What a difference a few days and a couple of decent showers can make.

Lake Nacogdoches had been low for the past several months. Luckily, we could still get our boat out of the slip — there was still enough water under the boathouse to float the barge, but just barely.

Then, after a couple of good storms over the past two weeks that dropped a few inches of rain at our house and several inches north of us, the lake is back up to full pool ... actually, just over full pool — a welcome sight.

It still amazes me how quickly the lake can rise. On one recent afternoon, after a couple of storms moved across the area earlier in the week, I arrived home to find that the lake had risen a few inches. We had gotten a couple of inches in our rain gauge, and it looked like that's about how much the lake was going to rise.

I got busy doing chores around the house and didn't really look outdoors for a while. About an hour later, I glanced toward the lake to discover that it had risen at least half a foot since I had gotten home. It continued to rise over the next hour, and my husband decided to "ready" the boat and boathouse for possible flooding, a routine that has become quite familiar to us over the course of the nearly seven years we've lived on Lake Nacogdoches.

The precaution proved unnecessary, but better safe than sorry, we always say. I sleep better at night knowing we've done what we can to protect our property from water that can rise very quickly, and often does so in the middle of the night.

When similar situations occur while we are at work and not able to glance out our windows at home to check the lake's level, a Web site provides us access to that information, inch by inch. That knowledge can either give me comfort or cause me to worry even more.

Seeing the lake at full pool, with water once again lapping under our boat dock, is good to see. I'm looking forward to warm, sunny afternoons in the coming weeks. Fishing for crappie is in my immediate future. Multiple boat rides are mandatory.

No matter how many trips around the lake I take, I never tire of what I see. Friends and neighbors out on the lake boating, skiing and fishing, the changing landscape along the shoreline, wildlife ... it's all a constant source of enjoyment and entertainment.

I have a wonderful treasure in my backyard, all 2,212 acres of it. I enjoy it year-round, but especially so this time of year. And in honor of the lake, the time of year and fishing in general, I offer my annual fishing jokes that I have stolen from the Internet. These were found at www.bestfishingjokes.com.

\• Two guys are talking about fishing. One says to the other, "I am NEVER going to take my wife fishing with me, ever again!"

"That bad, huh"

"She did everything wrong! She talked too much, made the boat rock constantly, tried to stand up in the boat, baited the hook wrong, used the wrong lures, and WORST of all, she caught more fish than me!"

\• Mother to daughter advice:

Cook a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

But teach a man to fish and you get rid of him for the whole weekend.

\• A small town doctor was famous in the area for always catching large fish.

One day while he was on one of his frequent fishing trips he got a call that a woman at a neighboring farm was giving birth. He rushed to her aid and delivered a healthy baby boy.

The farmer had nothing to weigh the baby with so the doctor used his fishing scales.

The baby weighed 22 lbs., 10 oz.