What proof Waltrip? What qualifications do you have to know the marsh was healthy? Because I know people with a lot more experience in marsh management that would disagree with you vehemently.

How do you know the marsh was healthy? You keep saying it, but I want to know what evidence you have to support that.

Do you know the difference between oystergrass and gulf cordgrass? What about between Sagitarria latifolia and Spartina patens?

Tell me how it's unhealthy? Tell me how saltwater is going to destroy marsh that has had saltwater for years

Have you been back there? Have you seen that some of the old boat runs are grown over? Who is saying it's not healthy?

WL&F biologist seem pretty confident that it has made a great come back after storms

So who is saying it's unhealthy? Because we sure are not hearing that

I have never been behind the wiers so please forgive my ignorance. Is the ICW connected to that marsh in any way? Can you get into that marsh from the ICW thats to the north of all that marsh? If you can't get in that marsh couldn't you put a wier somewhere on the ICW to keep the water at a level that it would always flow into the lake? Just seems like the salinity in the ICW wouldn't be that bad for the marsh. Just a thought.

No this is way south of ICW

They only way to flush with freshwater is from Miami Corp flat along hey 27, when we get lots of rain the flumes open draining into marsh behind weirs

They need to figure out how to keep a constant flow into Miami corp then. Even if it just creates a trickle of water atleast the wiers would stay open.

reckon the saltwater had anything to do with that 'beaten' the marsh took?;)

What LDWF biologists have you talked to? How many times have I said I've been back there? How many times have I said I've worked in that marsh? How many times have I said I've taken salinity measurements behind those weirs and had readings at 32 ppt?

That is way too high for a brackish marsh, which is what occurs behind the weirs.

Give me a name of someone you have talked to that says that marsh is perfectly fine. I bet you can't. I know you can't, because your bluffing. If that marsh were perfectly fine, they would not need the weirs.

Just give me a name. Give me an office, because I know people that work all over the state in LDWF, I have many friends that work for LDWF, and I'm certain you are full of crap.

Full of crap hey, well call lake charles office and the guys were running fish samples last week on comm pt. Ask the names of the guys who came talked with some guides here at Heberts.

Also find out the guys who were behind the weirs last month and was stopped by two guys who asked them several questions about the marsh and find out what they said?

Got all day

These marshes do border the ICW to the west of gibstown bridge. 2years ago they we're installing large culverts under big lake rd. by Fred's . I heard the purpose was to relieve fresh water coming down the ICW from the east. Why not install large 1 way culverts into this marsh west of the gibstown to relieve this water thru. just a thought

Confucius say what the puck? Who's on first? That was some world class jiberish.

The aerial/satelite photos I've reviewed make it clear that the marsh is being lost to erosion at an alarming rate. The type of vegetation is important because fresh/intermediate/brackish marsh vegetation resist erosion much better than the vegetation found in higher salinity salt marsh.

Each type of vegetation has a range of salinity that it can tolerate, and (generally speaking) the less salt plants tolerate, the better the land they grow on is going to resist erosion. So it may look good to the eye, but it has been shown with high confidence that salt marsh erodes more quickly during regular tide and storm events, and it is also much more susceptible to catastrophic large scale disappearance during tropical storms.

If the "marsh lovers" were blowing smoke on this, I'd be the first to call them out and cite all the sources that contradict them. But the "marsh lovers" are giving it to us straight. I've reviewed the data and the sources in some detail, and their inferences that we need to preserve that marsh and that keeping the salinity low back there is essential are spot on.

They need to keep the salinity low for one reason

Save wedgion grass for duck hunters to hold ducks

But they will never say that but don't worry ones who spend countless days out here know the truth!!

Typical Waltrip avoidance technique. Why don't you ever get names? Oh, because imaginary people don't have names.

I've studied that marsh, I've worked in that marsh. That marsh could not survive the weirs being permanently open. That is why they put them there, because the marsh was deteriorating.

I'll talk to my buddies with LDWF and see if and who you talked to.

get ready for a meme, its coming:rotfl:

This is awesome....love seeing folks argue over apples and oranges!!! Just wondering.....are all these "FACTS" y'all are spouting....is this info and data your personal research or did you hear it from someone else!!! If you haven't been behind the weirs and (I'm not just talking abt the levee canal) in the past 2 yrs...You have no dog or voice in this "fight"!! All the weir closings last year produced some of the worst duck hunting I've seen in my life!!! If they (WLF) think they are helping they have complete idiot's working for them!! My 2cents!! Y'all have fun with y'alls...I'm smarter than you conversation!!!! JEEEZZZ

Looks like that wind on bl has those bubble gums flapping again. Who am I kidding they never stop.

Some people just can't read. I've said in 3 or 4 posts ON THIS THREAD that I have been behind the weirs, in the last 2 years. In fact, I've been back there each of the last 3 years on multiple occasions at different times of the year. Spent 3 weeks out there in the middle of the summer 2 years ago.

Well welcome to the club....I just don't see what your point is....It was so fresh back there I lost all wigeon grass because of the green scum (due to no tide flow) not to mention stagnant water that stunk like methane....Lillies and cat tails were so thick ponds and trails were choked out.....and you need some saltwater to have wigeon grass...85% of the folks I talked to on the lease were displeased with the management back there.

Can't have cat tails the marsh is dying and about to be just pond of wate



95% of people who go behind the weirs never go out of eye site of the weirs

95% never leave the levee canal or they would be lost or hung up....jus sayn :shaking:

Weir management definitely needs to be improved to optimize the purpose while reducing the negative effects like those you mention and the negative effects on the fishery.

"Lilies and cattails" may or may not be a good thing, depending on the species, the location, the level of dominance, and the specific goals for the salinity and vegetation at a given location. You should take pictures of things you suspect are negative vegetation or conditions, noting the date and GPS coordinates to provide precise and accurate information to biologists who frequently deal with inaccurate plant identifications from the public. Scientific usefulness means specifying what, when, and where. There is a lot of space back there and a wide range of species and vegetation. Take high quality pictures to enable biologists to identify species of vegetation.

Keep in mind that the goal is not to manage the weirs to optimize the hunting or the fishing in the short term, but to support a mix of vegetation that best resists erosion and loss of the marsh.

Think stuff with deep roots that will hold on to the dirt and help it all resist washing away in a tidal surge = good.

Bare dirt and shallow rooted stuff that give way easily = bad.

Where are you at behind the weirs? I've seen areas that didn't have a cattail or Lilly in sight, and this was not near the weirs. Most everywhere I've been back there is wiregrass.

I say if we really wanna help the fishing....Put the strike nets back in Big Lake for the month of April (for Red Fish only) and do something abt oyster dredging. Then come up with a re-seed program. Ie Move oyster reefs from North end to the wash out and the cove. My Point is there is plenty of open marsh in our area to support the estuary. The weirs are gonna be the weirs until someone puts dynamite to them.....and we all know thats not gonna happen. Regulations that have been imposed for the greater good "long term" are now biting us in the a s s.

Mosquito lake and Blind lake area

It's just a matter of time till the crabbers and Shrimpers have enough of losing money and take actions into there own hands!! And I see that happening real soon

That's already happening....crabbers can't catch and rumor has it that Mr. Steve is wanting to sell his bait boat cause they are loosing $$$......Had a commercial fisherman that has also fished this lake as a guide tell me that all the oysters he has picked up by chance east of the washout are dead. We have a real problem here...But the weirs are not the "Big Picture". So until we can get the funding to have real biologist (that are unbiased) come in and do a real study....we may never know the real truth

I have not studied the detailed hydrology, but I'd think this area would be more impacted by the salinity of the ICWW (a few hundred yards) than by the weirs (5-6 miles away). If you open the weirs enough that any significant salt is making it back to Mosquito lake and Blind lake, you'd be exposing the marsh closer the weirs to much higher salt levels.

Salinity in the ICWW is controlled with the Calcasieu Lock and needs to be kept low in that area so as not to dump too much salt into the upper Mermentau system.

If you want more flow at that point, you just gotta pray for rain. If you want more salt, you'd better think about increasing the connection to the ICWW. But the USACE might not like that, because they work pretty hard to keep the salinity up there below 5 ppt (waaaaaay below). The USACE has a number of salinity monitoring sides along the ICWW. There are three south of the ICWW and many more just N of the ICWW. The two closes to your points of interest are labeled Sweet Lake and Willow Lake on the linked map. You can peruse the interactive map and see the salinity readings.

http://www2.mvn.usace.army.mil/ops/sms/Calc.asp

I hope all this internet data can solve all these Big Lake problems...but not likely. I've been on BL for 25 yrs and have witnessed the decline with my own eyes. We will not find the solutions with google....but with solid hands on data. I wish I had all the answers and my comments aren't answers just a ton of observation

Got some good news Brent

CCA said sit tight!!

But we know they have NO plans of fighting oyster dredging so that's out
We know they will not buck any kind of issues like the weirs so that's out

I bet we getting another half million dollar reef?

This may be a dumb question, but is there no middle ground? Why can't they leave one weir open with the boat bay and close all the others? Or leave them open during day when fishing peaks.

Sit Tight.....AWESOME!!

$$$$$

Did hear they were gonna dig a Big Hole where the key well used to be for the spoil.....and they were supposed to spend millions saving rabbit island in the cove.....Then again IDK if that was WLF or CCA.....either way someone's gotta pay for it. But I garountee ya 1 thang.....CCA wont see a dime from me....maybe that's the reason for the fishing lic increase.....no one can avoid the increase.

I grew up in Lake Charles, and the fishing in Big Lake post Rita was much better than it was in the 1970's. The rise of salinity and the slow death of the marsh give the appearance of health and life while it is happening, but then you're left with something more like Galveston Bay with a daily limit of 5-7 specks, 3 redfish, and two bull reds per year.

There are gonna be some hard years, but if we protect the marsh and the oyster reefs, Big Lake can remain a much better fishery over time than Galveston Bay. I met a gentleman out at Calcasieu Point a few weeks ago who had traveled here from the mid-West to do some fishing. After a few frustrated days on Big Lake, he hired a guide to take him fishing in Galveston Bay, which I could not believe. I tried to stop him, telling him any guide on Big Lake could put him on more fish than he'd likely catch in Galveston.

If the specks are down in a given year or one can't figure it out on a given day or season, you just gotta adjust. Let your customers know what's up when they reserve the day, and be prepared to shift and put them on slot reds or bull reds or sheephead or whatever. Guides all over the Gulf Coast make a good living putting customers on other species when the specks in their estuary aren't cooperating.

Some guides (to remain nameless) are overly elitist, looking down on popping corks or live bait or cracked crab or gafftops or whatever. But to my mind, if that's what it takes to bend a rod for your customer, then that's what a guide should do. It's not all the fault of the guys with the weir switch or the oyster boats, or whatever. Get out there and make some lemonade.

I've contributed to a lot of solid, hands on, scientific data on the Big Lake fishery over the past four years. I've got notebooks and spreadsheets full of data. I know the time, sweat, and money that it takes to collect that data, so when I can make use of reliable alternate data sources provided by our tax dollars and license fees through USGS or LDWF or USACE or NOAA, I do that.

We'll be collecting another year's worth of fishery data on Big Lake in late May to early June to help assess the impact of various management issues. We don't usually do surveys at Spicer's but we're staying close to there and can likely have a measurement team there quickly if you're headed in with a cooler full of fish. We can weigh and measure 60 specks and 20 redfish in about 20 minutes so it is hardly an inconvenience to most guide's routines. PM me for my phone number. With 30 minutes lead time, your "data" can contribute to our "data" and be a valuable addition to our study.

We need a like button on here

Good news W. I talked to my buddy with LDWF. Biologists for LDWF don't work behind the weirs. He said that is fed territory. So did you talk to Agents? Not saying an agent wouldn't know what he's talking about, but I have known agents that had no biology background except fish or wildlife identification. Nothing wrong with that, they don't need anymore than that in most cases.

I understand your point about data, Capt. B, but there is decades of data on vegetation and salinity characteristics as they relate to the Cameron-Creole. There has also been research conducted on the effect of the weirs on ingress and egress of organisms. I have a few of those reports sitting in my office. You can also find them online.

So there is not a lack of data. Quite the contrary, there is an abundance of data. I have seen one report, can't remember if it is one I have laying around or its on the internet, but it clearly shows salinities dropped after installation of the weirs, which is beneficial to that marsh. I have a map somewhere that shows the vegetation communities from 1949. Most of that area was high quality Jamaican sawgrass marsh. That marsh type was a great muskrat habitat. The loss of that marsh type has a lot to do with the loss of muskrats, among other things.

I am sorry to hear that what was good duck habitat has been grown up with cattails. I hate cattails as much as I hate marsh loss. But historically, that marsh was brackish to fresh. There have been some areas to the east that have experienced a freshing over time, while areas more lakeward have experienced a slight increase in salt, and consequently, a change in marsh type.

The major issue pre-weirs was the increase in salt. As Delany (1989) pointed out, marshhay cordgrass, or wiregrass as many know it, was dying because of the constant, raised salinities. It was dying so rapidly that smooth cordgrass, or oystergrass, could not colonize. The net result was a loss of marsh, and increased open water.

At the same time, this is when shrimping and crabbing appear to have been at their height in the area, because there was an abundance of detritus. This provided an abundance of food for these organisms.

If anyone is legitimately interested in reading some of these papers, I will be glad to share them. If I can get some of the paper reports scanned in, I will be glad to share those too.

It was not me who talked to guys behind the weirs it was a guide and a local guy who lives here



But I did talk to the guys who were fish sampling

Ah, gotcha. I still find it hard to believe that any biologist was commenting on the cameron-creole marsh when they don't work back there. It was a biologist that told me they don't work back there.

Thanks for chiming in, I knew you would explain some of these details better than I could. I'm more of a fauna kind of a guy.

I would be greatly appreciative for any reports or papers you could provide or point to regarding the ingress and egress of organisms.

He sure knew a lot, guess it don't take rocket science like you try to make it out to

As stated above that marsh has some areas you cannot even drive your boat anymore due to overgrown runs

That's one difference between marsh and open water. Vegetation ain't always bad.

Historically you couldn't drive a boat in there either, what's your point?

I don't try to make it out to be rocket science. It has nothing to do with rockets.

I'm just curious what this guy told you, or who you talked to at least. Amazes me that you can't expand upon what he told you, or give me a name. Then again, none of that helps your argument.

I find it hillarious that anyone that contradicts you is wrong, even if they are a wetland biologist, but when a FISHERIES biologist tells you something about somewhere that they don't work, you take it as gold. I'm not knocking fisheries biologists by any means, just saying they are fisheries biologists, not wetland biologists.

Would you ask a timber biologist for his opinion on the condition of a grassland? No, because that is not his expertise.

I'll see if I can find that one. I think its a paper report, so if I remember to scan it this week, I'll send it to you. Its definitely an older report, but a good read none the less.

Shortly before I left the Air Force Academy (civilian) we got funding approved to develop biofuels for rocket engines. Funds evaporated in subsequent government nonsense (sequester, etc.). But the point is there is interest in the Air Force relating to biofuel based rockets.

If you can figure out which plant back there will burn really, really fast when combined with an oxidizer or even better, one that has a naturally occurring oxidizer, then the sciences of marsh vegetation and rocketry could at long last be united.

Oh my!! Bubble gums at his finest. This one guy told me an this other guy told me. Unbelievable

O look Mr quack^^^ quack my duck who hides behind a computer screen and brags about using another man's picture as his avatar


Lmao yea NOBODY listens to you, we know how much of a coward you are you proved that

So come get some bubble gum maggot

You Bothered that your getting called out about running your bubble gums an making yourself sound like an ignorant person? Carry on bubble gum....

Who is bothered?? I just love making you follow me like a puppy dog!!


That's all!! More you talk the more famous I get

Expected response from bubble gum. It was either avoid the question or complain about weirs an widgeon grass which you know nothing about. You even even said you get your information from other guides an individuals. You're a pathetic individual. Try educating yourself bubble gum before you come on here trying to act like you know what your talking about.

There's enough bull**** on this thread, if you're not gonna contribute, move on please.


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