The Chester and Dorris Carison Charitable Trust has made an extraordinary gift to OPET's land conservation fund. A Director of the Trust and resident of Treetops has been watching OPET's activities with interest. Finding OPET's eftorts on behalf of the Pond worthy of support, she proposed that the Trust make a major contribution to OPET to be used for its Land Conservation program. Thanks to this wonderful gift and to the many other generous donations to the Land Conservation Fund received from OPET's membership during the past year, OPET's debt on the 7 acres conservation land at the north end of the Pond has been greatly reduced. What a way to go! Please help us get there on schedule - make a gift, large or small, to OPET's Land Conservation Fund!
This summer was a good one for fishing in Oyster Pond: Board members John Dowling, Bob Wilsterman and Jonathan Davis and son got out their rods, reels, hooks, worms or blinkers, waved good bye to their wives -- don't wait with dinner for me, who knows when a fish will bite -and braved the elements. Alas for the wives, they returned home well before supper: hardly had the lures hit the water, when hungry White Perch took the hook. In no time a dozen or so fish were landed and, as far as this writer knows, set free again after their size was (over)estimated, in good fishermen fashion. John Dowling claims to have done battle with one perch so enormous (a foot or longer) it broke his rod (no, not the 250 lb test line!) and courage to pursue other such monsters in the depths of Loch Oyster, at least for this season. Stan Hart, the skeptic, decided to test the waters himself, lowered a blinker from his dock and became a believer: 10 perch in less than 25 minutes. Did they end up in the frying pan? That you'll have to ask him yourself.
Board members Bob Livingstone and Birgit Rose went fishing in a more pedestrian fashion, with traps and dipnets. Their spouses had to patiently wait for their returns: so many fish had flocked to their traps, it took hours and many notebook pages to do the counts and list the species and their sizes. Meanwhile, swans threatened with attack, and there was the slippery duck-, goose- and swan poop to contend with on the docks, or a shower or a gust of wind that blew the dinghy far from the traps -- in short, an adventure each time. Board member Carl Breivogel dip netted at the weir for this year's spawn of alewife. He was quite content with their number, size and state of health.
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