Fun on the Great Lakes

Click the link:   it leads to my facebook blog about the wonderful Great Lakes. 

The Dynamic Great Lakes

Whether fishing, enjoying the beach, wind surfing or looking for information about each of the five Great Lakes,  The Dynamic Great Lakes is for you.

This book is available on Kindle or as paper back.  It's easy to throw in your backpack or small bag as a reference to the amazing freshwater seas.

This handy little book is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Schuler Books and Music, The Bookman and many other fine bookstores.

Barbara's Amazon Page  click here

Native Fish in Great Lakes Make a Comeback

Steelhead, perch and lake trout are making a comeback due to the decline of the alewife.  For more information about fishing in the five Great Lakes, here is a link: The latest fishing information

The Great Lakes from Space by NASA

NASA photo of the five Great Lakes: Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.  There is still ice on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior but soon it will all be gone and people will be out on the lakes enjoying swimming, fishing, kayaking, surfing, wind surfing, kite boarding and just enjoying the freshwater seas.

From this point of view, we can appreciate the Great Lakes.  They are freshwater seas.

Chicago Skyline and Brook Trout at the Chicago Aquarium

Brook Trout at the Chicago Aquarium

King or Chinook salmon

King or Chinook salmon.  The fishing has started on Lake Michigan.  Pictured is Norm Spring with his catch of the day.

Read more about Pacific salmon planted in the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes. Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other bookstores.

The Dynamic Great Lakes non fiction book and photos

The Dynamic Great Lakes  click the link

A book to throw in your travel bag if you are fishing, diving, swimming, boating or sailing on any of the five Great Lakes: Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario as well as Lake St. Clair and all of the connecting waters.

This happened a few years ago in Mexico. This cold blast in Michigan has me longing for warmer climates. El Nino Blue Marlin From the window of our plane we saw the Baja Peninsula rising from the sea below us like a a writhing red dragon with the Pacific on one side and the Sea of Cortez on the other. Only the hardy survive in the Baja's harsh beauty : sharp spined cactus, armadillos wearing suits of armor, swift roadrunners. Life on this rugged peninsula brings one close to the struggle for survival: armor, weapons, cunning, speed. It is likewise in the seas offshore Baja. Few people find it an inviting place except for the hardy fishermen for the waters offshore Baja teem with sea life of various kinds. Donning a mask and flippers, I entered its clear water and found a small fish resembling a dead leaf, a skittish school of large fish that streaked away before Icould get a good look, and strange puffer fish covered with spines like the cactus in the surrounding mountains. El nino, a change in ocean currents had brought a surge of warm water to the Pacific coast of Mexico and to the Seaof Cortez. The warm water had turned the fishing upside down. El nino means the child and is associated with Christmas time since it occurs around December and brings gifts from the sea in the form of tropical species. Perhaps the captain of the fishing boat we chartered was born during an El Nino for like the child, his name was Jesus. Jesus Ariza. Due to El nino, the unexpected was about to leap up everywhere. Away from the shallows where I snorkeled, the water drops off rapidly in the Sea of Cortez and has a hard black and white glitter like a chipped obsidian spear point due to its great depth. I sat on the upper deck and chatted with the captain while gazing at a panoramic view offshore of Beuna Vista. As the mountainous shore receded I imagined fish below us like armored, colorful warriors equipped for battle with lances, spears, sharp fins and teeth--ready for fight or flight. In their submarine world, great billed and sharp finned fish were cruising the dark waters: sailfish, marlin, dorado, tuna in all their shining splendor. Trailing from the deck below were three fishing lines rigged with artificial squid, red, green and black. It wasn't long before we saw tuna leaping and Jesus circled around while our deck hand Luis threw out a bait fish to tempt them. We were rewarded by a tug on the line and our fishing companion Ben pulled in a yellow tuna with its vivid blue and yellow racing stripes and bright yellow sawtooth fins protecting the underbelly. The others in our party, Norm, Charlie, and Jean took turns pulling in fish and by ll:30, we had boated three yellow tuna, and one striped marlin with the help of Luis, always quick to dash down the ladder and cast out a bait or gaff a fish. Luis moved like quicksilver as he expertly rigged lines and tossed them out nonchanlantly. During a lull, the boat rocked gently as Jesus spoke Spanish to another boat captain on the marine radio. His alert eyes scanned the water for leaping tuna or marlin. He had grown up on this sparsely populated coast and knew the sea and its inhabitants intimately. His steel grey hair curled around his weathered face. Jesus put the radio receiver down and chatted with me companionably about his fishing career on the Baja while we waited for another strike. "I started fishing commercially for shark with my father at age eleven. At fifteen, I started working on a sportsfishing boat and have done this for the past 30 years. I had no chance to go to school," he said. "Do you like your job?" I asked. "Si" he answered. "I know a lot of people who would like to trade jobs with you," I said scanning the water for leaping tuna, the telltale scythe like fin of marlin, or perchance, a whale. "There's a sea lion," Jesus noted. Rocking gently in the sea with its flippers pointing toward the sun as if receiving a boon, the sea lion basked, oblivious us,perfectly at home in the Sea of Cortez named after the armored conquistodor who discovered it, then ravaged much of Mexico. Above us black frigate birds gliding on the wind searched the water for small fish below them, or other sea birds they could steal fish from. Frigate birds are the pirates of the air. Thinking this would be a good time to eat lunch, I pulled out a chicken stuffed tortilla. "Pass me some of that hot sauce," I asked. Norm handed it up from below. Norm and I had never fished for marlin before. We had fished the Great Lakes fresh water for coho, chinook, and pink salmon as well as lake trout, steelhead and football sized brown trout. A marlin had just been a dream until our friend Charlie introduced us to his favorite place on the Baja, Spa Beuna Vista, and his favorite captain. It was easy to see why Jesus was much sought after. He was unfailingly considerate and usually found fish. The results today were in the fish box. For some weeks before we arrived el nino had been blowing. This was fortunate for us we were told, since el nino blows across the Baja every three or four years and is likely to bring good deep sea fishing. The day, February 26, was sunny with a breeze blowing, not too rough, not too calm, a perfect day for fishing. The previous days had been too windy for comfort causing the boat to pitch drunkenly. Even so we had caught three yellow fin tuna and had seen ten marlin near the surface. This day was perfect. I was happy to be on board. At high noon suddenly, out of the black and white sea, a magnificent fish struck--Norm grabbed the rod from its holder cranking the reel. He knew the fish was hooked well on the artificial lure. Within seconds it stripped off hundreds of feet of line, rocketing out of the sea, and splashing down again and again. I caught my breath at the sight of the fish leaping so far ahead of the boat. Could this really be the same fish on the line? It was too far away from the boat. It didn't behave like the other marlin. Even from a distance I could see its lance like snout, its large dark eyes its scimitar shaped tail and its flying grace as it arced back into the water. I could see that Jesus was excited. "It's a blue marlin," he shouted turning the wheel of the boat. "We are lucky today," he said. "It is early in the season for a blue marlin." Luis reeled in the other lines to keep them clear of the great fish on the other end of Norm's line. Norm played the fish in a welter of waves amid our cheers and whoops. The marlin sounded tugging the 80 pound test line, down, down, down. Again the great blue broke water as Norm played it. It ran with the line and he played it, letting it take its time, reeling, playing it out. At last he reeled it in close to the boat and we caught sight of the marlin's luminous markings, periwinkle blue shading to violet fins appeared above the water, and Luis gaffed the fish grabbing it by its lance like bill. He lashed it securely to the stern of the boat with a rope. Blue marlin are so highly prized for their white flesh that a fish like this was a bonanza for our captain; it would feed a lot of people in a country that is none to prosperous. If this were not so, we would have released the fish. On our way again, Charlie said he'd like to catch a dorado so we begin trolling again. Jesus observed seven marlin fins nearby. The fish were basking, enjoying a fine day. Luis threw out a bait fish to interest them and one of them hit his line, but the reel fouled. We tried again. All about us we saw marlins leaping, tuna leaping. At his vantage point on the upper deck Jesus could see 360 degrees and never missed any movement on the water. "Why do fish leap?" I asked. "Because they are happy," Jesus replies. It seemed to be true. Another marlin struck and this time Ben grabbed the rod. After another leaping, heart-catching battle, he landed a striped marlin, then released it back into the sea. "I want to see a whale," I say to Jesus. At this time of year and through the month of March, humpback whales breed in the warm waters off the Baja peninsula. The words were barely out of my mouth when the leviathon materialized, leaped high in the air right directly in front of the boat. I let out a cheer that brought the rest of the crew topside. The whale leaped again and sounded leaving a dark blue hole in the black waters. Awesome. "Where did he go?" We all peered in every direction. Then we saw him spout and the great back curved gracefully beneath the water, its rakish tail, grey on top and white underneath, disappeared as I wondered if the whale was as interested in us as we were in him. He seemed in no hurry to leave, but after he did, we decided to call it a day. Back on shore, the crew hoisted the blue marlin onto a scale and it weighed in at 356 pounds. The striped marlin weighed l65 pounds and the three yellow tuna about 60 pounds a piece. That evening the dining room at the resort Spa Beuna Vista served us a delicacy, suchi, thin slices of red raw tuna dipped in soy sauce, and the piece de resistance, the fine white meat of the blue marlin a dinner fit for the most finicky gourmet. El nino gifted us with a tremendous boon from the sea.

Playing Around the Great Lakes

    

Hands On Outdoor Learning

 I’m told that children learn through play.  From what I have experienced, I believe that everyone can learn through play. Our family has been playing in, on and around the Great Lakes most of our lives. We have learned a lot while we swam, boated, fished and beach combed.  The lakes engaged all our senses: the splash of cold water, the sound of the waves, the silence of fog, hot sand underfoot and the way it sings when you drag your toes across it, the ever changing colors and rhythms of waves, the times fish bite the best.   The outdoors have many lessons to teach if we pay attention.

     Family vacations took us to all of the Great Lakes; the majesty of Niagara Falls; to the rocky shores of Lake Superior where we hunted for agates; to many embayments and open waters of the lakes to fish.  My husband  Norm, has caught nearly every kind of fish in the lakes: walleye from Lake Erie and the embayments of the upper Great Lakes, deep water fish such as lake trout and burbot, and the annual runs of white fish and perch  Pacific salmon that were planted to control alewives.

     We have all learned so much from our outdoor adventures;  changing colors, their beaches of stone or sand, waterfalls, fishes and birds, wetlands , and dunes with their succession of plants.  In our play around the Great Lakes, we always learn something new.

     With all of this hands-on experience I wrote a non-fiction book, The Dynamic Great Lakes, a non-fiction primer.  I had wanted a book like this to read, but I never found one so I decided to write a book with information that people could use to make sound decisions about the Great Lakes.

    I am also the published author of three poetry books: The Wilderness Within and Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below and Between Sweetwater and Sand. The last book will be released July 30, 2013( These poems are drawn directly from observations of nature.   

     At Grand Valley State University, I developed writing classes based upon environmental studies. This gave students important topics to work with. I did not want papers recycled from high school.  I assigned books such as The Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold and Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon and Thoreau.  We discussed the topics and writing techniques used by these authors.

  I asked my students to go outdoors and use observation and to use the five senses. They kept journals based on what they saw and even how they felt about what they saw.   I brought things from nature such as feathers and plants indoors for students to hold in their hands and then describe in concrete detail. They played with the downy feathers, blowing on them and closely observing them.

I asked them to use metaphor and to use as many of the five senses as they could in their descriptions.  Student writing becomes grounded in reality when using these sorts of exercises. 

Our lives become grounded when playing outdoors.

    

Lake Erie and Walleye Fishing

The first time I saw a walleye I thought it was blind.  They are not but their eyes are made for seeing in dark waters.
Walleye fishing will be starting soon on Lake Erie and other places where the fish make their runs. 

 They are excellent on the dinner table.

Fall Turnover of Water in the Great Lakes

Here is an excerpt from my book The Dynamic Great Lakes

available on Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble and many other stores.

Fall Turnover of Water

On a cold November night with no clouds, the reflections of the
moon and stars sparkle on the calm surfaces of the lakes, and the
silhouette of a vee shaped string of geese migrating southward
crosses the salmon colored moon. Cold north winds have cooled the
Great Lakes waters.
As the air cools, the water becomes cooler and cooler. When
water reaches 39.2/ F, it reaches its greatest density. Waves rolling
in on the beach look heavier, almost like boiling sugar water as it just begins to thicken. The fall turnover of water is about to occur,
an important event in the natural cycle of the Great Lakes. When
surface lake water reaches 39.2/ F, its maximum density, the water
sinks since the surface water is heavier than the water below.
The sinking top layer of water causes the lake water to turn over.
The fall turnover of water in the Great Lakes is important because
oxygen poor water in the deeper areas of the lakes mixes with
surface water containing more dissolved oxygen (DO). This keeps
the bottom from becoming depleted of oxygen.
Bottom dwelling fish and plankton need dissolved oxygen in
water just as we need oxygen in air. When the layers of water turn
over, there are no longer three layers of water since mixed water
results in uniform temperatures.

Grand Haven's Pier Needs Repairs

The pier in Grand Haven needs repairs.  People like to fish from it and some can be seen doing just that.  I took this photo that shows fishing boats in the channel of the Grand River and out in Lake Michigan.  Pictured is the cat walk and its shadow with the lighthouse showing through the metal structure.

A Walk on the Pier with Mallard Ducks & Ducklings

Many fish lines are in the water today at the pier on Lake Michigan.  A mallard duck keeps her
brood safe on a rock below.  While the ducklings snuggle together she keeps a look out. A salmon might find a duckling good eating although they are mostly interested in alewife.

Sports on the Great Lakes

Fishing from the pier in Grand Haven that marks the Grand River that flows into Lake Michigan is popular as is fishing from boats.  Charters take sports fishers out and often come back with a catch of coho and king salmon, Pacific salmon that were planted in the Great Lakes. Yesterday the governor caught a nice steelhead, a lake run rainbow trout, on a charter.  Sometimes football sized brown trout are caught.  The fish are biting now that cooler water has moved in.

Sailing, surf boarding, kite boarding, and paddle boarding are all popular sports on the Great Lakes.  Some like to fly kites or play volley ball on the beach and some just like to gaze.  Sunsets are spectacular.

Boating & Fishing on Lake Michigan

All  sorts of water sports make Grand Haven on Lake Michigan a lively place in the summer.  People love to stroll on the pier where the Grand River flows into Lake Michigan.  Fishing from the pier or from boats is popular as is sailing.

Read more about the Great Lakes and what lies under the water in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.
I will be at the Norton Shores, Michigan Barnes & Noble store on July 23 at 11 a.m. to chat about our wonderful Great Lakes and sign books.

Copepod

Pictured is a copepod one of various types of zooplankton that sustain life in the Great Lakes.  This photo was taken through a microscope.

Plankton, phytoplankton and zooplankton feed small fish and are at the base of food pyramids in water. Read more about food pyramids in the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.  Available at bn.com in a new edition.

Herring Gull Reflected on the Beach

A herring gull stands reflected in the water.  Breakers roll in and in the distance is the pier with its lighthouse and foghorn.  This is the place where the Grand River enters Lake Michigan.  Sometimes, with a little luck, fishermen catch whitefish this time of year or anything else that swims by.  Some use salmon eggs as bait.

Poetry @ Schulers Bookstore Alpine Ave. Grand Rapids, MI

It's the perfect time of year for poetry.  The great migrations of fish and birds have returned to Michigan and poetry is in the air--and water.


Please join me as I present readings and talk informally about writing and my books of poetry:
The Wilderness Within and Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below.


I may even talk about my non-fiction book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

It all happens on April 8 at 7 p.m. as announced on the poster Schulers created for me.

The Great Lakes as seen from outer space. These freshwater lakes are fed by tributaries, ground water within their watersheds and by rain and snow. Lake levels rise and fall as they always have. The lakes contain cold water species of fish as well as warm water fish that thrive in their embayments and in the shallowest lake, Lake Erie.

There is world class fishing to be found in the Great Lakes. Read more about their fish in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

Barnes & Noble as well as many other stores carry the book.

Summer on the Great Lakes

Lots of fun on the Great Lakes this summer. The fishing is great, the water has warmed to the 60's and 70's.

I took this photo on a Lake Michigan beach.

Read more about this planet's greatest freshwater system in The Dynamic Great Lakes. Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other stores.