| Roger Batt, with the Idaho Weed Awareness Campaign and Rory Clinton, former Payette County Weed Superintendent, discuss how fast milfoil grows. Rory explains that the county has used aquatic approved herbicides on this pond and it seemed to do a pretty good job at the time. But, because milfoil is a "perennial" plant, it just keeps coming back.
Roger notes that milfoil spreads by "fragmentation", where a piece of the plant breaks off, but it also reproduces by seed. We can see some seed heads on the pond. Rory explains that this is a good way to identify Eurasian watermilfoil. The seed head can be almost 4 inches high and sticks up out of the water. It almost looks like a rattlesnake tail. A lot of other aquatic weeds just mat out on the surface.
Roger identifies a carp or something trying to swim through the dense "biomass." Rory notes that when they first identified this pond having a problem they found several 3-5 pound bass just lying dead along the bank. There was no open water whatsoever on the pond and it was totally taking the fish population out. This used to be a trophy bass fishing area and people have caught up to 6 pound bass out of here.
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