Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Identifying plants Ugly lake

What is growing in our lake and how do we fix it.

This is a mountain lake at a Scout camp in Colorado and it has become an overgrown mess.

This fish seem happy, however reeling them in through this mess is impossible.

What is growing in the lake and how do we get rid of it?


Thanks

I'm not an expert by any means, if it were I, I would recommend first, Texas A&M , plant.tamu.edu/plant-identification . Texas A&M website for water plants. excellent resource, if you get a handful and crush it and it stinks , skunk or garlic smell, then most likely (sp) Chara (sp) , an algae , my pond is infested for first time this year. If you can't figure out from TAMU Website, get a good sample , spread out on white paper , plus maybe a second sample in clear water, in clear clean jar so the experts can see it spread out and in jar, looking as natural as possible. Dozens of water plants look like your photo, plus the glare, cloud reflections, etc corrupt your photo's . Good Luck with it, Welcome to Pond Boss Forum and Highly recommend that you subscribe to Pond Boss magazine , to assist with your water management responsibilities . Hope I've helped.

Troy:

It's difficult to see the detail needed on the plants to correctly ID them. If you can, take a single strand of the plant, lay it in a glass backing dish with about 2" of water in it, and place the dish over a sheet of white paper. Take a good clear picture of the plant from directly above and we should be able to ID it and give you treatment options.

Are those reflections of clouds in some of the pictures???

If not, what are those whitish looking masses??

Noticed that too but after a closer look I am pretty sure they are cloud reflections.
Id say what you have there is a pretty long ways from an ugly lake, I can relate tho that that charra looking stuff would make it really hard to fish, especially bank fishing.

I have had better luck in a situation like that to be out in a small boat and pull fish out toward the middle, away from that stuff.
actually makes some pretty good fishing, the bait fish hang out in that big time and wherever they are you are gonna have bigger ones.

Hope you figure out what it is and are able to control it. Beautiful lake tho! good luck!