Well since cabin fever has already led me to learn knife making and set up a forge and even try ice fishing....let me go further off the deep end here before I finally have a chance to go fishing. Hang with me here, it gets better. LETS RANT ABOUT LAWNS AND HOW THEY RUIN FISHING! LAwns are a $40 billion industry. They use 75 million pounds of pesticides annually and devour more than 10 times the amount of insecticides and fertilizer than farmland. And since 10,000 gallons on water are used per 1,000 square feet of lawn, they account for 30-60% of urban fresh water usage....the result: fishing is ruined. Those chemicals wash into the pond and kill off all the amphibians/frogs very quickly (there goes some of a bass' favorite snacks) and cause massive algae growth. Now a couple of things can happen here. The algae could outgrow the plants, build up, then die off, depriving the lake of oxygen as it decays, killing off a crap ton of fish. We may step in instead and dump more chemicals into the lake to kill the algae....and really ensure that all those pesky, mildly necessary amphibians are dead too....as well as crustaceans/mollusks who are vulnerable to components in algaecides like copper. (More fish food dead...YAY!) Hold onto your pants folks, because this is where things get really fun. Fertilizers cause an accelerated buildup of pond scum, actually aging the pond at an incredible rate. Normally a pond transitions slowly from Rocky and cool to fairly mucky with plant life, then to chocolate milk, (think Louisiana waters) into marshland. With fertilizers being drained into them, they age faster than that nephhew you haven't seen in three years. (Seriously, last time I saw him he wanted a Nerf gun for Christmas, now he demands an iPhone or Samsung! To which I say "I'm not gonna buy you an iPhone, cause you ask for it, cause you need one...you don't...)
) This process makes the habitat unsuitable for the fauna far too quickly....killing them. (I think you've noticed a theme here by now) Of course there is also the weekly crop of rotting, ammonia creating, oxygen depleting grass clippings. Yet somehow, none of this ranks as the saddest of the facts. Imagine the beauty our forefathers must have seen when they first came here. Sunset painted lakes where mink bounded, dancing on fallen trees to the the music of whipporwhills and bullfrogs and the splashes of pike as turtles floated lazily at the surface of mirrorlike water, each one like a pebble, forming a step-stone path to paradise. A place where dragonflies caught mosquitos on the wing, doing their acrobatics as much to catch prey and perform for suitors as to avoid the multitudinous flocks of birds that gave a sweeter, soprano melody to the bass of leopard frogs. Where there is cut grass less than 2 inches, there are no minks, no garter snakes, no mice, few frogs, sparse crawfish, rare grasshoppers, no crickets, only the occasionally water strider...oh to name the loss of insect life alone would take days, but to name every food bass can utilize that would be lost...would be a tragic endeavor.
A lawn is not an ecosystem. It is non-native, European cool species plants, not designed for our climate. Cutting it just makes it grow thicker, so that no other plants can get through. So that no diversity can add natural nourishment to the soil, like the humble clover plants, dutifully adding nitrogen to the soil, that for doing so, are rewarded only with poison. Cutting it prevents it from seeding itself and providing food (seed) Watering it in the heat of summer when it goes dormant....only to cut it, leaves bare ground with no cover for mice, snakes, grasshoppers, etc. You're all fisherman, so what happens to animals without cover and food? A lawn is the antithesis of an ecosystem, but the frustrating part is when it is put next to a pond, it masquerades as one. Children can grow up and learn to think that it is. Call my mindset an anachronistic luxury, but I'd rather bushwack to the pond without poison, the one I can call an ecosystem...a piece of forgotten wild. At least, I will when I take that nephew for the first time. He deserves to walk that step-stone path to paradise through the fallen trees and hear the call of the blackbird and whipporwhill, before it is replaced by pavement walkways, cut grass, and the sound of garter snake-mulching lawnmowers. *sigh*
