If you look at Club Lake today, you’ll see we are currently battling an aquatic weed issue, specifically a weed known as Bladderwort. During periods of drought, bladderwort can be a real challenge for us. We do have a contractor who treats the lake on a monthly basis for algae and aquatic weeds. If you ever saw the guy in a small motor boat traversing the lake in the early mornings, this is what he’s doing. The challenging part, is the lake is our irrigation source, so what ever we treat the lake with, will be applied to the golf course via the irrigation system. That means during times of drought, we have to back off the severity of our treatments in order to protect turf. This past June was a prime example of that. We were on the weaker side of treatments due to the warm weather and drought we dealt with.
When we get into rainy periods, we can be more aggressive with aquatic weed treatments. All aquatic weed herbicides are applied at label rates and not harmful to fish and other wildlife. The other challenge with Club Lake, is its depth. The more shallow the water is, the more sunlight can penetrate the water, down to the bottom. Like plants, these weeds grow better with adequate sunlight compared to a deeper lake that stays relatively dark at the bottom and has cooler water temperatures. Therefore, dredging the lake one day should help with these aquatic weed infestations. Club Lake will be aggressively treated this coming week and the weed problem dies down significantly about 5-7 days post treatment.