Where are the weeds?

[eurolarva]

Three of the lakes i fish in the Wright county and the twin cities are almost completely weedless. These lakes are usually choked out in over 50 percent of the lake. I notice the water is dark green full of algae. My guess is that with the dark green water sunlight cant get to the bottom and make weeds grow. My big concern is the winter. Without these weeds there wont be oxygen trapped under the ice for fish to live. Maybe I am wrong here because I am not a scientist but this has me worried.

[Nick Kuhn]

Well, what kind of weed normally grows in those lakes? Curly leaf pondweed will dominate a lake up until it dies around the 4th of July. Canadian/Western waterweed can be pretty thick but that dies in mid August. Other species should still be up though: coontail, cabbage, milfoil, the grassy stuff.

[Deitz Dittrich]

a lot of the time if a lake is choked out it ends up killing it self out. Was the water color very green? Like all plants, weeds need light to survive.. if the water has too much stain it dies.

[eurolarva]

Water is dark green. I dont know my weeds but all these lakes have milfoil. Normally all the shallow areas have the milfoil but even the milfoil is mostly gone. The lakes I have noticed this is Peltier in Centerville, Pelican and Buffalo in Wright county.

[Kyhl]

Were the weeds there earlier this year?

My understanding is that each spring it is a tug of war between weeds and algae. Whichever takes off first wins by choking out the other for that season.

Example, one of the lakes that I fish, last year was an algae year with very few weeds. This year there are weeds everywhere but the water is not as green.