When To Service the Bottom of a Lake in Alabama

Question: How do you know when to service the bottom of a lake in Alabama? What kind of equipment do you use?

Answer: During our survey, when we go out every couple of weeks, we use a couple of methods of—we actually have some site-viewing sonar that allows us to see plants on a sonar screen fairly well. But in most situations we may make a pass through on some of them, or we use primarily the sonar. But the majority of the time, we're going to pull in just about every area, every treatment area, with a long-handled rake that allows us to actually rake the bottom of the lake and pull up any plants that may be growing. And that allows us to see the plant, you know, see if there's any growth. And as quick as we see, if we pull that rake up, and there's a three- or four-inch plants on the end of the rake when we pull it up.

You won't know they're there, other than by pulling them up physically and actually physically seeing them. You can see them on the sonar sometimes, but sometimes you may miss the real short ones. So we try to do as much actual physical raking and checking the site as we can, and treating immediately when we see those small plants. And when we do treat, we actually treat with weighted hoses, which are hoses that hang out of the front of the boat that have weights and actually hold them, the application, and puts the herbicide out right on the bottom of the lake, right where the plants are. So you're not treating—you're basically treating that bottom layer of water, rather than treating the entire water column when all you need to treat is that area at the very bottom.