Lake Fish

Because it is Spring and I live in an area that is in a deciduous hardwood forest, the pollen is blowing everywhere.  I live on the banks of  one of the community lakes here so I decided to check on the possibility of seeing some fish.  Yesterday morning I went to the lake shore and saw that the surface of the lake was covered with a thin veil of yellow pollen.  I also saw that for the first time this year, the fish are active. This morning I also went to the lake and took some better pictures from the dock.  Today there is a lot less pollen on the water.   The fish are excited to have a lot of insects to eat and warmer water to swim in.  The fish were just off of a dock and in about 3 ft. of water.  These are mostly warm-water fish although the Trout usually like colder water.  There were about 15 fish in the immediate area all trying to catch their own insect breakfast.

I have never taken pictures of fish and these are not great snapshots, but I decided to post them anyway.  The fish seen are mostly  young Largemouth Bass, possibly a young Walleye, and  adult Bluegill.   I also spied a lunker Bass  and a Crappie, but the photos were not of good quality.  I had to use a polarizing filter on my lens and hope to get to see any fish at all.  I also had to deal with all of that pollen on the water.  One of the photographs has a lot of pollen (white smears) in the picture due to the pollen on the surface of the lake yesterday.  I am not absolutely sure about which species all of these fish are and labeled the pictures with my best guess.  Please click on the thumbnail image to see the larger version of that picture.  Enjoy!

Possibly a Young Largemouth Bass

Bluegill (4/14/10)

Possibly a young Walleye (4/13/10)