Friends of Pontoosuc Advise Spring Pause for Fishing

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The Friends of Pontoosuc Lake surveyed the lake after it was treated with aquatic herbicides to control invasive vegetation.

Diquat was used to control three invasives in the 53-acre lake in mid-June. The survey was done over two days at the end of June, focusing from zero to 12 inches of the lake's perimeter.

The team surveyed: Lanesborough Island and Pittsfield Island, Narragansett Park to the Causeway, Causeway to A Street, A Street to National Street, Narragansett Avenue to the condominiums, the condos to Ridge Avenue, Ridge to the park on Hancock Road, U-Drive boat rentals to Nonamie Trailer Park.

Mike Callahan from Friends gave the findings to the Conservation Commission on Monday.

"We try to do the areas in which were treated to see, and what we came up with this year is we've seen a great deal on number of fish, we saw bass, carp, pumpkinseed, catfish, and pike," he said. "The water temperature was between 68 and 66 degrees, and we noticed that the weird weeds were starting to bend and knot on top of the water. That was done during the survey."

The crew categorized the fish from small, medium, large, and big. They found 156 small, 31 medium, eight large, and 12 big.

They noticed the big fish would scare off the little fish resulting in periods of no fish seen at all.

They also said they believe Pontoosuc Lake is fished a lot year-round leaving little time to recover and thought it might need some help to repopulate the fish.

"It's a very heavily fished lake, and the only way we could come up with of including the fish population is to close fishing from March to July during the spawning season to try to let them let the lake reproduce more fish," he said.

As the recommendation to pause fishing is not through the Conservation Commission, they sent it to the Select Board, which might want to follow up.

In other notes, citizens' requests for turtle crossing signage is in review. The Friends are looking for possible grant options and educational support to place the signs in high-risk areas. The Department of Public Works is willing to install them.

The commission also spoke about another potential buyer for the Berkshire Mall, and recommended to update wetlands delineation first. There have been four different companies that have reached out to the commission.

After More Than a Century, Heating Failure Puts Adams Turners' Future at Risk