Back at the lake after enjoying a hastily planned Thanksgiving dinner in town on Sunday. Found a small, never frozen turkey at the local grocery store, and everyone chipped in to make dinner. Even had some leftovers to bring back to the cottage.
Looks like the weather has remained decent over the weekend. It rained quite a bit on Saturday south of 7. Sunday was quite nice. Overall, the weekend was a lot better than the Blue Jays relief pitching.
Looks like most of the coming week will be sunny with temperatures at or slightly above normal. A few mornings below freezing, but not by much.
The lake has reached the lower theoretical level for fall drawdown which is 313.00 meters above sea level. Today it is at 312.98. That is low for Thanksgiving weekend, but not the lowest since I have been keeping track. On October 14, 2020 it reached 312.94. 4 cm lower than it is today.
Thanksgiving has been a bit of a sore spot for me for about a decade now. Sometime in the late teens I posted on my website, and had signs on the store door and in the boathouses that I would be closed Sunday afternoon so that I could celebrate Thanksgiving with family. I returned Monday morning before 8AM to open the store and found a VERY nasty note from a customer complaining that I had no business being closed on a busy holiday weekend and that they would never do business with me again. And, they held true to that. So, my afternoon off cost me a customer. I never closed on a holiday weekend again.
The OLT hearing regarding Limerick Estates has been postponed from Monday October 6th until an as yet undetermined date. The parties involved are looking at sometime in January. The mayor forwarded the legal notice of cancelation. This is a 40-year tactic of the developer. Delay hearings for months, sometimes years, then blame the municipality for being obstructionist when the hearing finally happens. Been there, done that with these folks through the years. Our mayor pledges not to let them wear her (or Hastings County) down. Link to the hearing cancellation notice: (copy and paste it into your browser, this editor does not support hyperlinks)
https://lwra.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/OLT-25-000357-Merit-Hearing-October-6-2025-Adjournment-1.pdf
Current status on boating access to Dixon Lake: A sub-committee of the Board of Directors of the LWRA had an in-person meeting with MNR staff in Bancroft on Tuesday September 23rd. Here is a link to a summary of the meeting:
https://lwra.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MNR-meeting-sept-2025.pdf
The Rogers 5G tower on Sutton Rd. is operational. The Rogers / FOCA special pricing plan for internet service is $60 per month this year. (unless you have a Rogers phone in which case it remains $50 per month) Even at the $60 price it is the best internet service for us on the lake. It appears they throttle the 5G connection to 40MBps down, and 10MBps up. That is plenty of bandwidth for any single-family use. On a related subject, Bell seems to have improved their cell signal in the area as I can now make calls indoors. I used to have to sit on the front steps to make or receive voice calls. Now I am showing 4 bars of service indoors.
The dump is on Winter hours. It is open Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday and holiday Mondays from 11AM to 4:30PM.
2026 fishing regulations are not yet posted. If things remain unchanged, lake trout season will open January 1. Bass season should open June 27, 2026 and close November 30. The Limerick chain of lakes has a "slot size" for lake trout that MUST be returned to the lake if caught. It is roughly 16 to 22 inches. It is also a "one line" lake when ice fishing. The Limerick chain of lakes are at the very south end of zone 15.
