Marion County Lake
By TOOTSIE SNELLING
Marion County Park & Lake reporter
If you want to see the lake full, come on out. It's full to the max. As near as we can tell from our rain gauge and everyone else's around we've had around 12 inches of rain in the past week or 10 days, and that's a lot. The lake was running in and out at the same time.
The burp hole is burping like mad, but when it starts sucking a little air later on it will burp even higher. Some of my grandkids hadn't seen it before and thought it was pretty cool.
Due to the high water almost all of the docks were unusable. Dale had to put ramps out to get on the heated dock and the public dock. The water was over the swimming pier too.
The high water brought out the cat fishermen in droves. The north end was lined up on both sides. They caught lots of nice channel on liver, worms, and cheese bait. Dean Snelling caught a 12 pound channel and Ken Vinduska caught a 13 pound channel June 18 when the water was running in. Mike Mader of Hillsboro caught a 40 pound 7 ounce flathead around 1 a.m. on the 19th. He rang our doorbell around 1:30 a.m. to weigh in the fish. Needless to say, Dale said, "It had better be a big one," and it was. He also told him not to come back unless the next one was 10 pounds bigger!
You no doubt heard on the news about the Great American Camping Rally being held in Hutchinson this week. We had our own version here this weekend. They weren't letting campers in until Saturday and Sunday. So every campground around and most Wal-Mart parking lots around were full of these campers waiting to get in. We were getting calls on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, wanting camping spots while they waited to go on to Hutch. We had campers from Alabama, Tennessee, Montana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado, and Iowa. Some had the BIG motor homes and some were in fifth wheels and the one from Montana was in a van. It was fun talking to the people from different areas and they were amazed at all the rain we have had and at the lake being so high.
Nobody used the hall on Sunday, but on Saturday it was used by the Bozone family for their reunion.
