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The water level in the lodge is maintained by the constant monitoring and repairing of the dam. The dam has a way of growing beyond desirable limits. Here is where the feud between man and beavers occurs.
Beaver ponds that develop along remote streams affect few humans, but beaver are making quite a comeback here in Virginia, and are no longer satisfied with remote stretches of stream.
They love to block off culverts — seemingly overnight — inundating the roadway with water. They love to cut down trees along water courses — also overnight — so they are across the driveway in the morning, often floating in the water across the driveway, as the beaver has cut most of the limbs from the tree and stuffed them tightly together with mud into the culvert under the driveway.
Certainly, the log across the drive and the limbs and mud in the culvert can be removed, but every morning before work can become a chore! Sometimes we wonder about whether the neighbors’ kids didn’t have a hand or even a chainsaw in this!
On the otherside of the coin, the beaver provides a tremendous service to the landowner, the hunter and the fisherman, the wildlife biologist and the wildlife itself. He helps to control flood waters, erosion and provides lifegiving water to livestock and wildlife in the time of droughts.
Most of us have seen the results of droughts throughout the state in the last few years. Imagine how the wildlife would have endured these droughts without help from the beaver ponds.
I know of no finer fun than to stalk the tiny trout that live in beaver ponds along the western parts of Clarke and Rappahannock counties.
Have you ever spent an early morning in mid-winter hiding in a duck blind over the only open water in the area? Probably over a beaver pond, as the decaying vegetation on the bottom of a beaver pond creates just enough heat to prevent water from freezing quite as soon as other open ponds.
In this world of lagging incentive, diminished productivity, and loss of pride in one’s workmanship, let’s give a hand to one of nature’s real workers, a skilled engineer, a producer — the beaver!
Fishing Update
Lake Anna is really jumping — or should I say, the fish are.
Guides for stripers are reporting good catches of three to 24 pounds this week. Largemouth and crappie are really good, even ith the snow squalls Mid wind earlier in the week.
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