Johnsfolly

I used daikon radish since they wouldn't discolor😉

MDC reports Missouri hunters harvested 15 black bears this season Missouri’s 2024 black bear hunting season ran Oct. 21-30 with 15 bears taken out of a maximum harvest of 40. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) reports Missouri hunters harvested 15 black bears during the state’s fourth bear hunting season, Oct. 21-30. More than 5,969 hunters applied during May for 400 permits for the season with the maximum total harvest being 40 bears. Of the 400 hunters selected through a random drawing of all applicants, 319 hunters purchased permits for the season. Bear hunting in Missouri is limited to Missouri residents and restricted to three designated areas of southern Missouri called Bear Management Zones (BMZ). Each permit issued is for a specific BMZ and hunting is limited to public or private property within the BMZ. Twelve bears were harvested in BMZ 1 out of a maximum of 20 with 166 hunters purchasing permits to hunt the zone. Three bears were harvested in BMZ 2 out of a maximum of 15 with 121 hunters purchasing permits to hunt the zone. No bears were harvested in BMZ 3 out of a maximum of five with 32 hunters purchasing permits to hunt the zone. Of the bears taken, 13 were harvested using firearms methods, one was harvested with archery equipment, and one was harvested with a crossbow. Ten of the harvested bears were males and five were females. “We had another successful black bear hunting season this year,” said MDC Furbearer Biologist Nate Bowersock. “Despite the acorn crop potentially being above average, hunters were able to harvest a record number of bears. This could be due to the dryer fall conditions, which likely caused bears to move more often in search of water.” Congrats to all that participated and were successful in their 2024 bear hunts!

I did find it interesting as to how much folks in Ireland identify with the pub that they most frequent. We would get asked a lot which pub we went to regularly. I don't go to a lot of local bars here, but maybe it's the same.

I have been known to partake in some Southern Comfort on occassion with many that I no longer talk about though I am likely past the statute of limitations for those😅

Though I am not a cider fan, this looks good😉

At our old place, we would get a couple of reds interested in our chickens every Feb/Mar as the males were roaming for mates. One year one got a little too interested and now we have a fox tail😉

Happy Halloween from the Folly family! Since our last place had only three houses and no children, this is first year in a while that we have done jack-o-lanterns. We hope that everyone has a great time today/tonight.

I was deer hunting one time and watched one climb at least ten feet up a hickory tree to check out some squirrels. Another time while turkey hunting I saw one with a large rabbit in its mouth and I presumed taking it back to it's kits. We have quite a few red fox out this way but I like the grays a lot better.

@Ham my local redfin pickerel spot dried up two years ago 😒. However, I still have a spot or two down in FL that you could try.

It's my understanding that they were stocked in the James River in VA to create a trophy fishery. I believe that was done in the 80's. I think that they thought at the time that the salinity of the bay would have kept them from spreading throughout the bay. Obviously that was not the case since blues are found in almost if not all river and tributaries of the bay. The blue cats and flatheads found in MD are considered to be invasives. They cannot be moved live from any body of water.

Congrats Dave. Sound like you guys had a great musky trip!

Thanks Al. It's interesting to me that there are twenty two fish in your list that I haven't caught yet. Mostly those are more western species.

I found out yesterday that Jonathan used my information to catch one of those Brook sticklebacks on a fly. Said that there were a couple hundred in the school. He had lots of bites but just the one hook set. Takes just one😉.

They are fun to catch and I haven't caught any big ones.

I didn't have the time to make it that way on my CO trip. But the storm that ran me off the mountains did drop up to 20+ inches in some areas and opened the ski seasons In a couple of resorts.

Jeff looks like all the above and more. A recent study showed up to 49% mortality from catch and release. I've heard from a reliable source that blue cats were seen having a feeding frenzy on striper spawn after the cats followed the bass up the spawning creeks. Recruitment has dropped dramatically over the last ten years. There has been higher recruitment in the populations spawning in the Hudson River than the bay. Menhaden, aka bunker, overfishing in the mouth of the Bay in VA has dropped the numbers that reach the upper Bay that are a high energy forage for juvenile and adult stripers.

Some awesome catches Ham!

More bad news for the stripers in the Chesapeake. Are we looking at another complete moratorium in the Bay/Eastern seaboard like back in the eighties? https://www.wboc.com/news/more-striped-bass-restrictions-possible-for-chesapeake-bay-fisheries/article_abca55b6-9231-11ef-ab45-97bc3b3c59ef.html

Pretty sure that at least the smaller ones were stream bred. I still have a conference in Austin TX in Nov.. I have plans for some fishing there as well.

Congrats to you guys! What a great time! We had a business trip to SD cancelled this year. I was looking forward to making that trip. That fishing looks too good to not consider a trip out that way at some point

Last week I caught and met my total lifer goal of 19 lifers for 2024 with this brook stickleback that I caught in Colorado. I still have some time to get a few more species by the end of the year.

I was out last week in Denver for a business conference. I had planned on a couple of days of fishing after the conference was over. This was my first trip to Colorado. I definitely wanted to catch a fish in this new state and was hoping for a Lifer to boot. While researching target species, around the Denver area I found that folks have caught longnose suckers in Boulder creek in downtown Boulder. Ham had a trip with a Lifelisting fisherman, Jonathan, from Colorado and I asked if he had ever tried to fish for those fish in Boulder crk. Turns out that he had caught that sucker from that creek. Jonathan lives in Denver and he became a great source of information about species to catch in and around Denver. Some of the species that he suggested, plains killifish, longnose suckers, fathead minnows, were ones on my target listing, It also turned out that some of his locations were ones that I had also found and planned to fish. He threw me a bit of a curveball with a small mountain stream that has a good population of cutthroat trout. I showed Jonathan photos of my jigs and flies that I intended to use and he thought that we should meet and he would give me some flies that he felt would work better. He and I met at Cherry Creek at a spot where he has caught creek chubs and longnose dace previously. I don't know the name of the flies, but they looked like a combination of tunsten bead midge with a small San Juan worm. It didn't take long, in fact the first cast, to catch a creek chub from Cherry Creek. This was my first fish in CO and the 32nd state that I have caught a fish 😉. Ten days prior to this trip, the weather was going to be clear but cool. That degraded to rain/snow coming in Friday afternoon and most of the day Saturday. I took a chance an ran up into the mountains for the cutthroat stream to beat the storm there and then head back to Denver in the afternoon. The stream is a very small and tight fishing would be needed. I orignally did not plan on fishing such a small stream. Could not beat the scenery! I was very excited about seeing my first American Dipper (by the rock in the center of the photo). Though it's not a great photo it is not hard to id a thrush sized gray bird that dives under the water to find aquatic insects. This creek has had some improvements made in the past with wooden cribbing to created plunge pools. I saw that there may have been greenback cutthroats stocked into this creek which was part of its native range. I blew out the first two holes that had one to three trout just figuring out how to get the best drifts with my fly and indicator to put the fly in front of the fish with my spinnign gear. Also to figure out what fly to use. I did find a #20 nymph (possibly a green back drake?) in my fly box. Once I had the drift right the trout would agressively turn on this fly. I hooked two trout from different holes but both came unbuttoned quickly. I did hook a willow that bit hard and broke me off 🙄. I found a #16 emerger fly and fished that fly. I enticed a trout to hit and fought that fish. I needed to get it over a log to be able to net it and it popped the hook as I lifted it above the log and didn't get it netted. Just for @snagged in outlet 3 here is a picture for the fish sulking under some rocks after it came off (gray fish tail from the brown rocks). I fished that creek for a few hours. The weather went from partly cloudy to the front of the storm coming over the mountains. I drove through the rain in the mountains and hoped to get ahead of the rain that afternoon and fish Piney Creek. The target species would be plains killifish and fathead minnows. The spot that Jonathan mentioned where he caught/snagged plains killifish was devoid of fish 😒. I eventually found a large school of fish in a channelized portion of Piney Creek. I drifted a #26 Tanago hooks with tiny piece of chartreuse and pearl Gulp bait off of a 1 inch minnow and a bit of red worm under a small float. Most of the fish did not respond to the bait as it drifted by. I extended the distance between the float and bait so that it would drift right above the bottom. I started to get samll bites and I could see fish responding to the bait. I finally got a fish hooked and instead of the lifer plains killifish, I caught a lifer that I did not expect on this trip, a brook stickleback😁! As soon as i got through with my photos, the skies opened and the rain drove me back to the hotel. The next day I was again playing the weather odds and chose to fish locally early in the day then head to Boulder to fish Boulder creek for the longnose suckers. I went to Sand Creek to fish a spot that Jonathan has seen large schools of fish that might be fathead minnows. I fished that spot and there may have been fatheads that I did not hook. The fish that I did catch were just western mosquitofish. Before I left for Boulder, I fished the boulder/rip rap under a walking bridge. I put the bait in between the cracks of the rocks. I got a few bites. I even puleled a possible male fathead minnow or juvenile green sunfish. It got of the hook and I could not get safely to the fish before it flipped into some cracks and I could not find it again😒. I ran up Boulder to fish Boulder creek. The holes that intended to fish was just downstream from the fly/lure section of the creek. I opted to use bait. I never did get a sucker in the holes that runs that I fished. I did land a few brown trout and a couple of nice creek chubs. I did fish fatheads in another small pond that had a fair number of transients that kept me from fishing it until dark. I didn't get a many lifers or the ones that I targeted prior to this trip. I did land a cool Lifer and had a great time.

We had a similar show out here in Maryland. Pretty cool to see. Last time I saw the N lights was in PA back in the early 90s. Was shimmering white and not the pink like this one.

Great post Daryk! Love the scenery and that pretty longear. I don't know about the coffee scented red worms but I have seen fish shy away from the red worms that Walmart sells that they leave out in room temps. I have stopped buying them where possible. Nothing worse to get on a cool new species and it reject your bait.