Like A Vibration

We can think of light as a vibration, something like a vibration traveling along a

stretched rope.
Light that vibrates in some clearly defined direction is said to be polarized.

The blue light of the sky is polarized. When the sun is low to your left or right,
as it is in this experiment,
the blue light of the sky right in front of you is polarized vertically; the
vibrations are up and down.

Vertical Vs Horizontal

But the lake doesn't reflect that light very well. Horizontal surfaces in general
don't reflect vertically polarized light very well.
You see a dark patch in the lake 4 feet in front of you because, at that angle, the
lake doesn't get much light it can reflect.

The blue sky supplies vertically polarized light; the lake, being horizontal,
can't reflect it and that's why there's a mysterious dark patch in the reflection
of the sky.