Opinion
Sunday Night
MaryHelen Swanson, editor
My husband, whoís been around over half a century, remembers picnics at Rush Lake as a kid. The lake was always green and cloudy, he says. As a kid he never liked swimming in it. It still is green and cloudy. It looks like we will never see clear to the bottom of it like you can in some other lakes. Despite serious attempts to improve the water quality of Rush Lake, it still is one of the greenest lakes I have ever seen. It should have been called Green Lake, and people would not even have to ask the origin of its name. I do know that people have been working for years to clean up the lake- studying and testing the surrounding areas to find a source of pollution, if you will. But even as identified potential pollutants are removed, the lake remains green as ever. Not only is this lake green from ice out to freeze over, it has a slimy algae growth early in the season and it smells, especially at the shoreline. Not just a ìlakeî smell, but a foul, nasty odor that is repulsive. Iím sure the excessive heat this summer has made it worse. It also appears to be extremely weedy this year. I also learned that a lake residentís dog got quite sick from drinking the water this summer. A couple of times back in the 70s I took my kids swimming in the lake at a resort on the south end of West Rush. The lake is not for swimming, wasnít back in the 50s, the 70s and isnít now. More recently my family and I have enjoyed some good fishing on Rush Lake. The fish we caught looked healthy, no black spots on the perch, etc. But we caught a number of sunfish with a reddish sore-like condition on their sides. The first ones we thought might have been bites from larger fish. But when one after another showed up, we began to wonder about this condition. We did not keep any of the fish with the reddish blotches. We did keep a variety of panfish and several really nice walleyes. What a disappointment, however, at dinnertime. The panfish were okay, but the first walleye tasted very ìfishyî or ìmuddy.î The next walleyes caught were soaked in lemon water, at the recommendation of a fellow fisherman, and tasted better, but there still was a bit of a fishy taste. I donít know whatís happening to the lake, it just does not seem to get cleaner. Try as folks may to clean the water, it looks as if weíll never see the bottom of Rush Lake, but what a shame about the taste of the fish. If anyone has any answers, give me a call here at the office.
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