DownTime wrote in
:

What possible and hopefully logical answer can tell me why anyone in
their right mind would chain a log to the bottom of a lake?



During the Depression, when the lakes were created, the loggers were in the
same shape as the rest of the country, starving to death. They lacked the
resources to get the logs out of the lake bed before the lake filled up
because there was noone to buy the logs at closed lumber mills across the
country. Noone wanted the logs.

So, in their infinite wisdom, the Santee-Cooper state-run power company
decided the cheapest way to get rid of the unwanted lumber was to chain it
down to the bottom of the lake with large log chains, never thinking the
logs would eventually shrink enough to float their way out of their bonds.

I lost an Evinrude 70, ripping it right off the back of a trihull runabout,
to one in the channel of Lake Marion about where I-95 goes over the lake,
back in the 1970s.

The fishermen are all thrilled that these terrible hazards of floating logs
and rotten tree stumps 6" below the surface of the lake in vast forests
that never even got cut down are the way they are. The rotting forests
make fantastic breeding grounds for the land-locked striped bass both lakes
are world famous for, breeding lots of real monsters with all that cover to
protect the young from its parents and predators. The hazardous lakes also
keep other boaters away from these fishing grounds by tearing up their
boats and making boating so hazardous it keeps them away to easier venues
or down near the deep water at the dams, leaving thousands of hectares of
excellent fish breeding and fishing grounds unmolested by spinning props.
They wouldn't have it any other way....