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Oneida Lake AssociationPO Box 3536 Syracuse, NY W H A T 'S U P ?GOT GEESE? As a last reminder, plan onattending the free, OLA-sponsoredworkshop M arch 25 . Agency professionals and experts will be onhand to discussoptions available to lakefront homeowners, land and parksmanagers, and otherinterested in the escalating growth of resident Canadagoose numbers. Starting at 9AM, talksand a shepherd dog video will take place at PV M oore High SchoolinCentral Square.Address : 44 School Dr, Central Square, NY 13036. From the south on Route 11turn left just past the Post Office on Hillcrest Drive, or one block north turn left onTucker Road. From the north, at the main triangle intersection of Rt 49, turn rightonto County Route 12, take the third left onto Tucker Road. The main entrance is onthe north side of the building of Tucker Road.AGENDA9:00 Welcom e (Ed Mills, OLA Director)9:05 Biology, History, and T ypes ofDamage by Resident CanadaGeese (Paul Curtis, AssociateProfessor and Extension Wildlife Specialist, CornellUniversity)9:30 U.S. F ish & Wildlife Service’s Role in CanadaGeese Management(Chris Dwyer, Migratory Game BirdBiologist, NE Region, US Fish & Wildlife Service)9:55 DEC’sRole in Resident Canada Geese Management in New York(Josh Stiller,State Waterfowl Biologist, Jim Eckler, NYSDEC Region 8 WaterfowlBiologist and GeorgeJ. Steele, Captain, Region 7 NYS ENCON Police)10:45 Options for Homeowners and Land Managers in Managing ResidentCanadaGeese Damage (CarlCranker, Wildlife Biologist, USDA Wildlife Services)

11:30 A T ale of a Working Dog and Nuisance Geese (DannyLiedka, ManliusNY)12:00 Open: Questions & AnswersWALLEYE SEASON IS CLOSED from 12:01 AM March 16 though 11:59PMMay 5, 2017.MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THE ANNUAL MEETING . M ay 3at Gillette Road Middle School in Cicero.EARTH DAY VOLUNTEERS Earth Day is Saturday April 22. Again OLADirectors – and other members who wish to help – will bepicking up trash from theBartel Road exits on I-81 and the angler access trailbeneath the bridge. Meet at theend of the of-ramp at 9AM. Bring gloves and anorange/yellow safety vest, if youhave one. Bags and pickup sticks will be provided. If you are planning to help, contactGeorge Reck at gkger3474@yahoo.com. If you cannot join us, we encourage you toparticipate in someother local event, for instance the one in Bridgeport BLCOCNY@twcny.rr.com. Remember that while this Saturday is the‘official’ day, every dayshould be an Earth day to responsibly preserve someelement of today’s environmentfor tomorrow.Spring is about to spring. Some near-shore tulips emerged in the warmth of March 4,2017. February 29 last year brought the beginning of breakup whenstrong windsstarted shifting the icepack. Ice-out was not final until the end of March. This year icestarted to go Feb 23 and was essentiallygone by February 26, but following recordhigh temperatures March 1 a cold snapcaused the lake to refreeze a few days later.A week later another thawbegan, opening wide leads and moving ice east then west.Then a real cold snap refroze the lake overnight March 11.ALL WATER MATTERS!CREEK OR CRICK?Hydrologists and engineers know thatwater flowsdownstream and that theright bank is the starboard one whenfacing downstream. Anglers andpaddlers may assert “alternative facts” inrepresentingtheir orientations in thestream. Butwhat is a river, a stream, acreek, and a crick? Excerpting Patrick F.McManus’s “A Fine andPleasant Misery”,maybe we can clear up the confusionIfthere is any doubt that the sustainedresearch conducted by theCornellUniversity team s working out ofthe Biologic Research Station onShackletonPoint has internationalreaches, you m ight want to view this videoon walleyestockinghttp://www.scout.com e Cornell BiologicResearch Station

overcricks and creeks.First of all a creek has none of theraucous, vulgar,freewheeling characterof a crick. Ifthey were people, creekswould wear tuxedos and amusethemselves with theballet, opera, andwitty conversation. Crick would goaround in their undershirts and amusethemselves with theSaturday night fights,taverns and humorous belching. Creekswould perspire and cricks sweat. Creekswould smoke pipes; cricks chew andspit.Creeks tend to be pristine. Theymeander regally through high mountainmeadows, cascade downdaintywaterfalls, pause in placid pools,ripple off beds of gleaming gravelandpolished rock. They sparkle inthesunlight. Deer and poets sipfromcreeks, and images of eagles wheelupon the surface of their mirroreddepths.Cricks, on the other hand, shufflethrough cow pastures, slogthroughbeaver dams, gurgle though culverts,ooze though barnyards, sprawlundersagging bridges, and when not otherwiseoccupied, thrash fitfully ontheir beds ofquicksand and clay. Cowsshouldperhaps be credited with giving crickstheir most pronouncedcharacteristic. Indeference to theyoung and the fewladies left in the world whose sensitivitiesmight beoffended, I forgo a detaileddescription of this characteristic. Let mesay only that to a cow the wholeuniverseis a bathroom, and it makes noexception of cricks. A single cow,equipped only withdetermination andfairly good aim, can in a matter of hourstransform aperfectly good creek into acrick.Many of us always heard the words "Godwilling and thecrick don't rise.” For somepeople,that's the pronunciation of"creek," not actually a variantword. Usedas a sign-off tag line of the1930’s radiobroadcaster and Kentuckian BradleyKincaid, the phrase becamepopular as asupposedly hayseed utterance. Indeedto some people, growing up with newfangled TV westerns in the1950s thephrase was common parlance.The etymology of the phrase "Godwilling, and the creekdon't rise." Is oftenattributed to Benjamin Hawkins, who wasthe GeneralSuperintendent for IndianAffairs between 1796 and 1818 for theU.S.Government. Hawkins, college-story is chronicled in last years’ book"Oneida Lake: Long-Term Dynamics of aManaged Ecosystem and Its Fishery”published by theAm erican FisheriesSocietyFEDERAL DE-REGULATIONPROPOSALSThe OLA Directors are monitoring aWhite House proposal to cut EPA'sbudget. An included line would virtuallyeliminate annual Great LakesRestoration Initiative (GLRI) funding,slashing it from 300 million to 10million among other cuts that wouldaltogether reduce the EPA's total budgetby aquarter.The GLRI funds state and local projectsthat combat invasive species, restorewildlife habitats and clean up watershedspolluted by a Rust Belt economic legacyacross the eight-state Great Lakesregion. It has traditionally enjoyed strongbipartisan support in Congress.Threatened programs potentiallyaffecting Oneida Lake could include thelamprey treatments, nuisance goosemanagement, threatened ternmanagement, fisheries research, andsewerage system expansions andupgrades. Inter-agency agreementsunder the GLRI also includecompetitivegrants to mitigate emeraldash borer (EAB) impacts, reduce runofffromdegraded sites through greeninfrastructure, and enhance wetlandfunctions such as runoff filtration andprovision of northern pike spawningareas and waterfowl production.REPEATREQUESTDo you Have information on pastOLAActivities? Mike Sorice (msorice@vt.edu)is part of a team of researchers fromCornell University,University ofWisconsin, and Virginia Tech seeking tounderstand how lakeorganizations, likeOLA, support lake management andprotectionactivities.He requests your help incollectinghistorical information about OLA and orother organizations thatwill assist histeam in studying how local lakeassociations function andinteract with

educated and a well-writtenman, wouldnever have made a grammatical error,so the capitalization of Creekis the onlyway the phrase could makesense. Allegedly he wrote it in responseto a request from the President toreturnto our Nation's Capital and the referenceis not to a creek, but TheCreek IndianNation. If the Creek "rose", Hawkinswould have to bepresent locally to quellthe rebellion.Alternative fact: the phrase doesn't (er,don't?) appear inthe collected works ofBenjamin Hawkins. So the claim that hecapitalized theword Creek isunsupportable, apparently. It has nothingto do with the Creek Indians.The phrase has morphed over possiblyhundreds of years, quite often indialectspeech, to what many are familiarwith from the 1950s onward. ReportedlyStephen Goranson, one of thepremierword/phrase finders over at theAmerican Dialect Society found whattheearliest variant attributed in TheDoolittle Delegation, to a"Woman'sRights Convention" by Miss L.Virginia Smith, Graham's AmericanMonthlyMagazine of Literature, Art, andFashion v. 38 June 1851:"'Feller-citizens--I'm not 'customed topublic speakin' before suchhighfalutin'audiences.Yet here I stand before youa speckled hermit, wraptin the risen-suncounterpane of my popilarity, an'intendin', Providencepermittin', and thecreek do n't rise, to 'go it blind!'."All this is entertaining, but to thosecommuting through Rattlesnake Gulch,payattention. If Butternut ‘Crick’ floodsinDewitt, Route 298 may be flooded for afew days!regulatory commissions. There is ahistory of Oneida Lakemanagement thatprecedes the 1945 incorporation of theOLA.If your family has records,writtenmaterials, anecdotes, orknowledge that may be of interest toMichael, pleasecontact him within thenext few weeks as they schedule trips toCNY to meetwith people interested inlake management and protection efforts.Materials they seek include: oldnewslettersfrom other than OLA, otherorganizations’ meeting minutes andnotes, letters tolegislatures andagencies, newspaper articles, or anyother citizen-initiatedmaterials toenhance management and protection ofthe lake.We have no update on the status ofcormorant management on the lake.It is unlikely that the USFWS willcomplete its environmental review andresponse to the court, or the judge willrespond, this summer.This delay enjoined by the PEER group,as previously reported, can underminesome of the fisheries managementresearch by Cornell. At a time whenround goby numbers are exploding inOneida, we have no knowledge ifcormorant diets are changing, or ifwalleye and perch remain the earlyseason prey targeted by the bird.POCKET RANGER FOR NEW YORK STATEAs many of us grab our gear to head out to Oneida fora day of fishing, our mentalchecklist includes not only rods, reel, andtackle, but our electronic gadgets, aswell. Chart plotters, depth finders, fish finders, and GPS are all commontools formany fishermen, both ashore and afloat. Your smartphone can also supply a wealthofhelpful information. F or those com fortable with using a sm artphone, besureto check out the app called Pocket Ranger. (Go to the App Store orGoogle Play and search for “New York Fishing, Hunting,and Wildlife App”). As thenameimplies, it’s packed with lots of information on hunting and fishing, for allof NewYork State. Of course, OneidaLake is a featured spot on the app for plenty of