wolc123

It looks like we got just under an inch of rain last night and this morning. I had to go in to work for a few hours and it rained most of the time I was there. My front corn plot (well drained ground) was dry enough to spray with gly in the early afternoon. The rains over the last week have been good for it and it is now growing like mad but so are the weeds. It is well over a foot tall now, and covering a lot of the weeds, so I went over the rows twice with the sprayer. By late afternoon, the back plot was dry enough to spray (only up about 6"), so I went over the rows once with gly. I will try and get the front plot cultivated tomorrow. The back plot is still too short for that, but the gly should make a pretty good kill on the weeds. I planted a few rows of non-Roundup Ready sweetcorn near each field corn plot, so I guess I will need to hoe that after I finish cultivating. That ought to be fun. Maybe I can put a sign out by the road "hoers wanted". I had a number of setbacks on the spraying operation but managed to get it done in time to have supper with the wife. The touble started with a flat front tire on the tractor. Fortunately it is a slow leak and it held long enough to finish the job. Next, the sprayer nozzles plugged up with rust. Fortunately they are easy to remove and clean from the seat of the tractor. I probably had to clean the nozzles a dozen times but they seemed to stay clear over the last plot. I used 30 gallons of spray (two fillups of my 15 gallon saddle tank) and ran out on the last two rows. Half way thru the first plot, the fuel filter plugged on the tractor and I had to by-pass it out in the field. Finally, the wooden framed tractor seat rotted out and busted, making for an uncomfortable finish. I had made it from an old hair-dryer chair of my grandmothers and it really did not hold up well in the old barn with the leaky roof. It was a bit windier than I like it for spraying and between that and all the nozzle cleaning that was required, I ended up getting plenty of gly on myself. Hopefully, the long hot bath I just finished will take care of any issues with that.

Walleye and perch don't have enough "fish oil" in them for good baking or grilling. They dry out too much. Bass is better grilled than either of those for that reason. Bass has just enough oil in it to remain moist thru the grilling or baking process. We fried a big, fresh lake Erie walleye last week and it was excellent cooked that way, but bass is never great fried (due to the oil in the meat before it goes in the frying pan). I definitely prefer the bass for multiple reasons, the first being that they are way more fun to catch because they pull a lot more, pound for pound. Secondly, grilled or baked fish is a lot healthier than fried fish. Lastly, they are easier for me to find consistently. The two tricks to making the bass taste good is to keep them alive and healthy until the meat is removed for eating or freezing, and drying (with paper towels), then vacuum sealing when freezing. If you feel those bass fillets twitching as you pull them off the fish you know they will taste good.

What about wheat ? I have seen deer walk around rye to get to wheat on multiple occasions. 50 pounds of wheat costs $ 8.00 where I shop.

For cerial grains, deer order of preference from a taste standpoint is: Oats (best) Wheat (2nd best) Rye (third best), and Barley (worst). I usually go with wheat becasue it is always the easiest to find and the cheapest, and it lasts longer than oats (all the way thru winter). I have not planted rye in about 10 years. Unless you got real acidic soil, I dont see the point of planting something that costs more, is harder to find, and deer don't like as much. I thought about barley once, thinking I could make some tasty beverage from it but after hearing that deer liked it the least, I skipped it. The special ingredient I recommend throwing into a fall kill plot mix (of wheat and white clover) is soybeans. Nothing is more attrative to deer than young, sprouting soybeans, and global warming has resulted in late fall frosts, often letting them last well into bow season (and sometimes all the way to gun season). That mix did in this fine 3.5 year old 8-point last fall 2 weeks prior to the gun opener:

One thing is for sure, there is a better home awaiting. Prayers sent for Mark and family.

The corn plot that I planted on May 30 is up over a foot now and really starting to take off after the inch or more of rain we have got over the last few days. The weeds are taking off also. Hopefully, I can get the rows sprayed with gly and cultivate in between the rows on that plot by this weekend. I have not been back to look at the smaller plot that I planted a weeks and a half ago. I assume it will be up, so I will probably hit it with the gly this weekend but wait until it is up over a foot before I cultivate. It is too easy to burry or wipe out the smaller plants when cultivating, but the gly won't hurt it, and that will let more of the starter fertilizer go to the corn and less to the weeds.

We ate this 28" lake Erie walleye that I caught on Saturday for dinner tonight. It was very good. So good in fact that the kids ate every last bit of it and there will be no leftovers for my lunch at work tomorrow. Not a hint of fishy flavor like the one we had a month ago that had been vacuum sealed in the freezer for about 10 months.

Surface temp was 67 - 70 today. We tried deep for walleyes, but only got about (8) sheephead between 30 - 40 feet. Saturday all of our fish were caught in less than 30 feet. Since the action was slow out deep today, I figured I would look for the warmest water I could find to try and find some post-spawn bass. We ended up getting (3) that were 12.5 - 14" long, right near the outside of the wall, by the windmills. Those are the size I prefer for eating. Only the largest of the three had eggs in it. Since you did not fillet any of those bass you caught prior to the regular opener, what makes you think they had already spawned ? I think that is highly unlikely given the current water temperature out there. The larger bass we caught on Saturday were taken from about 25 feet of water where the surface temp was 65. The temp 25 feet down had to be low 60's which is too low for the bass to have been post-spawn. I probably will not get out there again until June 30 or so, and I hope that most of the bass will have finished spawning by then. If it stays as warm as it is now, that should be the case. As I mentioned earlier, I really don't like harassing them pre-spawn. They have a hard enough time with all the cormorants and gobies, that I think they could use a break from anglers at that time. I would like to see NY state go back to the third Sat in June opener and not allow folks to target them prior to that. I see bass as food, not playthings. I am liking the new Garmin fish-finder so far, but it could use a sun screen. I might try and fabricate something for that before our next outing. My new Berkley lightning rod worked well also. It handled that heavy walleye and quite a few big sheephead very well and the sensitivity was real good. Just a few bass on it so far though and that is it;s primary purpose. Hopefully we can get some more of those on the next trips.

We hit lake Erie for the opening day of bass season today. We launched at Buffalo small boat harbor, which was as busy as I ever saw it. The bass were a little slow, and they have not spawned yet. We landed (3) smallmouth, all of them 18" egg-laden females (I learned that when I filleted them later), in about 10 minutes along a short stretch on the outside of the outer breakwall, starting at 10:30 am. After that short bit of fast action, we drifted a few times across between the outer breakwall and the inner and lost smallmouth #4. That one was probably a male because it was shorter and no where near as fat as the first (3)). We also landed some "accidental" catches on those drifts which included about a dozen sheephead and (1) 28" walleye. We are probably going to hit that area again tommorow, focusing more on the walleyes, becasue I dont care for harrasing pre-spawn bass.

That means that it looks like Hemlock lake will need to wait another year for me to get this "never registered" 1979 12 footer on it. At least I can hang on the the $ 8.00 I will owe NY state in sales tax until then.

I was polled over the phone a few months ago. My wife never picks up calls from unkown callers, but I often do for my own entertainment and to tie them up so they can't bother others. The woman was very polite and I don't recall what organization she was from. I believe her call was mostly concerned with the upcoming replacement election for a former Washington Congress rep for our district. She went over many issues, explaining both sides. My views were 100 % for the Republican side. Most of it seemed like common sense to me. For example, I don't have a clue why anyone would support abortion. How can anyone believe that a criminal would abide by the additional gun-control laws ? What I liked about the poll is that it made me realize that there is not a single issue where my views align with the Democratic party.

I have been biding my time the last couple weeks, waiting for bass season to open up. My boat is only a year newer (1989). I re-powered it in 1999 with the current 70 hp Johnson, and I downgraded the "kicker" this year from a 1989 15 hp Johnson to a 1956 Evinrude 5.5. The Min-kota trolling motor up front is late 80's vintage. I am going to let the crew make a "game-day" decision (somewhat weather dependent) on if we hit lake Erie, or the upper Niagara river for the bass opener on Saturday. I am excited about trying out the new Garmin front fish-finder/GPS, and a new spinning rod I just picked up. The big motor and the trolling motor worked good a couple a few weeks ago on a pre-season "shakedown" cruise. I probably will not fire up the old Evinrude 5.5 until Fourth of July weekend (on a 14 ft Meyers rowboat) up at my in-laws place in the Adirondacks (that lake has a 10 hp max limit). We are down to our last pack of frozen bass in the freezer from last year so it is almost time to "get to work".

A few years ago a drought dried up my small (aprox 1/4 acre) pond in mid October. I dug it about 20 years before and it was starting to get shallow from sediment buildup. As it dried up during that drought, the herons cleaned out all of the fish (bluegills and bullheads that the ducks brought in) as the water level got lower. While it was empty, I got into it with my loader tractor and removed all the sediment, and went down a few feet deeper into the clay bottom. The following July, I added a 5 gallon bucket full of lake Ontario bluegills and a couple of 13" Largemouth. I have not tried fishing it since so I am not sure how they are doing. It is about 10 feet deep in the center right now.

Fresh caught bass.

Zara Spook.

Cats work very well for chipmunk control.

I like it better than any of the other blinds that have been posted in this thread, and that is not just because all the materials were free. The upper deck is missing one thing that I see all of the others have, and that is a big advantage for deer hunting. They all have "blind spots". You never know from what direction a deer may appear from and I like to be able to see 360 degrees around. More than 3/4 of the times that I have hunted that blind, the weather conditions were good enough to hunt the top level. I have only taken one deer from the lower level of that one since I added the upper level about (5) years ago. Back when it only had the lower level, I would move it around from year to year, based on where my best food plots were. Now it has found a permanent home in my favorite spot. I have another, slightly smaller one made from a 6.5 ft construction style truck cap, over at my folks place. I have never taken a deer from the lower level of that one , but did kill what may have been my largest-bodied whitetail buck (43" chest girth) from the upper deck of it with my crossbow in 2017. That buck showed up about 4 minutes after i cleared the leaves out of the upper deck. I am fairly certain he was attracted to that sound, thinking it was a rival buck clearing a scrape. This one is not in such a hot-spot, and also built on a trailer, so I may give it a move. I can't always depend on having dry leaves to scrape out of it.

That is all I use for chucks, since I traded away my Ruger M77 22/250 a few years ago. All my shots are under 50 yards, so that 22/250 was overkill and buying that expensive ammo was a waste of money. A nice thing about that gun was that they never even flinched after taking that bullet from less than 50 yards (aim-point center of mass), and it never left a mark on them. I suppose it turned their insides to jelly when the bullet exploded internally. Most of my shots are from my bedroom window, so the noise was also an issue. You should definitely aim for the head with the .22 LR, if you don't want them to make it back to their hole. I usually kill a few every year and they love living under my old barns. I have been seeing a few this year but have yet to get a crack at one. My 10/22 and a clip of yellow jackets is at my bedside now, just in case one gives me a chance.

You can kill a buck (one 3 in, or larger antler), or a doe with that tag. If you take the archery course, then you can get a second tag that is antlerless only. You get a another buck tag to use during gun season (or late ML) when you purchase your big game license. For an additional $ 10, you may also apply for DMP tags (2 in some DMU's), which are good for antlerless deer and may be used in Archery, Gun, and ML seasons. After November 1, a second draw occurs for "leftover" DMP tags, and you can get (2) more then for free (assuming you paid the $ 10 fee for the first application(s). You can also recieve up to (2) DMP tags signed over to you by another hunter. It is relatively easy to get up to (9) tags in some DMU's but only (2) of them can be "legal antlered (3" or more) bucks, and you can kill all (9) with your crossbow if you wish, starting 2 weeks before the gun opener. Bucks with antlers less than 3" long may be tagged with DMP tag, and you can kill up to (9) of those in a year if you wait until late ML season (the gun buck tag reverts to an either/or at that time). All that venison comes in handy in these days of limited meat supply in stores. NY state is a meat hunters paradise. Most of the confusion results from NY state being forced to consider a crossbow a muzzleloader because the hard lobbing effort of the anti-crossbow group New York Bowhunters. This nonsense has resulted in a glitch whereby one can hunt deer with a crossbow without taking the archery course (but you must remember to carry that little signed form when you are hunting).

"Free" is a bit of a stretch, but there have been a few years when my venison has came in at less than $ 1.00 per pound, including most input costs, and I often get close to that with fish. Combining the two activities is one key to minimizing expenses. For example, bass love bucktail jigs, especially in zebra mussel "gin-cleared" waters. Hooks are cheap and I can always get lead for free (along with the bucktails). I can pour some heads and tie up a few in less time than it would take me to catch nightcrawlers. Tons of money is wasted needlessly on hunting and fishing equipment. Too many folks buy into the lie ""you get what you pay for". In reality, the best things in life are free. "A fool and his money are soon parted" is a much better fit when it comes to hunting and fishing expenses. When it comes to boats, my primary vessel has been serving me well for more than 30 years. I am still killing deer with the old Ithaca 16 gauge that I inherited from my grandad. My supply of Remington sluggers, that I picked up for $ 1.00 a box when a sporting goods store went out of business up in Brewerton a few years back, is starting to get low however.

If you want to try for walleyes, the latest information that I have (from last season) indicates that the "hot bite" has been in the deep holes with jigging Rapalas. I used to go for walleyes down there a lot in my younger days, before I learned how much better bass are. I still have some good friends who are into them and they did very well down there last year.

That is a question I have often wondered about myself. The answer is that many would not be satisfied anywhere, because they are lost spiritually. That leads them to focus and obsess on the dark side. Globally, It would be hard to argue that the dark side was not making great strides under the prior Washington administration. Look at the percentage of global land mass that was controlled by ISIS for some proof of that. I wonder if the 4 or 5 individuals here, who are arguing so strongly against the current administration, realize that they are on the same side as those who "wish death upon the infidels". Nationally, It would be hard to argue against the job that the current administration has done, particularly in areas like black unemployment, which had reached an all time low. The other party does a lot of tough talking but starting with Lincoln, it has always been the Republican party that has actually delivered. As far as NY state goes, there is a "bright" spot that resuls from our disfunctional politics. The hunting and fishing is so spectacular in this state (where it is relatively easy to get all the protein one needs to feed a family "for free"), that everyone and his brother would want to live here without it. That would create a traffic nightmare on the roads, and way too much competition for our readily available "free food". I watch some of those "Alaska" shows and it appears that those poor SOB's have a much tougher time keeping their families fed "off the fat of the land" as I do here in "the best state that there is". I know of only one place where things will be better than they are right here and right now. That is because I know that the dark side will loose, as is written in the world's all time best seller.

I never tried it and it looked dangerous. The guy claimed that it worked good though. I like the old OMC factory pressurized tanks and two-hose systems better than the newer setups. It seems that the old motors with those idled down and trolled a little better. I also had a 1971 9.5 Evinrude, in addition to the 1989 15 hp Johnson (both with the modern single hose fuel systems) and neither idled down as smooth as the 1956 5.5 Evinrude. That was actually the same year/make/model motor that Cathryn Hepburn used on a rowboat in "On Golden Pond" to bring the guys their lunch while they were fishing out on the big boat. Up at the in-laws, we call it the "Ethyl Thayer".

It does look like a much better hull design than my other 12 foot Sears "Gamefisher". That one does not leak at all, but it is poorly designed and it is much slower, using the same outboard motors, as my father in law's 14 ft Meyers rowboat. I only use that one over Thanksgiving weekend (on the years when the lake is not froze by then), because it is light, cheap, and crappy enough to just leave down by the water year-round. We always bring the "good" boat up for winter storage by that time. There must have been a few different vendors who built the aluminum boats for Sears back then. I paid $ 250 for the "crappy" one (found on Craigslist), but that deal included my 1956, 5.5 hp Evinrude, and a 10 hp Chrysler outboard. I gave my marina-owning buddy (the guy I got the "new" boat from), that Chrysler in exchange for his getting the Evinrude running like a watch, and finding me a nice, OEM 4 gallon, pressurized fuel tank for it. The prior owner used a home-made contraption (made from a 5-gallon plastic bucket) for a fuel tank.

I am not yet sure that it will float, but all the rivets look tight and it looks like it should. Hopefully, our creek will rise soon, and I can drag it out and give it a try. We are a bit overdue for some "high-water". We have been struggling at home, for the last 20 years or so, with a tippy canoe when that happens. I have regretted trading my old 14 ft Starcraft rowboat for that canoe. It will be nice having a stable rowboat again. I have another, older Sears Gamefisher 12-foot rowboat up at the in-laws place, but that one has a narrower beam and seems to be made from lighter gauge aluminum. I also don't have paperwork for that one, so I can't register it. That is no big deal on that "private" lake. This one is quite a bit heavier and looks like it would be a lot more stable. I am looking forward to getting it out on Hemlock lake, but first I got to make sure that it floats. If nothing else, maybe I will drag it back to the pond this summer, or fill it with a garden hose. I am lacking oars at home right now though, but I hope to remember to bring a set home from the in-law's when we visit up there on the 4th of July. There are a few extra sets up there, but all I got at home are paddles. The guy I bought this one from had not had it in the water for a long time. He just used it upside down, over the top of his "work-boat", for winter storage.