Tough bite

Clear. 22F.  SW wind @ 5mph
The lake is less rumbly this evening.
The fish are here but not real eager to bite.
First bluegills under early ice.

 

Filled with chironomid goodness.

                                    
                                    No wonder the light bite.

On the ice.

It is safe to be out now.
Six solid inches of ice are uniformly distributed atop the pond.

 

With temperatures in the teens, and only 2 inches of snow on the ice, the freezing process is in high gear. The boys and I head out and drill a few holes just before the daylight fails. The lake is noisy and alive - full of expansion music.
Slsssssss - aaaaaah aaah - slssssss- crick crick crick - aaaah - Boom ! Creeeeeekk - bBoom!
Water rises and falls in the holes with each new crack and quake.  The dogs look nervously at each other, at me, toward shore. The whole sheet of ice is on vibrate.  But then a crappie comes up the hole and the youngster is transformed into a dog possessed.
I unhook and drop the 9 incher back down the hole. I have made the dog insane ! A couple more bangs - bBaaaang - aaaaaah - errrrrrrr - clank ! Sounds like beating on a steel drum with a bat ! The spaniel bugs out for the shore.

Craaaaack - reeee reeeee reeeee- slllllsssss- errrrrr - bbBoom! 
No more bites.
The music too loud and sweet.

Oops !

It is perhaps a bit soon................

I don't see a pickup connected to this rig, but then that would be the less buoyant bit, wouldn't it.

Leave no trace

Of course there are different ways of walking across the land. Mr. Big's pursuer, I can assume, takes a different path than mine. He provides numerous clues about his life and character.  Clues which I would not leave behind for anyone or any thing to ponder.

Mr. Big's pursuer set up his tree stand in a 60 year old red pine that grows in the corner of property that he does not own and is not public ground.  It is within 50 yards of Mr. Big's prominent calling card. He smoked at least eight cigarettes while waiting for a deer to come within range of his 30-06. He used scent and wicks to attract a buck. He fired his rifle twice.

I collected his trash and took it home. He is a pig.

I find no evidence that Mr. Big was killed here.

Who Killed Mr. Big ?

I don't know if anyone killed the big boy who's responsible for this, but if they did I would like to see the candelabra atop his head.  The youngster and I got out and about for the last hour of daylight, and found this place of Rut-O-Rama in the corner of the woodlot.  We also found a grouse to miss.  A great outing.  That's a little 28 gauge Uggie for perspective.

Stiff

During the night of the twelfth
twelve degrees fahrenheit were achieved
freeze up the result

goodbye long rods
kayak paddles
waves

no roll cast
double haul
nor Duncan loop

unjoint the angles
oil the reels
bag up the dekes
pickle the outboard

many months of stiff water
ahead
to endure
hurry April

And October is but a memory as well......

 Seems that I kept a more detailed and timely record of stuff when it was just a notebook and a pencil. Weather, phenology, what the fish were taking, how many fish got bonked on the head, flush to bag grouse hunting statistics, annual tally of trout kill and release, and the occasional crude sketch of some piece of beauty.  A few lines penned, just for the record, just for my consumption, maybe for later, you know - the dream of someday actually writing something worth reading.

Now with the ease (insert consternation here) of communicating in the digital age, I find that I don't keep track of much of anything in writing, either in the old notebook or on this blog page. Seems that I have more shit to do and less shit gets done. And less time, all the time.

And now October is gone.  September as well.  Best intentions were to splash a bunch of fall leaf colors on the page and wax on about living inside a kaleidoscope and how the sugar content was different this year, and how the colors were predicted to be poor because of the drought, but then No ! they were wrong, the drought induced brilliant colors! and how can the Theys of the world be so wrong and so right at the same time about the same thing.  And then, well that brought me back to politics and the presidential race and being so left and so right at the same time over the same things and negativism and attack ads and well.....  I was just about ready to shoot myself !!!

So, instead I took the young dog into the marsh. And the world just kind of slowed down for at least one morning. Ah wilderness............... The  sunrise was on time, the ducks flew, and I shot well. All the training paid off.  The youngster retrieved six birds!  And I didn't do any shouting or cursing.

I best go bird hunting again.  Soon.