and you’ll hear the frogs and toads sing. Search up “frog calls” on the Internet and you’ll easily find sites where you can listen to spring peepers, chorus frogs, mink frogs, and others, and so distinguish the individual sounds as you might instruments in an orchestra.

This is also a time to watch the migrating through – a pair of binoculars and a field guide can help you expand your vocabulary from “ducks” to buffleheads, widgeons, mergansers, teal.

There’s a current of urgency to it all: time is fleeting. These springtime weeks are a great time of year – maybe the best of times to spend with your lake.