Sunday, May 13, 2018

A pesky loon



After looking at the maps, the stocking reports, the google earth, more maps, and then some more maps, I finally decided to go for it. Forty-eight miles one way from home down some fairly rough forest roads is where I ended up. A put and take trout lake. At twenty-one acres and a mean depth of only nine feet, I suppose it is more of a pond than a lake. I wanted some alone time and an adventure into the unknown, so this trip filled the bill. I half expected to find that the lake had winterkilled, or the other half expectation was that there would be a circus of Yahoos plugging up the whole lake.

But I went for it anyhow and on arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was all alone. Except for the loon! I have been around a lot of loons. Boated, paddled, fished around em. Shit, I even built a loon nesting platform at the home place. There have been plenty of times that a loon has checked me out - dived under the kayak, swam a couple circles around to check things out, and then off they would go.  Not this loon.
This thing dogged me. Twenty feet behind the boat it followed. But when I put up the camera.....Dive! Then it would pop up twenty feet in front of me. Camera.......... Dive!

This went on for the better part of an hour and I was not going to fish, for fear of hooking this crazy bird. I could just picture this thing bagging my streamer and then towing me around the pond. I should have been able to get some great close up shots, but no, this bird would not hold still for a photo. After a while, and I was getting pretty annoyed by then, it finally headed over to the other side of the pond. At last I could finally start flingin the flies.

I caught a few fish, gut the loon was never very far away - I had more half thoughts that he might come zooming in and bag a struggling trout on the end of the line. But that never happened.

Instead the frogs sang their heads off, the wild plums bloomed like madness, and the Piscator had another Beauty May day.







Thursday, May 10, 2018

May we ?


It's all good
But the first week of May has been really very good
Every day brings something new, remembered, longed for
Ephemeral
Ringnecked ducks diving for last autumn's rice
Turtles both painted and snapping breathing deeply at the surface
Bumble bees at the Hepaticas
Brook trout eager for a big cold water meal
Rosebreasted grossbeak cocks
Gaudy and winging in on the first warm rain
Storms of falling aspen catkins
and of course
fly rod panfish at a beaver house

Truly a constant
yet never at precisely the same moment, rate, or intensity
from year to year the events are replicated
If lucky enough to behold and participate
there is no better
Season

                                                       Song of the White Throated Sparrow

                                                                        Water Dog

                                                                  Leader Shredder

                                                                  Bumble Food

                                                                      Old Friends


                                                               What it is all about

And then after the suns sets
The techno world offers up something new from Old Neil
This one's for you David
Where ever you are...........