Greasy B

Hatcheries produce hideous fish but given enough time that river allows them to turn back to something wonderful. Those are beautiful.

Yeah, it’s a different world now. A while back my brother and were looking into buy a new river jon. Our primary concern wasn’t power or speed it was how do we install grab rails and lean bars.

Our local liquor store has a few bottles of Pappy Van Winkle, somewhere in the $800.00 range. I’m trying to imagine an occasion grand enough to justify a bottle.

I recall seeing these jack plates on wooden Jons when I first floated the Eleven Point, ~1980. It was impressive watching boatmen adjust the throttle and jack plate to glide through Mary Decker shoal. Equally impressive were the graceful lines of the narrow Jon boats, they were beautiful. Despite the weight a 9.9 seemed to power the boat, guide and two fishermen just fine.

Retirement is a beautiful thing, Linda and I are three months in and I’ve never felt more joy.

Happy birthday Pete,

Thank you, it works now.

Please include me, there are times when I can’t navigate at all.

It’s funny that I still have the memory, there are whole decades that I’ve forgotten and some I don’t want to remember. It was on a clubhouse dock at Spatterdock Lake near Brickhouse slough in St Charles county. I don’t recall the exact fish but I do recall looking in the water and being fascinated that there were living creatures in there that I could see. The first time I caught something other than a Bluegill was at Memorial Park Cemetery. By the time I moved up to Wabash lake I was a fishing veteran.

I’d love to hear about Wisconsin River.

I was hoping someone would reply to your question. That’s the terrifying problem with taking a river Jon on a downstream trip. Was a time when my partner and I could have emptied the boat and dragged is over a gravel bar, those days are over. If you make the trip let us know how you did.

I lifetime spent outdoors and I can count the Bobcats I’ve seen on one hand.

My neighbor took this picture a few weeks age, Warren County.

In light of the recent river tragedies you’d think they’d be sensitive to safety, nope.

The first time I found a Black Snake in the chicken coop it had just started to wrap its mouth around an egg. I pulled the egg out of its mouth and searched for something to wack it with. That one climbed the barn wall in an amazing escape. After a bit of thought I realized the snake was probably eating far more mice than eggs, he was probably a net positive as the barn has few mice, I’m now taking a live and let live approach. The next snake I found had already swallowed the egg and curled up in the nesting box to digest. Problem was it took weeks, I got tired of him and tossed him in the woods. A couple weeks ago I found the one in the picture swallowing a golf ball that I keep in the nest box as a decoy. Funny thing it passed up a perfectly good egg to eat the golf ball. Shortly after I started to feel sorry if the darn thing died gagging on a golf ball, I went back to the coop but he had either detected the fake or got scared and left.