jdmidwest

Remember the good old days when Gay meant something else.

People get stoned on the river? I never noticed it that much. I have run across shake and bake meth labs.

Academy makes a Tarpon knockoff using the old style mold that is a great bargain, the Perception Pescador. I bought Heritage Angler 10 for the grandson last summer and use it now on all of my floats. Its light and easy to paddle, stable enough. Plenty of storage for a day trip. Ocean Kayak is nice, plenty of features and well made. Wilderness Systems makes great boats, but pricey like the Jackson ones. I have an Pamlico 120, first yak I ever bought. My daughter likes it. I like it to duck hunt out of. It is a sit inside. Sit on top for kayak fishing is a must. Good seat. Lightweight. Dry hatch and deck rigging. Hull designs. All good things to consider on a yak. Best to find some to try out first.

I drag a hose with a sprayer on it and a couple of beers down to the garden and water everything down once or twice a week depending on the need. Or I use a rotating spray head to mass water and go on to do other things. Some things don't like to be watered from above in the evenings. You end up with mildew and fungus problems. Best time to water is in the mornings. Corn, okra, flowers, beans don't have fungus problems. Cucumbers, squash, melons, tomatoes need to be watered at base or you will have fungus problems.

Most I have seen are colored with the natural barring. Probably just a combination of Rit Dyes. Soak them in Dawn dish detergent to remove the oils to allow them to take the Dyes. Bleach would only make them white and brittle. Tan a few hides and make some mini zonker strips. Collecting tails and fur this time of year will not have the same amount of hair on them as they do in the fall. You have to wait for good cold weather to get good fur.

This one used to support alot of fish. And it was deeper with a gravel bottom. Back in the early 80 s, it was the subject of a grad school project I helped out on. We did stream surveys with electrofishing for an entire year. I have stayed in touch with all of the years since. Gar have moved upstream to it upper reaches. That has happened in the last 15 years. They were not there in our surveys. They were only in the lower, slower regions. Now we find them in the upper reaches that have a higher gradient and gravel bottoms. At first I thought they were there only to spawn, but I see them year round. We used to catch more largemouth and spotted bass than smallmouth. Now the primary bass seems to be smallies. Longear sunfish are really thinned out, we only found a few bedding areas yesterday, the largest only had about 8 beds. I did find a few bedding goggle eyes but they were only about 4-5 inches long. No snakes of any type yesterday. Small frogs. No tadpoles. Did not notice any crayfish. Still minnows and chubs. I did catch several nice chubs. I did not see any invasive carp. With as much rain and everything, my other concern was that there was hardly any water in the runs that would allow even a kayak thru. Something must be happening to the water table around there too dewatering the area. 10 years ago, I would have put a kayak in this time of year and floated the entire length with minimal pulling over. I would not attempt it now.

Barnes in ST Louis. Dr. spent his residency at Mayo. He was fresh out in his first year. He is proud as a rutting buck with my success. I still have full speech, taste, and saliva after loosing 1/3 of the front left portion of my tongue to a marble size tumor. I have a hair patch on my tongue now. Surgery got it all without having to go thru chemo or radiation. Did you regain full use of your wrist and arm? Mine still has some issues. Carpel tunnel like pain in the wrist along with tightness like someone is squeezing it. The tendon in the inside part of my elbow is still tender. Somewhere on that portion that is my new tongue lies a scar from a 3 hook rapala I deflected on its return flight from a limb with the arm. I buried one point of a treble into that tendon in the middle of my wrist. I cut the eye of the hook with a leatherman and removed the plug and kept fishing that day. Later that night I met up with my doctor, who I was going to fish with the following day. He pushed on thru the tendon, cut the barb, and pulled the hook out. Then we went fishing. He owed me one, I extracted one out of the web between a couple of his fingers one time.

Not silt, clean and clear streambed. Land use is about the same, maybe less timber. I just write it off to natural process. The channel has stayed the same. It has cut to the bedrock and washed out the gravel to make the stream wider and shallower. Willows and sycamores stabilize the gravel bars now.

Since the weather was predicting our first hot humid day of the year, it seemed only fitting to do a little creek fishing. I had planned an outing on the boat for a bluegill fest to stock up the freezer with fillets. But it was too hot to sit on a boat. Waist deep in cool waters was a better idea. We hopped from bridge to bridge on a local river and its tributary I have fished since college. Over the years, the stream bed has wore down to slick bedrock and most of the stream is now hard to wade. First stop only produced a few little ones. The next two bridges were barren. We navigated around a few slick runs to some that I thought were going to be productive and nothing happened. What used to be good has dwindled away to nothing. Just 10 years ago I was posting on float trips thru this area. Now, even with a wet spring, you could not poke a yak thru it because it is so shallow. Next 2 stops were duds. One had about 25 ATVS on a gravel bar and several wading fisherman. The next had swimmers, tents, and many, many people. Finally on the last stop, we found a good hole. But it was only one hole, above it was slick rock beds. We managed to pull a few nice smallies out of it. One was 15 and the other 14. Several under the 12 inch mark. I really don't know what has happened to this stream. I am thinking otters, but did not see tracks or sign. All fish of any size were gone. Crayfish were not seen. No snakes or frogs either. Then there is the wearing down of the streambed to shelf rock. Alot has changed since 1982.

I had cancer on my tongue back in Nov. They took out a third of it and used the muscle on my wrist for the replacement. It was the wrist that I used to block the incoming 3 hook Firetiger Rapala that stuck in my tendon. The scar was removed and relocated in the surgery.

I have seen worse. Mine stuck in the tendon. Can't push it thru, can't pull it out. That scar is on my tongue now, moved over from my wrist.

Yum. Frog legs.

He did not show nipple, so we are all better off.......

Fame and Glory. Same thing that drives many that don't work hard. I have never understood the removal of privileges anyway, not like they care much about breaking the law. They should take that shiny truck in the background and auction it off, Take the boat he used and do the same. And his bow.

Camping is allowed outside of float camps. You should not have big crowds, its not really a holiday weekend. With all the water and flood, expect down trees and tricky bends with sweepers. Brian should be able to fill you in on the river conditions. NFS should go thru and clear areas of downed trees.

It is not a fun process, but survivable. And it always takes something out of you that you never get back. Glad to hear she made it thru.

I troll the TN river with my 17 Tracker Jon. The old one had a 2 stroke 35 hp and trolled upstream pretty well, but the exhaust would kill you in a tail wind. My new Tracker has a 50hp 4 stroke and have only trolled one trip with it. I had more trouble keeping it throttled down but the air was fresher. A kicker is looking more promising for that boat. Current down there is too strong for a trolling motor.

Probably will get invited to a sit down dinner as the main course. Neighbors dog tangled with a coyote a few years back and lost most of an ear. It was a lab/boxer mix and very able to stand its ground. We used to lose calves at the farm to coyote packs and they had a herd of cattle to tromp them. Your campground spooks are probably just coons looking for food you left out. They can tear a dog up pretty good too if cornered. And they like to carry rabies and distemper.

I understand very well the load, it will probably penetrate more than you think. Unless it is loaded lighter than factory, it will break a clay pidgeon. You can find plastic and rubber loads designed for LE that will not penetrate. I killed a deer one time that someone peppered in the ham with small shot, 6 or 8. Ham was festered and whole deer was bad. Looked like a healthy doe when she walked up.

Either shoot to kill or find something else to scare it with. A 410 target load would just create a festering sore on it and maybe cripple it to the point that it would have to become a nuisance bear or an angry bear that would hurt someone or livestock. Black Bears are pretty reclusive. A shot in the air. Nail him with a slingshot. Throw rocks. Just don't do anything to wound him, it would just make things worse.

Airboats are designed to run over grass and lily pads that would choke a jet or prop motor. Takes a big engine and a big prop to make them move. Not very efficient way to power a boat. Engines could be muffled, but most I have seen are based on small 4 cylinder engines with straight pipes out the back or headers. Going against a current would be tough too. Most are seen on flat water with minimal current. I had an Uncle that built one back in the 80's using a old wooden ski boat and a Volkswagon engine. It was a bitch to paddle. But it would have worked better on a flat jon. And it probably would have worked better if my Uncle was a better mechanic than an engineer. He came up with several neat designs using Volkswagon engines, but he could not keep them running properly. MDC uses one at Duck Creek from time to time. It was the only way to cross most of the lily pad covered parts of the lake to do waterfowl studies.

Naw. All the tourists have Yeti's now prepping for the bear invasion. I am sure that is why they are flying off the shelf. $400 cooler that barely holds a 12 pack of beer, lunchable, and a bag of ice.

Nice Pics. I still need to do that upper float. I have always wanted to see Jam Up Cave. Your pics makes it really look interesting. Its a shame that there was that big of a crowd and fishing was poor so early in the year. Maybe in October if the water is up and flowing would be a better time. With the way Current River and Eleven Point looked last weekend on 142, I was surprised to see anyone got any floating in that area. We did the Spring River trip, it was cold and muddy water from Thurs to Sat.

I imagine it was a chore, that jetty is pretty slim and rough. Last time I was there it was covered in feces and broken glass. I almost dragged the Tracker back in there coming back from Council Bluffs but had not heard about the lake being done. NFS will probably drag it out for several years then abandon it. Hopefully it will kill off all of the pads and weeds they have worked so hard trying to make grow there and return it to what it was in the 80's. Thanks for the link. I have a floorplan for mine, but it will be big for a teardrop. I want it at least 6' tall in middle for the stove, taper off front and back. I want a bed in front and back, sink and stove with some storage. I have an old popup to scavage parts off for the interior, just have to build a shell. It will be similar to this with a short deck in front for storage.

I had intended to start a teardrop camper project this winter til the cancer popped up. Maybe this year. I plan on making mine a little bigger on a wide body bass boat trailer. I want a little deck on front to put coolers and other stuff on. I also want the camper part to be tall enough to stand in. I will ditch the exterior galley in the rear idea for another bed. How was Crane with the draw down? I imagine there is no boat access at the ramp. It has been a favorite spot of mine over the years, remote but worth the drive. Where did you find the door? I need one and a window for my plan and have not really looked for them yet.