Went to work cleaning up the banks, raking some of the muck out of the shallows, and pulling out aquatic plants:
I want to try to keep the banks trimmed short going forward-any tips on how to do it without making a mess in the water? Its tough to see but on the far side I pulled an actual woody/thorny bush that looks like it had started on the bank and then extended its root system into the water. The grass I'm going to have to pull by hand. I'm planning on putting an old canoe in and throwing the stuff inside as I pull it.
I freaked out when my rake caught this on the end of a stick I pulled out of the bottom:
My first thought was that it was eggs and that I had killed an entire generation of fish that I didn't even know that I had! Fortunately I found on Google images that it was just a bryozoan. Apparently their presence indicates good water quality, so that's a plus.
