The First Hunt

I'll jump right to the point and say I didn't shoot anything yesterday. Not that the day was fruitless. I found places I won't bother going again and a few places I definitely will.

Drove to a small lake at local game area, arriving just short of 8. I'd wanted be there well before that, but I always underestimate the time it takes to drive to that area--near Picnkney, actually. The lake was beautiful, ducks or not, even in the steady rain and the wind that sheared yellow leaves from the oak and polar trees in clouds. No houses stood along its sides--just reeds, shrubs, tall trees, and shallow, mucky backwaters. To my untrained eye, it looks like a decent place to set up for waterfowl. I didn't, since there was a truck with Ducks Unlimited stickers parked at the landing. I had no idea where the guy was set up, and I didn't want to stumble around his blind.

Next I made my way west to another small lake on public land, and followed a small creek with a fairly swift current to where it entered the lake. I expect that would be a nice spot for the late season, when lakes begin to ice up. But step into the lake to test its bottom told me that trying to retrieve a duck there would be suicial. I went in to my knee, with no sign of stopping, in half a second. This will be a problem with many southern Michigan lakes. Getting a float tube may be a good idea, provided I can find a spot I can reach w/o walking through half a mile of osier and multiflora.

I tried to take a shortcut to avoid some of the tangle on the way back to my car, which led to the low point of the day. I lost sight of the landmarks I'd seen going in and ended up walking in circles for over an hour. At one point I could see a road intersection across a narrow strip of marsh that was heavily posted. I passed it by a couple of times, not wanting to trespass, but finally I went for it--I would have welcomed being picked up by the sheriff at that point. I was actually very close to my car when I came out of the swamp--a relief, though it made me feel that much more the idiot.

After that I turned back toward Ann Arbor, poking around in a few marshy spots along the way, each of which had that same soft marl bottom. I did jump a couple of wood ducks in a small river, though I wasn't carrying my gun at the time. The river flows near a rental cabin in a state park, and I suspected it might not be open to hunting. I was right, though I walked along it for a ways just to see if any birds were there, and sure enough...

I returned home wet, chilled and very happy. No, happy doesn't cut it--I was deeply conscious of being alive, and of the goodness of that. Not that I don't appreciate life, but sometimes the value of the condition is easier to grasp.

I have a feeling most of my duck trips this fall will be like that, just poking around. But returning home with that feeling will make them worth whatever disappointments they bring.

Just Ducking In...

It's been a series of day-late dollar-short weeks. So the blog goes on the back burner. But I do miss it, despite being at a loss for what I might say lately.

Anyway a couple of new finds to pass along.

First, Modern Ice Fishing joins the FTR blogroll. It looks like new venture, but it may prove useful to some readers during the approaching cold months.

Also, I've been persuing the tailfeather-kickin' duck blog Shiawassee Kid. The man's in the middle of a long ND waterfowling odyssey. Wish I was there.

Why have you been reading a duck hunting blog, you may ask. As it happens, I'm taking my first duck hunt tomorrow. It will be as much a scouting trip as a hunting trip. I'll cruise a few local wet spots on public land and see what's there to see. I may get the gun out, I may not. But I'm pumped (pardon the phrase--I shoot an 870).

The weather does look ducky.
Here's to feathers in the coat tomorrow.

BREAKING: New Record Brown?

The Ludington Daily News is reporting that a Grand Rapids angler caught a 41 lb 7 oz. brown trout from the Manistee river this morning. DNR biologists have verified the weight. This would top the current world record by more than a pound. Certification of the record is pending...

Cute Overload

Cuteness is a quality relative to scale.

The University of Victoria is taking a soft approach to get rid of a warm and fluffy problem — the hundreds of feral bunnies that call the campus home.

School administrators are looking for someone to trap and sterilize about 150 of the rabbits and put them up for adoption as part of pilot program.

The rabbits, which come in a variety of colours, appear to be the pet store variety, not the wilder Peter Cottontail sort. According to university staff, however, the lives of the estimated 1,500 campus rabbits can be dangerous, difficult and short, with cars, dogs and the occasional sadistic student bringing things to an abrupt end.

They are also a nuisance, digging holes in sports fields and gnawing their way through gardens in surrounding neighbourhoods, according to Patty Mack, president of the Mount Tolmie Community Association.

"They are awfully cute, but it has gone to the point where there are just way too many of them," Mack said.


The rest.

And if the foster-bunny plan doesn't work, we are approaching the season of tailgate cookouts...

Diver Down

Man found lurking in toilet again


By LORNA COLQUHOUN
New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent
Wednesday, Sep. 2, 2009


Four years ago, Gary Moody explained his presence in the bottom of a pit toilet on the Kancamagus Highway by saying he was retrieving his wife's lost wedding ring. Now Moody -- who dodged jail time in that incident -- is facing three new charges related to incidents at a campground toilet in the White Mountain National Forest.

The rest.

"Again"? And I thought I'd met some odd people in campgrounds...

Happy Labor Day; Au Sable 9/4

Being free myself from the chains of labor last Friday, and surmising that the day might provide some first-rate fishing, I made a day trip to the Au Sable.

I planned to spend most of the day on the big water below Mio, but I remembered heavy trico hatches on the north branch over a labor day weekend a few years ago, so I went there first. My car thermometer read 41 degrees when I pulled into an access above twin bridges just before 9AM. Tricos did come, around 10:15, but the hatch was very thin. Feeding activity was lighter than when I'd fished the same stretch in July, and the fish that showed were exceptionally spooky. I put down the first two pods of fish I cast to after two or three casts. I approached a third on hands and knees, setting up behind a large sand ridge that ran between a weedy backwater and the run where the fish were rising. It was difficult to get a good drift over the fish, since there wasn't room for a backcast that would load the rod (even my whippy 4 wt) and generate enough forward power straighten the leader. Kneeling and catching the water with the elbow of my rod arm when I cast didn't help with accuracy either. But I did manage a few good drifts and didn't put the fish down with the bad ones. During the twenty or so minutes the hatch lasted, I managed a couple of smaller brook trout and a shiner.

I headed downstream to Mio for the afternoon and evening. Bob Linsenman told me that white fly soft hackles were still the ticket, so I hopped downstream from access to access fishing one in tandem with other nymphs or emergers. The midday action wasn't red hot, not even as good as it had been the Friday before. I took three planter rainbows, lost a few others.

That wasn't the most regrettable part of the afternoon, though. While fishing in front of the Davis rest area, I heard a roaring coming from upstream and I turned around to see two jet skis rounding the bend. They weren't moving fast but they're kicking up a wake that could easily (and possibly did) swamp a canoe and making enough racket to drown out every drunken tuber on the river. After they passed a cloudy ribbon trailed along the river's edge for almost five minutes, erosion from their wake breaking on the bank. Soon they were headed back upstream: more noise, more silt. I hope jet skiing isn't becoming popular on those waters.

Around 4:30 a nice BWO hatch began and fish began feeding avidly. Over the next hour and a half I caught about 10 trout, 10-14" long. When the bwos faded, I went to the McKinley bar for a quick supper and got back on river a bit before 7:30. The white fly hatch began shortly, and using an emerger, I took 8 or 9 trout about like those I'd caught on olives. When they stopped hitting the emerger, I looked down for spinners and saw none.

Last year on a superb night of white flies, I switched to a spinner pattern far too early and missed a lot of trout I should have taken, but didn't switch back because I didn't want to have to re-tie the spinner on in the dark. Last Friday I decided to keep the emerger on until the spinner fall was obviously in progress, but a succession of trout ignored it. When I did see the first spinner, I immediately went to change flies, but I fumbled tieing on the spinner in near darkness (there's a stretch between twilight and full dark where the vest light is of limited help). I only heard about two rises once I was ready to go, and my casts in their direction produced nothing. But having done well earlier, my regrets were mild.

I sometimes feel guilty about these day trips, burning a lot of money and gas for a single day of pleasure. Sometimes I don't even catch much. But this one was worth every penny and every pound of C02.

Au Sable Big Water, 8/27-28

Got onto the water Thursday and saw numerous risers--took me a while to figure out what they wanted, but once I got the BH soft hackle white fly, I took 7 or 8 rainbows and browns up to 14". Mostly missed the evening white fly emergence, which started earlier than I'd expected--probably on account of the cool weather. In camp that night, the fire was not just about atmospherics.

Friday was slower--managed five trout, including one 15" brown, in the afternoon, all on olive emergers, but rain drove me from the river in the evening.

Camping at the Loop was an unsettling experience, as usual. Details to follow.

Heading out...

Up to Mio for a few days. Tweets and report to follow.

He Stopped Purring Today

Apologies to George Jones for the title of this, but it's as apt a phrase as I can think of to sum up the death and life of my cat, Pavlov. He was as affectionate a cat as I've ever seen, and sometimes I thought he spent his entire waking life purring. Not so much over the last week when he rarely left the couch, and a cyst that had grown on his side since last winter began to abscess. But we squeezed one more out of him as we held him in the vet's office this morning before we gave him the shot. About an hour ago we buried him between the pines in our backyard, wrapped up with a small St. Francis icon and a sprig of catnip to make the journey pleasant. He was 19.

I won't give a protracted elegy here, and I won't rehearse the difficulty of making the decision, which we actually went to the vet's this morning not assuming we'd have to make, even though I knew it was a possibility. It was awful to have to decide, but unquestionably the right thing. He'd been declining for months, and had almost nothing left to give. He could hardly walk from the couch to his food bowl without stumbling, though he often made the attempt, as his appetite remained excellent right to the end.

It is a sad day, though given his age and his relatively good health until the last, not a tragic one.

I really couldn't ask for more from a pet, though Pavlov had his faults, among them that he photographed poorly. His gray/black coloration didn't show up well against most backdrops, at least not with the lighting in our house. I had trouble choosing among at least slightly disappointing likenesses of him for this memorial post. Ultimately I chose this one, taken just a couple of weeks ago, when for once he seemed to be lit up well. We took almost thirty pictures of him that day, most of which we snapped just as he was moving. So they're generally blurry, or have a little glare, but this I thought was one of the best, taken on one of the last days he was at his.



Farewell, Pavlov (AKA the Pea, the Peanut). Thanks for 17 fine years.

Paddling East, Fishing West

Had a nice float with Kristine down the south branch and mainstream of the Au Sable. I won't go deeply into detail. We paddled, we saw eagles, deer, an otter; slept on the ground, woke one morning in fog so thick it felt like drizzle; ate out of cans and bags; I watched in agony Thursday night and Friday morning as rainbows rose to BWOs for hours on end in the waters below Mio.

We took few pictures on this trip--certainly not enough to offer anything like a photonarrative of the trip. Since I had the camera most of the time, the quality may not be what it could have been. But here are a couple of random shots that came out OK.




The Mason Chapel, on the south branch




Our last night's camp, at Meadow Springs

I started missing the trip as soon as we hauled out. I've been online-window-shopping for canoes since we got home.

Quite the mind-wipe it was. I didn't give much thought to work or other routine concerns, except to note a couple of times the fact that I wasn't thinking of them. Returning to reality is much harder than letting it go--I almost began that with "unfortunately," but I'm not sure about that.

After the float was over and the livery hauled us back to our car in Roscommon, we headed up the road to Grayling to recover with a motel room for the night and the obligatory dinner at Spike's. In the morning, I snuck out to fish the Manistee, giving the Au Sable a break because I'd never tried the Big M before in trico season. A fair hatch came off around 9, and I took 5 legal or better browns, plus some dinky ones. Fish were active in a few locations, but completely absent from long stretches of water. Nothing worth opening the champers over, but a pleasant wrap to the trip.

A busy week ahead, with preparations for classes. I may or may not blog