Late for the King

It has been five days since I walked the trails over on the other side of the lake.
Of course the Boletes came out to play in my absence
All past tense now
Riddled with insects
Ah, but to be a little beetle

The summer has taken the turn as we tilt ever faster toward autumn.

Experiments in extermination

Purple loostrife   Lythrum,salicaria
Exotic, beautiful, invasive.
There is a clump of this stuff that grows in the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge and I first made it's acquaintance in the summer of Y2K. It was blooming profusely, but looking somewhat forlorn as it was the only one of its kind amidst a vast expanse of cattail, sedges, and wild rice. I determined to prevent it from spreading, so cut off its flowers, stuffed them into a sack and deposited them in the local landfill.
Each summer I visit the site and do some mayhem to this persistent plant. It has been pulled out by the roots, cut down to ground level, had its flower heads removed, even shoveled out one year when I was more ambitious.

It has not spread, but comes back every year. I cut off the flower heads again this year - twice !!

Standard operating equipment

 

Over the years a lot of time has been spent in one of these boats.
Fishing, hunting, freight hauling, wild ricing, and of course canoe tripping and camping.
Grumman 17' aluminum canoe, designed and first manufactured in 1944.
These sturdy canoes revolutionized travel in the BWCA up until the time of Kevlar and Royalex.
But I had never actually owned one, as they are ubiquitous in the north country.

So, I saw one sitting on the side of the road the other day with a "For Sale" sign attached.
The 85 year old widow who was selling and her late husband had paddled thousands of miles in the days of their firmity through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness - years before it was a designated area.
Well worn, dented, straightened, beaten and patched - the stories it could tell.
It does not leak.

 

Home it came
Like I need another boat.............

wee oinker

boletus, edulis
a.k.a. King Bolete
a.k.a. porcini

Been lookin' a long time for this little piggy

Hot days

 


Bloody hot
92 in the shade and a heat index of one oh oh
nosing around the upper ottertail country
no sweat lodge required
vision quest or heat stroke
call it what you will
hybrids appear as if hallucinations from the bowels of the pool

at the twilight's last gleaming

Round about the summer solstaice through July fourth, give or take a week, there is a hatch of hexagenia, limbata that emerges from a stream not far from my digs. Over the years, the brown trout that lurk in the river where the hatch occurs have been hotly pursued by the Piscator, ever hopeful that he might be able to bring a big one to hand. Relative to other trout waters, its a pretty low numbers deal, but there are some big fish to be had, and a weak semblance of predictability that keeps me interested year after year. Well OK, it's pretty much a crap shoot when you lay the whole thing out.

Generally when fishing the hex hatch I hit the water at the crack of 9:00 pm.  Time enough to suit up, lather up with bug dope, hike into a good (relative term) spot and wait for the show to begin. If the curtain actually goes up, it's happening by about 10:15 and all over in 45 minutes at legal closing time. It's always a big game of chance that goes something like this:

As the daylight finally fails a sparse hatch of insects might begin, consisting of a few Giant stones, sulphers, maybe some bigger stuff like Hendricksons or march browns, couple of caddis - and maybe three Hex total - and not a riser anywhere. The following night there might be Hex duns hatching off the water like popcorn in the middle of a blizzard - and not a single fish showing! Then the following night the Spinners are swarming and falling from the sky like November mallards to a picked cornfield - and no fish showing !!

But then again it might go like this:

Not a bug anywhere to be seen and the fish just whack with abandon, even a poorly placed and sunken fly!
Or perhaps a moderate train of hex on the water rolls past and a perfect rhythm of rise, cast, take, fight, land, release, and you think it's just so easy. Shit pours into your head like "we bad, we bad!", "I am freakin' invincible", "pro staff", custom endorsements,  and other euphoric nonsense! But, oh here have been some memorable hatches that produced so many hex that you could feel them hitting your rod in the darkness and they covered face and hands - complete with obliging hungry fish!
And then there are those rare and crazy times when you could probably just hook on a wine cork or one of your own stinky socks, throw it out there - and the stupid bastards would jostle each other out of the way for a chance to kill and eat it !
But of course that is all tempered by the dreaded and always possible no flies and no fish scenario.

Now mix and match these differing situations into whatever probability/predictability model/equation you might want to construct, and there you have the Hex game. There's also the whole range of climatic and hydrologic variables, but I won't get into that.

The one constant though is the Vampire swarm. Shortly before the Hex are, or are not going to come out, the legions, and I mean legions, no perhaps I mean Mongol Hoards; ok, I'll just go with Gazillions of fuggin mosquitoes arrive to dine on whatever nano patch of exposed skin that you have missed in the liberal application of some awful formulation of DEET.

So I've been out there lately and the score is 0 for 3.  Skunked, blanked and busted.  The first night out and it was the no bug no fish routine.  The second outing produced a couple of bugs and a couple of small fish that rose but weren't hooked.  And the third night went kind of like this:

Arrive at river at the appointed hour. Suit up, dose self liberally with horrible mosquito repellant. Hike to spot and set up.  Feed mosquitoes while staring at flat, hexless, fishless water.  Observe large beaver swimming upstream into preferred fishing spot. Curse the fuggin luck. Endure 20 minutes of beaver harassment which includes grunting, hooting, tail slapping, menacing submarine swim by, and general fugging up the hole behavior. Harasss beaver with splashing, kicking, yelling, cursing and finally log throwing behavior. Unjoint rod as beaver meanders downstream laughing. Notice inexplicable fish rise withing casting range. Notice inexplicable fish # 2 within casting range. Rejoint rod. False cast to fish #1 and plant fly firmly in alder bush. Curse. Yank, pull, wobble on line and put fish down while breaking off fly. Tie on new fly in the dark with headlamp and old eyes and happy mosquitoes between eyeglasses and eyeballs. Turnoff headlamp and let eyes adjust to darkness. Observe fish # 2 still present.  False cast toward fish # 2 and bang fly on rod tip on forward cast. Curse.
Throw unchecked fly to fish # 2. Set hook and miss as fish # 2 pounces on fly.  Check hopelessly fouled fly in headlamp glow. Call out loud to self "putz, dilrod, moron", and endless other derogatory terms. Leave.

Guess the book is closed on hex hatch 2013.

 

Stewards of the Land?

Field A
For at least the last ten years, this was a field of grass. Most of the 25 or so acres are out of the picture and slope steeply up from this waterway.  Last fall the field was plowed up and tilled down to bare ground.  This spring it was planted to small grain and a "grassless" waterway was cut in after planting.

 

Field B
For at least fifteen years up until around 2009, this 80 acre field had been in perennial alfalfa. Most years three crops were harvested, baled and removed from the field with precise attention to how the weather dictated it be done. In 2009 the alfalfa was killed with herbicide, the field was plowed up and tilled down to bare ground. Corn was planted in the few inches of organic soil that overlaid the parent sand.  One rain event turned the field from rich brown to tan, and gullies began to form in the waterways. Now it is in the corn/bean rotation with this year being the bean year. The gullies grow and the deltas of sand enlarge.

Field C
For at least twenty years up until 2010, this 80 acre field was the stuff of the sand plain - prairie smoke, big bluestem, Indian grass, and tumbleweed and a few stunted pioneering jackpine. The last greater prairie chicken that I saw on the Shell Prairie was here about twenty five years ago. Then in the fall of 2010 it was plowed up and tilled down to bare ground. The forty across the road got the same treatment.  A center pivot irrigator was installed to make up for coarse sandy soil and the naturally dry climate. In 2011 it was planted to spuds maybe, 2012 to corn, and this year to beans.

I may be off on the timing of these changes by a year or two, but "Hey" its just an observation of my commute. I don't collect data on this stuff............I just watch shit happen.............................. Stewards?