Good Pond Gone Bad
Denton Destruction of Recreational Opportunity Continues
How can you tell if you have ADD? It’s not that I am worried about myself, especially at this late date, but the more I fly this drone? The more I think about what this thing can do to teach about fly fishing, patterning and dissecting a water body.
Of course, just the though of flying this investment over water is enough to make my punched-out stomach turn … my visions of a kamikaze drone, flying uncontrolled straight into the abyss … it’s a strong vision. But, I bit the bullet yesterday, and stuck my toe in the air – over water – and flew some learning circles around the small Northlakes South Pond.
North Lakes Park South Pond
One of the top reasons I am leaving North Texas, if you get down to it, is ponds like the ponds we find in our North Texas towns and small cities, and especially DENTON parks. They’re lousy, and they weren’t always that way! At one time, I could go out in the evening, stand onshore work my cast, and catch an occasional bass, crappie and even catfish.
Nowadays, those days seem like ancient times, prehistoric, the “Good Old Days,” way back when these ponds weren’t SILTED IN, overly polluted and essentially turbid – like the South Pond of North Lakes Park on Bonnie Brae, in Denton, Texas. The worst part of it is, I was sounding the alarms a decade ago at what I saw happening at the pond. Guess what? Almost the same jurisdictional mumbo jumbo that is killing the Trinity River from Ray Roberts to Lewisville – even extends to this little pond.
Lost in the destruction is the fact that once again, no one wants to take responsibility for the pond, what it is there for, and take on the stewardship (spelled $) of this pond as a valuable outdoor experience for the Citizens of Denton and surrounding communities. It’s a fatherless-motherless pond. On one side is the City of Denton, and we know their track record, and on the other side is a different loser – the Soil Conservation people who put ponds like this one in to prevent erosion. To them it’s just a number on a map. But be certain; no one can do anything to the surface that would effect the dam, or the pond’s ability to hold water. Idiots.
Below the surface, the pond is silted in almost all the way around. Thus reducing the pond’s holding ability drastically. See no evil? It was silting in years ago due to huge increases in water coming in from new construction sites, from new shopping centers and now from new apartment complexes. Without improvements – spelled DREDGING – the pond will continue its slide into turbidity and eventually it will be six-inches deep over the entire acreage – WATCH THE VIDEO FOR THE MAPPING!
There once was, and I cannot now verify due to my weight lifting restrictions, a SWEET SPOT in that lake that was there before the silt, and after the silting began. That SWEET SPOT is right out in the middle and along a line that IS the old creek that ran through before the pond – watch the video for the MAPPING! Along that creek, so I have been told, was also a gravel road. It may have been for walking, or for the pond’s construction? I do not know.
What the combination of that cut-ditch-creek and the gravel means? Big bass after big bass – in the five-pound range was normal … but you had to get out there in a kayak to do it. Now, this pond is a feeder – it feeds a lot of unsuspecting people bass for supper … bless their hearts. I have seen stringers of undersized bass going out of there more than once. One guy, a real regular, ate his thirteen-pounder … said it wasn’t going to live anyway. So you get where I am going with this, right?
IT is UP TO YOU to get out there and see if they are still there! This video will lay out as best as I am now capable of flying and editing – the drone view of North Lakes South fishing pond. It’s a bass timing bite, last I knew, sunrise and especially SUNSET were very active on the lake. You can also see there are some crappie in the pond as well – on this other North Lakes Pond Denton Texas video.
COMING NEXT WEEK – North Lakes North Pond – One spot in another once great pond. Get your yaks out and grease-em up.
Category: Causes, Photography, Science and Environmental, TIPS
