Taking a dive with the loons on a banding excursion

Well, we finally got enough rain to bring my pond back up to the fill pipe, which certainly made the trout happy. I was out in one of those heavy down pours while fishing at Cascade Lake with my granddaughter Emily and her friend Zack.

The weather radar had promised us some rain about noon, but it didn’t say it would fill the canoe in 10 minutes.

The fish were biting pretty good about the time the noon whistle went off and I could hear rain drops-big ones-heading our way.

Luckily there was no thunder with the rain so Emily and Zack caught a couple more fish before we headed for shore.

You might say it was a downpour as we had about two inches in the bottom of the canoe by the time we hit shore and another two inches by the time we hauled the canoe to the Big Moose Road.

I was wet to the skin for the second day in a row. There’s more to that story.

While fishing, Zack used the wonder lure, a rapala plug, his dad’s favorite.

He was catching nice bass pretty regularly until one broke his line and went away with the lure.

Luckily, it was a floating plug and when the bass got free of it, it floated back to the surface so Zack was back in business. Emily was using an imitation perch plug that was doing pretty good until a big bass broke her line.

We switched her lure to a tiny torpedo and she began catching fish nearly every cast. Zack lost his dad’s plug again and switched to another color tiny torpedo.

We had about a half hour of fishing action in when the rains came pouring down.

Emily was doing most of the catching and Zack the unhooking of her fish. It was a great morning-and I needed a shower anyhow.

I’ve been loony for over a week now, though some may say it’s been longer than that.

We started our Loon banding up in the Saranac Lake area last Tuesday on Weller Pond off Middle Saranac Lake and ended up in the Newcomb area last night.

Actually it was this morning (7/31) at daylight on Woodruff Pond in back of the Newcomb School.

We had a high of seven birds one night but went down to just one chick the night before last. We had only two chicks last night.

Some Loons are catchable while others won’t hold for the light or even stay up on the surface when a light is put on them.Some adults are attached to their chicks and others just dive away from us as if to say, you can have our chicks but not us. It could be a mercury thing or it could be because they live at the back of the lake where there are no lights on the shoreline. They are not used to the light, then we show up with our bright lights and give them a panic attack. Normally they are screaming at us even before the lights go on. They don’t stop until they see us walking away from the pond or lake.

If we try to put the light on them they just splash dive and we don’t see them for another five minutes or until we hear them call from another area on the water.

Over six nights we were on Weller Pond, Middle Saranac Lake, Lake Colby, Upper St. Regis, Rollins Pond, Dry Channel Pond, Middle Pond, Arbutus Lake, Wolf Pond, Ferris Lake, G Lake, Mason Lake, Henderson Lake, and Woodruff Lake. A team went one night to Thirteenth Lake to catch a Loon tangled in fishing line.

The second night was visitor night at Lake Colby, just north of Saranac Lake. About thirty people came to watch the Loon banding process.

The Loons were at the far end of the lake so they didn’t see much of the catching process but we did catch an adult and chick that we brought back to shore for blood taking and banding. The other adult was nowhere to be found.

There were a lot of good questions asked by the folks attending.

The third night was quite interesting, from my perspective.

We went to Rollins Pond where there was a Loon pair and a chick. We found them immediately.

I reached with the net and had the chick right away but what happened next was unexpected. In bringing the chick into the boat I managed to tip from the deck and fell right into the pond.

I have to say it was less than refreshing. When I came back up I still had the chick in the net and the crew took it from me. I lost my headlamp in the process and filled my binoculars and wallet with water.

The two adult Loons were right around our boat while the talking chick was on board. The other team missed one bird twice. I drained the water from my boots, grabbed the net, and nailed the male on the first try. The other team caught the female.

When we put the boats together for processing the other team joked that they had seen something bigger than a Loon swimming in the water.

My boots were quite soggy but luckily it was a warm night.

We’ve been doing this since 1998 and I guess someone had to be the first to take the big plunge. No pictures were taken.

A good old thunderstorm, but that’s another story. See ya.