Spam Questions

I’ve been running a WP blog at https://ids.org/ for just under 2 years (with Akismet running the entire time). About a month ago, I deactivated Akismet and reactivated it within the same 24 hour period of time. Since then, 98% of my blog comments are put in the moderation queu. I mark all of the legitimate comments “not spam” but this is still happening with the same group of commentors. The only other anti-spam plugin I have installed is WP-Gatekeeper – I get the same results with Akismet whether or not Gatekeeper is activated.

This is what I don’t understand:
When I deactivate Akismet and leave it alone for a few days, I get emails from my readers saying that they are posting comments that are not appearing on the blog. When I check the admin panel’s mod queu, it’s empty. When I reactivate Akismet, the comments appear under the “spam comments” page in the admin panel. When Akismet is not installed, where can I find those comments (there is no “spam comments” page when Akismet is not installed).

I know this is a very basic question and I want to thank you in advance for your patience.

Jaime