Great day just to fish

There are days when it is nice just to be on the lake, whether the fish are biting or not. I don't have one of those fancy fish finders, and I don't read the fishing tables. Mainly I just fish when I feel like it. If the fish are biting, I keep going, if they aren't I stop. Usually.

Today we fished for crappie, mainly jigging white grubs. Boy there were a ton of bites but seems the fish were just playing with us. Lots of nibbles few nice bites. In two hours the two of us caught about fifteen or so. Threw them all back for someone else to catch.

The lake was like glass almost all morning. An occasional gust but otherwise just nice and calm. Easy to use that trolling motor and not fighting the wind like it is often around here. The water temp is about 80, which is getting nice for swimming.

My wife likes to fish, which is good, most of the time.

First post of 2016

My how things like twitter and linked in take away from blogging. I really used to love this but there is something about that evil little bird that keeps me from posting here like I should. What are the big things in my life this summer?

A new granddaughter, a special reminder of how wonderful God is and how the world is blessed by new children who are born into loving homes where He is honored.

A new dock service. Hooray! No more days waking up at night wondering if the dock is going out in the spring or if it will freeze to the lake in the fall.

Gooseberries, currants, and hazelnuts from bushes I planted three years ago.

New landscaping on a hillside that was once home to an old shed.

That is all for now. Just wanted to get something plugged into the blog today. If I recall right one of my new years resolutions was to blog more this year than last. I have some work to do.

The pieces are coming together

Enough about IRS witch hunts and phone intercepts.

The house, the lake, the woodchipper, the riding lawn mower, the well, the dock, the lift, the boat... the pieces of our escape out of the city are coming together.

This was the weekend I was on the boat almost everyday and caught the first fish on the Lake, a couple of small-mid size northern pike. A good start.

It was also a weekend of family gathering with my brother in town, who likes to stay off the grid and shall remain nameless. He found us breakfast in Waconia when the power went out and also was full of some sound boating advice. Power was out for about three hours, not too bad. In any event that would not have affected the smoking plans. I must admit they turned out pretty good. Ribs and pork shoulder on the smoker, its getting where I can almost do this blindfolded.

Regarding bbq, this year I began using a rack for the ribs to stand them sideways. Boy does that make a difference. Not sure what it is but i think it has to do with a more even cooking. Nice and tender. 5-6 hours at around 225. No fancy rubs on the ribs or shoulder. Just salt and pepper. 

One last note. The shoulder and ribs had been frozen for about a month. I have smoked both fresh meat and the frozen then thawed. I cannot tell the difference. I guess I'd need to have them side by side. I'll keep freezing so I dont have to run to Costco every weekend.  

Ice Time

Last weekend, just before Christmas, I spotted the first ice house of the season, on the lake behind our house. For some reason it seemed a bit early but when I realized how much of the past weeks had been spent below freezing, it didnt seem so out of place.

Also that day i saw the first ice skaters out. Five or six kids off in the distance, like a Christmas scene from Currier and Ives.

Now, a week later, the ice houses are everywhere. Little villages that pop up during the day. You can't tell by looking whether they are occupied, but I always imagine that they are. That inside each of them is a couple of guys, dropping lines in ice, sharing a drink, telling lies, getting a long-awaited break from the world.

I want a lake

I am in the midst of a multi-year search for a home on a lake.

Our home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities is too big. It is great at Christmas and holidays when its all decked out for a special event, or when company is coming. But the rest of the time its a lot of space to keep clean and maintain, not because we want to but because we have to. Because its there and we own it.

Thus, the past year and a half we have been working on a dream of swapping bedrooms and an extra story for lakefront. It's a big undertaking and one that is easy to do around here, but difficult to do exactly right. While we have hundreds of lakes to choose from, finding one that is the right size and suitable for year round activities with houses in our price range is tougher. Combine that with the normal problem of finding a house that you actually like, and it gets pretty tough. In the last week we've gone back and forth between the expensive, ready to move in type to the fix-it-up yourself project that you wonder if it can be made livable. All of them are farther away from the city, which is both a positive and a negative.

We are looking for land (but not too much), privacy (but with neighbors close by), in the country (but near the city), flat lot (but not too flat), and finally a Goldilocks lake that is just the right, not too small or too big, not too deep or too shallow, not too popular or too deserted. Piece of cake. 

Fish On

There is something about fishing that puts all the other cares of life to rest. A day of fishing is a bit like an afternoon at the ballpark. No matter what you have going on, it is easy to get lost in the moment and focus solely on now. That's the way it was last Thursday morning in Heber Springs, Arkansas.

Caroline and I did not catch any huge trout, but we caught a lot of them. On Arkansas' Little Red River at the Red River Trout Dock . We fished from around 730 to 1130, with our guide, Roy. She caught 22, I got 11. She was 2-1 on me all day and cast a line as she was born to do. Like riding a bike, once you learn how to cast you never really forget it.

This was a good ending of a week long trip of visiting family and wrapping up a first year of college. A great way to kick off the summer. An even better way for a father and daughter, who rarely get to do things together, to spend a day forgetting about everthing else that is swirling around them. For a few hours there were no texts, no emails, no clocks, no phone calls from parents or clients, no posting to facebook, no deadlines. Just a couple of rods, a boat and a cool slow river inching its way across the belly of a beautiful piece of ground.

St. Paul - Ice Fishing Show 2011

These people are crazy over ice fishing. Simply too packed to enjoy. Like a baseball stadium on opening day, you have hoards of both fanatics and wannabes.

An evening in Montana

Last night I arrived in Helena around 6pm. A gorgeous day just too beautiful to waste watching TV in the local Hampton Inn ( though they are very nice people ). I took a long, hundred mile drive up into the Helena National Forest, doing a long loop that took me past a stray cow wandering on the highway, through the town of Lincoln, and past the pristine trout waters of the Blackfoot River.

As I mentioned in an earlier email to my mother,  Helena reminds me in many ways of my ancestral hometown of Elizabethton, Tennessee. A small city, mainly of lifelong residents. A combination of pretty older homes, tacky shopping areas and a nice downtown, nestled in the middle of the mountains. Not a bad place at all to spend a life.


 I ended my drive at the minor league ball park and watched the Helena Brewers faced the Casper Ghosts (gotta love that name). The Brewers lost but time at a ballpark is always time well spent.

Six more weeks, or so, of winter

Annual ice fishing trip was this weekend to a local lake. Ice was about two feet thick. Robin and I caught about six small walleye total. No pics from that expedition. Here's the house in Feb. Still too much snow around the bushes to get the Christmans lights and wreaths down. Maybe by next month.

Out on the ice

There is this thing about ice fishing that is starting to get to me. On the one hand, it's a bit of a pain. I have a manual ice auger and as much as I hate to admit it, drilling a hole in ice a foot thick is a chore for someone in their fifties. Like normal fishing, the weather is probably the biggest factor in determining whether you are having a good time. The company you are with plays a huge part as well.

When I lived in Missouri, I once invited a friend to go fishing. He was newly married. We met at one of my favorite spots a few hours from the house, in the hills of north Arkansas. He brought his new wife. "Hope you don't mind, I brought my wife". (Still to this day, one of the stupidest things to come out of the mouth of a human being) She sat in the boat with us. About 30 minutes into our fishing she asked, "how long are we doin' this?". We never spoke much after that. It wasn't so much that he brought his wife without asking, it was that he ruined the day by dropping a non-fisher into the boat.

My oldest daughter and I went "hard water" fishing this weekend. I've been half a dozen times, about once a year. This was her first and probably my favorite. The weather was perfect. 34 degrees, the first day above freezing since December 2. The lunch we cooked on the ice was superb. The company could not have been better.

We didn't catch much, though we did pull in a couple of little walleye. She referred to our fishing rods as "cute", but coming from a hard core fisher, I knew it was coming and did my best to laugh it off. She's a fisher and there's a big difference between us making fun of our sport and taking it from a non-fisher. Her boyfriend stopped by later, met us out on the lake in his truck, and had his first taste of ice fishing as well. 

There is this thing about being out on the top of the water, and witnessing the awesome power of nature. One that will easily freeze a foot-thick layer of hardness and strength on top of every lake and pond in the state. I like to think that it takes my mind off everything else, that I don't worry about the markets, or family matters, or other stuff. I do, I just don't worry as hard, fishing takes alot of the hard edges off of life.