Twin Lakes - Bellmore
November 30, 1998
It is a crying shame what has been done to this lake...or should I say, the lack of what
should have been done to this lake. It's like putting a band aid on a gunshot wound.
I grew up just a few blocks from Twin Lakes...I have fished there for almost 30 years and have seen so much overkill on these lakes. These lakes, which are really more like ponds, used to hold 8 lb. bass and 1 lb. crappy in the 60's, 70's and even the 80's. There were also 25 lb. carp, 4 lb. catfish and eel in all three lakes. Osprey nested in the trees, racoon crawled through the brush and muskrats could be seen swimming across the ponds at dusk. You could hear a one hundred year old snapping turtle hissing in the tall grass, giving you a warning before it took your Pro Keds and made them into mulch. The lake was fenced off to the public...it was a local place where you would see maybe 10 people all day. There were no boats in this small delicate habitat for years.
Then I started seeing boats that devistated the breeding grounds. I saw Russian fishermen fishing for carp with twenty rods. Where oh where were the game wardens? The lakes was advertised in magazines which brought people from all over. In the late 80's it took four year to wipe out the carp...and the crappy went with them. Fishermen would take their little boats out and sit right over the holding spots off of the shoreline and catch forty crappy and keep all of them. Real bright...look at the size of this lake...it could not reproduce fast enough for that sort of raping. I had a deep passion for this lake...
Enough of what was...where are we now. It's 1998 and finally no bass are allowed to be kept. By the by, you shouldn't be eating any fish from Twin Lakes anyway, because of the highway run off. This run off could be diverted easily with a run off drain into the sewer...but instead it runs into the lakes. Recently, brown trout have been stocked in the lakes...brown trout are carnivorous...they eat fry. What is fry...baby fish...bass, crappy, sunfish and carp babies. What rocket scientist came up with this plan? Probably the same one that came up with the quotas for saltwater.
How can we bring back this jewel and polish her up? California and Florida saw these problems in the 70's. They took steps and a made changes which have produced positive results. The lake should only be open to fishing two days a week and closed totally for certain weeks, especially when the bass are in the shallows breeding. Stop stocking any trout all together. In California the lakes are now producing tons of quality bass and crappy after just three years of implementing similar changes. This does not cost us one penny, it's just a matter of enforcing the rules. One rod per fisherman, not eight...a no kill on all fish but trout. Let the lake come back naturally on her own. The damage has been done...let's get real and take the steps to fix it!
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I grew up just a few blocks from Twin Lakes...I have fished there for almost 30 years and have seen so much overkill on these lakes. These lakes, which are really more like ponds, used to hold 8 lb. bass and 1 lb. crappy in the 60's, 70's and even the 80's. There were also 25 lb. carp, 4 lb. catfish and eel in all three lakes. Osprey nested in the trees, racoon crawled through the brush and muskrats could be seen swimming across the ponds at dusk. You could hear a one hundred year old snapping turtle hissing in the tall grass, giving you a warning before it took your Pro Keds and made them into mulch. The lake was fenced off to the public...it was a local place where you would see maybe 10 people all day. There were no boats in this small delicate habitat for years.