If you haven’t had a chance to visit Lake Superior State University’s fish cam, you should. When the fish start stacking up, it really is fascinating to watch.

The cam is located in the St. Mary’s River, the outlet that carries Lake Superior’s overflow into Lake Huron and on to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also home to runs of steelhead in the spring, Atlantic salmon in the summer and chinooks — what’s left of them — in the fall.

Activity varies — it’s nature, after all — and it’s not unusual to see whitefish, suckers and other river inhabitants. Today it looks like the Atlantic salmon are making their way in from northern Lake Huron. Numerous fish swim right in front of the camera, giving you an up-close look at what life in the big lake does to a fish. You can see the clipped fins that tell what year the fish was stocked. Many have lamprey marks on them.

Worse, a disturbingly high number of salmon are actually carrying those vile bloodsuckers. I saw one fish with two lampreys on it.

There’s no two ways about it: Those are nasty critters. I mean, we know they’re out there. We know what they do. But seeing so many of them on fish is pretty disturbing. Efforts are ongoing to rid the Great Lakes of sea lampreys. But clearly there’s plenty of work to do.

OK, so we want this to be a family Web site. So I can’t specifically tell you the exact words I used when I learned today that I drew an elusive Michigan elk tag.

The first word was “holy.” The second one was anything but.

And I still can’t believe it. Like many Michigan hunters, I’ve been dutifully applying for that tag for years. Every year 40,000 people do it. Every year 300 get one. It’s an 8-in-1,000 chance. On a good year.

This is a good year.

I”m still trying to decipher the hunt area, and it seems like hiring a guide would be a good idea. I got the “any elk” tag, which means it’s a once-in-a-lifetime. This one chance has to count.

You are certainly free to think what you want about Barack Obama. As president he’s pretty much fair game for criticism.

You can disagree with his stimulus plan or his approach to health care. You can worry about how his policies will affect lawful gun owners. You can wonder whether he’ll be tough enough on terrorism or how he’ll handle Iran.

But today he’s catching grief because … drum roll, please … he swatted a fly.

You read that right. In a television interview, a fly buzzed Obama. He waited for it to land, then nimbly and accurately … oops, I mean cruelly and thoughtlessly … swatted it. To death. That’s right. He took its life. The horror. So PETA jumped at the chance to lecture the president about being more humane.

I once witnessed such senseless violence hanging out in a barnyard. This steer, this vicious, blood-thirsty steer, was chewing away and very carelessly flopping her tail back and forth. You can’t tell me she couldn’t see or feel all those flies hanging around her flanks. I think she might have been doing it on purpose, because she repeatedly came very close to hitting them!

I was about to warn her that I didn’t appreciate her reckless behavior, and then it happened. So fast. That hairy, matted end of her tail caught a fly flush. It fluttered to the ground and lay motionless. “How could you? You beast!” I shouted. The killer played dumb, just staring back at me, chewing, chewing, chewing, that tail still swinging defiantly. So callous. What an animal.

I picked up the fly and stroked its head. I held it to my breast. I spoke to it softly. And then astonishingly, it twitched. It twitched again, then righted itself. It did that little fly thing where they rub their wings with their back legs. And then it flew over onto some poop. It was a miracle!

But that didn’t excuse that damned steer. There’s no reason to be so hateful.

So I had her slaughtered. And man, was she tasty.

Oops.

Note to  self: Graphite conducts electricity.

That was demonstrated clearly and almost tragically this week when a couple Missouri anglers withstood a serious whack from a lightning bolt. Gabe Neal was holding a graphite rod when the strike came, knocking him out of the boat. The strike lit his 17-year-old son Christian’s hair on fire; they were rescued by Iraq war veteran Andy Flippin.

The rod Gabe Neal was holding looked like a horse tail after the strike,  with all its individual fibers separated.

Thankfully, both Neals will be OK, according to news reports. Which makes it a good reminder to the rest of us that a fishing rod can be the last thing you want in your hand when there’s electricity in the air.

So Michigan has a goose problem.

If you’re a golfer, a lakefront property owner or anybody with occasion to walk through a suburban park, you might say “Well, no sh-t!” Except there’s PLENTY of sh-t, and it’s all over your shoes. And some nasty critter is hissing at you and bobbing his head violently while a bunch of little fuzzballs pick at the grass behind him. And you can’t hit him with a golf club, because that’s illegal and besides, you don’t want to mess up your clubs.

So you won’t be too broken up to hear that the DNR has ramped up its goose control efforts to include killing adult Canada geese. The traditional three-pronged approach — harassment, egg oiling and relocation — has lost a prong because nobody wants the leftovers any more. Inexplicably, Iowa was taking some geese off Michigan’s hands to build populations there. Shockingly, they’ve decided they have enough.

So now the DNR will turn to “lethal means.” We haven’t figured out exactly what that means tactically, but it’s encouraging to know the geese will be processed and fed to folks who need something to eat through Sportsmen Against Hunger. It’s a good use of perfectly good meat.

The discouraging thing here is that there are already plenty of people who would be more than happy to take care of the goose problem. That would be us, the guys in camo. Wait, maybe they can’t see us. Quick, put on some golf pants!

No, the real problem is the classic sprawl issue. The geese are proliferating in the suburbs where they’re safe. To feed, they fly into farm fields in the surrounding townships. But the townships have shut down hunting because every other crop field is now a subdivision. And township officials tend to wilt when those new country dwellers look out their pastoral windows, notice the guys laying on the ground killing geese just like they have for decades, and then scream like banshees because the mean old hunters are about to shoot all the kids at the bus stop. With No. 2 steel shot (BBs are prohibited), from 500 yards away.

But never mind that. Physics is overrated.

One by one, these exurban townships have taken away the best method for controlling geese. And now they have a goose problem.

No sh-t.