wolc123

I don't care for heights but I do find a hammock-style, on the ground, tree seat very comfortable, as long as it is not raining. I do have a hoss, but no saddle:

I was hoping to get it installed today, but the weather is too good for working outside. The ground is drying out real well and I still got lots of corn to plant. It is supposed to rain on Tuesday, so I will probably get it installed then. You can see my old Eagle flasher on the council and a little bit of the Eagle LCR graph at the stern, but this little baby will go up front by the trolling motor: Maybe I will put disconnects on the power cable so that I can take it up to the in-laws place in the Adirondacks and use it on a rowboat or my father in law's party boat (he keeps a 12-volt battery on that for his 10 hp, 4-stroke, electric-start, "weighs a ton" Honda outboard. I mostly fish the shoreline up there, so a depth-finder is not a necessity.

I don't disagree. The main-stream media exists to "fan the flames" . No story with no flames.

Those days are the best. I don't enjoy releasing ANY fish. That is especially true for bass, which I find to be better eating than walleye or perch, since learning how to properly care for and prepare them. Bass have more oil in them, so the meat stays moist while cooking, using "healthier" methods, such as baking, grilling, or broiling. Fish-oil is very good for you, while vedgetable, or animal oil that is usually used for frying is not. The key to the excellent taste of the bass, is to keep them alive and as fresh as possible, until the meat is removed and vacuum-sealed. A live-well works wonderful for that. I have worn out more live-well pumps than I have outboard motors. Perch and walleyes do not have as much oil in them, and they tend to dry out too much in comparison to bass. To me, "catch and release" is mostly just the senseless maiming of a fine food source. God gave man meat for food, not for sport. That said, I ain't perfect and have done plenty of it, usually when they are too big to be real good eating, or when they contain too many chemicals to be safe to eat.

This country has two big black eyes, one from carrying on slavery so long, and the other from the mis-treatment of native Americans. It should be no wonder that the descendants of those who were made to suffer long ago, react violently at the slightest provocation. This type of thing will continue until folks realize that there is no such thing as "race" and that we are all the same people in God's eyes (and biologically).

Thanks for the recommendation. I will keep you posted on how it works out, but probably will not get out fishing again before the third Saturday in June. The new fishing rod that I ordered the same day, from the same place did not arrive yet but they say that it shipped.

Bass Pro Shops had these on sale last week ($ 99), so I ordered one and it arrived yesterday. It is surely a major upgrade from the old Huminbird that I had up in the bow of my boat. It will be nice to be able to read water surface temperature again, since my old Lowrance temperture gauge has not worked in about 10 years. The GPS feature should be good for getting back to the "hot-spots". I am very "old-school", so I am sure I will appreciate the "flasher" feature. Hopefully, the screen will be easy to read in the bright sunlight (that was often a struggle with my old flasher). I am pretty sure that my favorite feature will be the silent operation, after listening to the old Huminbird "hum" loudly for the last 30 years. Last Sunday, it was more of a "scream", as the bearings must be on their way out on the drive motor. I have two Eagle Sonar units on the boat (a LCD graph at the stern and a 35 year old "Silent-60" flasher at the center council) and both are noise-free. I always disliked that loud Huminbird up front due to its "hum". One of tomorrow's projects will be to get it mounted on my boat. It came with a trolling motor transducer mount. I had Jury-rigged a transom transducer on my trolling motor for the old Huminbird, after the custom trolling motor transducer (that I think I paid $ 100 for), got wrecked. That worked ok, but never as good as the custom trolling motor unit. I nearly skipped this new purchase, and almost moved the old Eagle graph from the back up to the front instead, since I rarely use it back there anymore. I might try backtrolling for walleyes or salmon trolling with downriggers again someday, and that stern mount graph is great for those. It was really the GPS that made me drop the hundred however, and I would have hesitated even less had I known about the surface temperature feature.

I went for a "real-beef" one of those (a double but without cheese) from the drive-thru on Wednesday, for my first meal out since all this Covid-19 stuff started. I had to work late and I needed the calories before the drive home. It tasted pretty good, after three months of mostly venison for protein. Not a bad use of $ 6.79 (I had the exact change). I brought my own water, so I did not need to spring for their high-priced beverages.

Happy birthday and good luck hunting and fishing.

I feel the same way. Stuffed peppers made with venison is one of my favorite dishes. My wife much prefers ground venison (with no pork added) over ground beef for any recipe that calls for that ingredient. "Lazy" style stuffed cabbage is my personal favorite. Our kids favorite is venison tacos, but hoagies made with sliced backstrap is a close second. We all love spaghetti with venison meat sauce or meatballs also, and who don't like venison chile ? If I had to pick one meat that I could eat every day it would be venison, but I realize that our kids could get sick of it, if we had it too often. That happened to me when I was young with chicken. My dad discovered that raising meat chickens was the cheapest way to feed our family so we ate it way too often. To this day, I don't ever order chicken when we go out to eat, and I don't like it too often at home, and that is a direct result of having too much of it growing up. We definitely go thru more ground venison than anything else, so I grind everything but the backstraps and tenderlions of most of the "mature" deer that I process. The last time we ran out of grind was for one week in October 2016. Fortunately, I scored in the early northern zone ML season that year, to end that 1 week drought, and our supply has been good ever since. I always put the grind from the first deer each year in zip-lock bags, because vacuum sealing something that gets used within a few months is a waste of time and money. The rest get vacuum sealed though, since it keeps for at least 4 years with no loss in flavor that way. We are just getting into the grind from My 2018 gun buck at this time, which was a 182 pound whopper with a 42" chest girth, so it will take us a while to get thru that. My 2019 crossbow buck was in ziplock bags, but a bit smaller body and we finished that up a few weeks ago. I don't think we will get started on the grind from last year's gun doe, until well after northern zone ML season. I am planning on taking that whole week off this year so hopefully we will not run out of grind again anytime soon.

Not sure, but on my 5.5 Evinrude there was a little plastic dog thing that broke off, which resulted in non-engagement (I had to use my separate pull rope around the flywheel for the rest of that long weekend up in the Adirondacks, but fortunately that one usually starts with the first pull). I pulled the whole recoil assembly off and took it to Lang's outboards in N.T. during the off-season, and he charged me around $ 10 to replace it.

15" (short shaft). It always was a good motor. That frayed recoil rope is the first thing to go wrong with it. One $ 13 part, after 30 years of service, was pretty good. I did put a new set of plugs in it this spring, and maybe one other time over that stretch. The rope held up ok to start it up again while the guy was here so that he could listen to it run. The center core was still intact, just the outer sheath was missing over a few inches of length. I always carry a spare pull rope that can be wrapped around the flywheel to start it if the recoil fails. For about (5) years, I used that 15 hp Johnson on a 12 foot rowboat, for two long weekends each fall at a cabin my in-laws used to rent on Red Lake (attached to the Indian river). Those little 12 footers were rated for 10 hp max and the 15 was a bit much for them, but it probably pushed them close to 30 mph. It was a bit unstable though, so the last few years up there, I used an early 1950's, 5 hp Mercury Super-5, that I bought at the auction at our family reunion, about 15 years ago. One of my cousins has a camp up in Canada and he always bring his "junk" to the reunion. I paid $ 20 for a pair, as "non-runners", and I gave one to my marina-owning buddy in exchange for him getting the other one running like new.

I just ordered a Garmin which included a GPS from Bass Pro. It was on sale for $ 99 and includes a transducer with trolling motor mount. I also picked up another fishing rod to replace one my daughter broke last Sunday. I should be all set for the regular bass opener on the third Saturday in June now.

I did 10 minutes ago. I noticed that the recoil was frayed and it needed a new rope ($ 13.25 on E-Bay). He offered me $ 500 and said that he did not need the fuel tank. I had no use for the tank because my 1956 kicker runs a two-hose setup with a pressurized tank and my 70 hp feeds from a built-in tank. I let him have it with the tank for $ 525. He seemed like a nice guy and he is an Army veteran who was stationed up at Ft Drum for a while. Now I can "splurge" on a new depthfinder for the bow of my boat (the old Humminbird flasher took a crap last Sunday). The 1981 Eagle "silent 60" on the dash is still going strong however. I originally bought that one for my rowboat when I was in high school. I like to run one from each brand because they run different frequencies and do not interfere with each other.

It move my 17-footer about 16 mph, loaded down with the "broke down" big motor and a couple medium-sized guys. I will probably have to settle for about 5 mph with the little 5.5 hp that I have for backup now.

The last few years, the pike numbers have been down up in the St Lawrence. I remember a time, maybe 15 years ago, when we would get about 6 pike per largemouth when fishing the shallow weedbeds. Now that ratio is just about reversed, which is real good as far as my wife is concerned. I do miss those hard-striking pike a bit however. My family's camp is on Goose bay (one bay down-river of A-bay), and that bay used to be infested with small pike (they call them "hammer handles" up there. Now they are few and far between. They used to get tons of them, and some big ones, thru the ice on that bay. 40" was my personal biggest pike, and that one came from Lake of the Isles (caught on a big spinnerbait while bass fishing). That mount now hangs in our billiard room next to a 30" St Lawrence walleye and a 50" Niagara rive musky.

Pickled y-bones are a delicacy up in the Thousands island area. A neighbor up there used to fillet all I would give him and all he asked was that he could keep the y-bones. He cut off all the meat in one big slab and then used a straight razor to cut out the part with the y-bones. It was amazing how much meat he could get off those fish, with almost no waste. He was super fast at it, probably having done thousands. I never remember finding a single bone in any of those that he cleaned for us. I used a method that involved cutting off the back meat above the spine and then trying to stay outside the y-bones to remove the side meat. Lots of meat went to waste that way and I sometimes missed a bone or two. One year my brother in law choked on one and they had to take him to the hospital in A-bay to try and remove it. The operation was not successful (y-bones don't show up on x-rays). The following day, he coughed up the y-bone while eating an oreo cookie for breakfast. My wife has not allowed us to fish for pike since that time which was at least 10 years ago. Now, I mostly just catch them by accident while bass fishing.

They are fun. My favorite part is the strike. There is no missing that, and sometimes it is so violent that they just about tear the rod out of your hand. I used to fish for them a lot more but my wife is troubled by the bones in the meat. I tried to get most of them out when filleting but it seems that she always manages to find a few.

I thought about doing that. I saw a hood from a 9.9 on craigslist a while ago, that would have done the trick, but I got to be able to sleep at night. What I like about that 15 hp 2-stroke, is that it has a good power/weight ratio. My father in law has a newer, electric-start Honda 10 hp four-stroke on his big party boat on that lake, and it weighs about double what my 15 hp weighs. I get stuck hauling it up the steep stairs, to put it away for the winter, which is no easy task. My "updated" 1956, 5-1/2 hp Evinrude, 16:1 gas/oil mix 2-stroke is just a little lighter than the 1990 15 hp Johnson, but it still runs as smooth as a Swiss watch. I can't pull the girls around on water-skis with it on a 14 ft rowboat, like I could with that 15 hp however.

This motor has very low hours and is in good condition. I have mostly used it for backup for my boat's 70 hp Johnson, and only needed to use it one time for that purpose. It had enough power to get my 17 footer on plane with two guys in it. The little 5-1/2 Evinrude that I use for that purpose now will never do that. I am selling it because there is a 10 hp maximum hp limit on the lake where I now spend most of my "free" time. The photos were taken today. I put some fresh gas and it fired right up and still runs like it did when new. 6 gallon tank and fuel hose is included as well as owners manual and original bill of sale. Asking price: $ 550 cash, WNY local pickup.

I am enjoying the same beverage (my favorite "lunch" beer), along with an "unexpected" lunch. The freezer package was labeled "liver", but it turned out to be beef heart. Oh well, beggers can't be choosers, so I'll take what I can get from my beef farmer friends and family. I already had the cayene spiced flour and chopped onions ready to go so I went ahead and sliced it up and fried it as if it was liver. A little chewier, but tastes great and goes real good with the cream ale. All in all a pretty good "feast" to celebrate the completion of my spring plowing, which I just finished up this morning:

The water was bad in the Black Rock canal today also. It looked to be full of mud, flowing in from the Buffalo River, probably due to lots of rain over the last week. Lake Erie was generally clear however, with about 20 feet of visibility. We only spent about 10 minutes in the muddy water of the canal before heading back out on the the lake.

Silver lake was slow last week. The water was still very cold and we did not see any signs of any fish in the shallows. With the warm weather we have been getting the last few days, I think the action there should be picking up. Usually the pike bite along the edge of the weeds in the north and south ends is pretty good. My favorite bait there for those toothy critters is a jig and minnow. The water is usually very clear and I always have more luck "doubling" up my last foot or so of mono or flourocarbon line rather than using steel leaders. The lack of fees for launching is nice, at the state parks.

White, which is a perennial, so it will last several years, with nothing more than mowing a few times a year for maintenance. Red is taller and an annual.