Choptank

CAMBRIDGE -- It looked like just another beautiful day on the water as Bill Dennison and his crew of biologists pushed off from their pier at the Horn Point Laboratory and sailed toward the mouth of the Choptank River. The sun glistened on the waves. In the distance, craggy, tree-lined peninsulas carved the river into jagged coves that have long been home to crabs and rockfish. But there were hardly any fishing boats. In fact, hardly anyone was on the river at all. It soon became clear why. The researchers passed large patches of brownish-white foam - so-called "mahogany tides" where the water is so thick with algae that no light can get through.

After 20 years, the annual Bernie Fowler show has become a parody of itself. Skinny stick of a man, amazingly boyish at 83 in his denim overalls and straw hat with a little American flag stuck in the brim, holding hands with his wife, Betty, and a group of state and local dignitaries as they march 70 or so abreast into the unappealingly brown water of the Patuxent River at Broomes Island to see how far they get before their white sneakers disappear....

CAMBRIDGE -- At first, the young father told police that the carjacking horror began on the bridge that spans the Choptank River.But after 13 hours of police interrogation, according to charging documents, Richard Wayne Spicknall II confessed that he had shot his 2-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter while they were strapped in safety seats in their grandmother's automobile.The 27-year-old Laurel man was charged with first-degree murder in the death of his son, Richard III, and the attempted murder of his daughter, Destiny Array Spicknall.

PROSPERITY has eluded Cambridge, a historic town of 10,800 on the Lower Eastern Shore. While nearby communities -- St. Michael's, Oxford and Easton -- draw tourists and wealthy retirees, Cambridge, the focal point of agricultural Dorchester County, limps along.Unemployment in Dorchester County, at 7.8 percent, is third-highest in the state, exceeding Baltimore's 7.4 percent jobless rate.That could change, thanks to a deal sealed this week between the state and Hyatt Hotels to turn 342 acres on the shores of the Choptank River into a luxury resort.

White perch headline the fishing activity in the state's upper tidal waters and stocked trout lead the list of freshwater pursuits, but as the weather continues to warm fishing action for other species will quickly heat up, too.For the present, however, white perch are hot at Millington, Red Bridges, below Unicorn Lake, Tuckahoe River and Blackwater River and starting to get thick in the Susquehanna.Stocked trout areas that are open are offering great fishing, too. A schedule of stockings and closures is available at area tackle stores and Department of Natural Resources regional service centers.

CAMBRIDGE -- It was an incredible journey, no question about it.A one-ton buoy, dragging more than its own weight in chains and anchors, was ripped from its mooring by ice in the Chesapeake Bay into southward-moving currents. Eleven days later, the electronic-laden buoy was found to have drifted 22 miles up the bay from its original position and into the Choptank River, two miles from the laboratory that monitors it."We'll never know the whole story," says Carole Moore, senior faculty research assistant at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies.

"SO THE SHALLOP sailed north with its cadre of excited explorers and when a great broad river was sighted, [Capt. John] Smith cried, 'This is our Choptank. Here is Patamoke, city of gold!' "So wrote James A. Michener in "Chesapeake" of the English exploration of the Delmarva Peninsula in the early 1600s. Those were probably not the exact first words from corporate officers of Hyatt Hotels Corp. when they devised building a $187 million luxury resort, including a hotel, vacation homes and a golf course on the Choptank River at Cambridge.

A family outing off Tilghman Island turned fatal yesterday as a 10-year-old girl and her 6-year-old brother apparently slipped from their uncle's grasp after their canoe capsized in the windy, cold Choptank River.Jennifer Thompson was declared dead several hours later at a Washington, D.C., hospital, and despite the efforts of dozens of rescuers, her brother, Samuel, had not be found off the southern tip of Tilghman Island by nightfall. The children's uncle, a Baltimore County attorney, was hospitalized in guarded condition last night.

As the new year begins, you can make a bet on one thing: Nineteen ninety-five will be the Year of the Gambler in Maryland. Everywhere you look, folks are trying to expand legalized gambling.Many of the state's biggest lobbyists have signed up high-powered gambling companies interested in getting permission to line the Chesapeake Bay and all its tributary shoreline with casinos containing roulette wheels, craps games, blackjack and halls filled with slot machines. They are expected to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to win over the legislature and the governor.

Havre de Grace. -- The wild wind that walloped Baltimore Tuesday afternoon, putting rubble in the streets and the city on network television, was kinder and gentler out in the Republican backwaters of the state. But it made itself felt there too.It took out the top of a big old sycamore in a hilly pasture next to a house in the vicinity of Level, sending a couple of tons of wood crashing to the ground near but not on top of a herd of hunkered-down cows. It lifted the roof off a rabbit hutch.

Two decades after he successfully lobbied to turn the old U.S. 50 bridge over the Choptank River into a fishing pier, Bill Burton was honored Wednesday when the state named the popular site after him. At the urging of Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Department of Natural Resources, the Board of Public Works approved the measure Wednesday by a unanimous vote. "It overwhelms me to think that they think enough of me to do that," said Burton, 82. "There's a hell of a lot of pride in that." The Board of Public Works also voted Wednesday to rename the Overlook at Green Ridge State Forest after longtime DNR forester Francis Zumbrun.

Heritage Society to hold its Christmas tours The Heritage Society of Essex and Middle River will hold its Christmas tours from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. today and tomorrow and Dec. 13 and 14 at 516 Eastern Blvd. The decorated Avenue of Shoppes will show how people shopped two generations ago. Featured gifts include Maryland jigsaw puzzles and 40th-anniversary apothecary jars. Information: 410-574-6934. Utility rate increase coming to the Shore DENTON: Choptank Electric Cooperative customers can expect a 5.46 percent rate increase starting next month.

Environmentalists are urging the state to act quickly to clean up Maryland's Choptank River, which has become more polluted due to farm runoff and development as well as a major drop in the oyster population. At a hearing on the state's rivers yesterday in Annapolis, several Choptank advocates asked legislators to consider new solutions to help the river. Among them: an effort to determine how much water quality damage is caused by each new development; a tax-incentive program to encourage homeowners not to pave along the shoreline; and a moratorium on oyster harvesting in the river.

CAMBRIDGE -- It looked like just another beautiful day on the water as Bill Dennison and his crew of biologists pushed off from their pier at the Horn Point Laboratory and sailed toward the mouth of the Choptank River. The sun glistened on the waves. In the distance, craggy, tree-lined peninsulas carved the river into jagged coves that have long been home to crabs and rockfish. But there were hardly any fishing boats. In fact, hardly anyone was on the river at all. It soon became clear why. The researchers passed large patches of brownish-white foam - so-called "mahogany tides" where the water is so thick with algae that no light can get through.

CAMBRIDGE -- From a cramped office on the Eastern Shore, researchers Laura Murray and her husband, Michael Kemp, have spent more than two decades studying the decline of underwater grasses in the Chesapeake Bay and measuring what that means to the health of the estuary. All their work was lost yesterday in the flash of an early-morning fire that destroyed twin trailers that housed their offices, their computers, their research papers and irreplaceable data. "I just feel hollow," said Murray, after surveying charred rubble at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental and Estuarine Study.

After 20 years, the annual Bernie Fowler show has become a parody of itself. Skinny stick of a man, amazingly boyish at 83 in his denim overalls and straw hat with a little American flag stuck in the brim, holding hands with his wife, Betty, and a group of state and local dignitaries as they march 70 or so abreast into the unappealingly brown water of the Patuxent River at Broomes Island to see how far they get before their white sneakers disappear....

ST. MICHAELS -- The sun was rising in a ribbon of crimson over the Choptank River as Barry Yancosek lugged a veteran's wheelchair backward through sand and spartina grass along the shore. Yancosek, a therapist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, helped Chad Kueser, who lost both legs in the Iraq war, hide behind camouflage netting with a shotgun. Next to him, three other servicemen with prosthetic or disabled arms hunkered down into a duck blind. During a morning of biting wind and numbing cold, they felt their spirits lifted by camaraderie and breathtaking scenery.

You total your car by driving it off a cliff. The insurance company cuts you a check and you buy a replacement. Do you drive toward the abyss and tempt the fates? We might not, but the folks who manage Maryland's fish sure seem partial to playing at the edge of deep holes. How else do you explain the willingness of the Department of Natural Resources to pander to commercial fishermen and allow them to scoop from two Eastern Shore rivers yellow perch, a fish we used to know well but rarely see now. The agency held two meetings in late November to go over the yellow perch population numbers.

The operator of a cabin cruiser that struck a fishing boat anchored at the mouth of the Choptank River in July has been charged with six violations of Maryland maritime laws and regulations. Keith David Price, 42, of Landenburg, Pa., is accused of negligence and unsafe boat handling in charging documents filed by Natural Resources Police in Easton District Court. Several people fishing aboard the Jil Carrie were injured, and one was thrown overboard, when Price's 53-foot cabin cruiser, Price Pirate, rammed the stern of the charter boat at noon July 7. Price has been charged with operating a boat in a reckless or dangerous manner, negligence, speeding, failure to maintain a proper lookout, failure to take all risk-assessment measures and failure to take appropriate action in a narrow channel.

Jamil Molock, a welder and Cambridge resident, drowned Wednesday while swimming in the Choptank River near the Caroline County town of Choptank. He was 23. Mr. Molock, a Cambridge native, was a 1998 graduate of Cambridge South High School. He developed an interest in underwater welding and construction while in high school, and attended Divers Academy International in Camden, N.J. Mr. Molock enjoyed playing video games and performing odd jobs around his home. He was a member of Christ United Methodist Church in Cambridge, where services will be held at 1 p.m. tomorrow.