jdmidwest

Snow is in the forecast for several days around here this week. At least we have winter this year, kind of. 75 here last Friday. Sat., I started the morning with a T shirt, ended the day in a blowing norther wind with the t shirt, denim shirt and a heavy quilted flannel jacket. My bees are so confused.

Beware of kits, they are usually full of junk you don't need. Vise, good pair of fine sharp scissors, cheaper pair of larger scissors, dubbing needle, good bobbin, bobbin threader, whip finisher are good for tools to start. As far as smallie flies. Size 6, 8, 10 streamer hooks. Size 10, 12 dry fly hooks. Olive, black, purple, chartreuse, yellow, and white chenille and marabou. Some brown, white, olive, chartreuse, or yellow saddle hackle for feathers. Hares ear dubbing. Pearl or black Estaz chenille. Gold beads and dumbell eyes, some gold bead chain. Black, white, brown, and red 6/0 thread. Black flat foam, maybe brown or yellow, you can find that at craft stores. Sally Hansen Hard as Nails nail polish for thread cement. Spool of lead wire for weight.. Look around and see what you want to tye and pick up the materials you need instead of buying a kit with materials. I fish mostly streamers, buggy nymphs, foam hoppers, and poppers. I usually buy poppers, they take alot of time to tye. I always spend $20 each time I see a new pattern on materials and probably have around 2k in my tying materials, tools, and vises. And I still need to pick up a few things. To start out with, I would suggest some woolly buggers to learn on, then move on from there. Find a mentor or take a class to learn, it will help greatly. Buy a few good books.

What about the Mars scenario? It was like Earth for a while, till something disasterious happened to change it.

No matter how much safer they make cars, they still seem to kill thousands of people every year. Everytime some person decides they need to drive, they run the risk of an accident happening. A gun is always loaded, and should be treated accordingly, Period, end of story. The story does not go into much detail, but it looks like it went off twice. That would rule out accident. Millions of people carry guns loaded on a daily basis, the actual percentage of gun related accidents is pretty low. Police, military, sportsman, and armed civilians carry around loaded guns daily. But it really sucks to hear about an accidental discharge hurting another person.

Great advice. I cast with my right arm and reel with the left hand when spin fishing and fly fishing. Being right handed all my life has led my left hand astray. I have never been too ambidex in anything I do. But now I have developed this thing called a "tennis elbow" so I may have to learn to switch. Not really sure what brought it on, but I remember drawing a bow last fall and felt a pop. Since then it has been sore and I have been limping it along. It is bothering me right now, I have been using a drill and a screwgun all afternoon. I was thinking stiffer rod and heavy line with the tube jigs would be better with a casting rig. And faster retrieves would help too when I need to drag them in. I have been tossing 1/4 oz jigs so that seems to be border line. A friend has tried to get me started into the plastic world of worms. He has been trying to get me to switch to a casting rod for them. Looks like another investment. What line weight would balance a 1/4 oz jig and 3 1/2 inch tube?

Al, what baitcast rig do you recommend? I have not used anything but spinning gear in my entire life. Other than fly fishing. I use the shimano's with the quick fire system and never have a problem with covering water while in a yak or canoe floating along. But, I have entertained the though of the baitcast system. But it was for boat fishing in lakes and casting worms and other soft plastics. I am also tempted to get one for fishing tubes out of a boat on the streams. Interesting thread, lets hear some more thoughts on the matter.

Looks like the boat may be hot. Sides are too low for what I am looking for.

Devils Horse is a good one too in gold or firetiger. Torpedos of differents sizes in frog, black, and firetiger. Black of a night or near dusk is deadly.

Trout stocking takes place in the spring to allow them optimum temperature and abundant food source. Put them in the fall and the temps get cold and food source drops off. Plus, that is about how long it takes for them to go from an egg to the stocking size. Trout have an optimum temperature to feed and thrive. Too high in the 70's and they stop eating, too low, metabolism slows down to conserve energy. 55 to 58 is optimum if I remember, similar to our spring water. Unless it has increased, Current River only gets 8000 browns, average 1000 per mile of river stocked, which is the park to Cedar Grove. What is the length of the area from the spring branch to Scotts Ford?

When a hive of bees gets too crowded, tame or wild, they will turn out some queen cells and make a new queen. When she hatches and gets ready to fly, scouts go out in search of a new hive location. The queen and part of the worker bees leave in a swarm. They may light in a tree or bush till the scouts find a suitable home. When they do, they all move in and start a new hive. Tame bees are managed to avoid swarming by adding more boxes for them to grow into. Wild hives in trees are limited to the size of the opening. Swarming takes place in the spring of the year for the most part. You can set out boxes in areas with wild bees and bait them with a pheremone lure. If one finds it and moves in, free bees! Install them in full size equipment and new hive of bees added to the apiary.

If you don't know him, astronaut Kelley is Gabbie Giffords husband and co partner in the Americans for Responsible Solutions. ARS is the most recent anti gun group to appear on the scene trying to limit our gun rights. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/09/Gabby-Giffords-Husband-Buys-AR-15-Announces-He-s-Not-Keeping-It-After-News-Leaks-Out Kind of ironic isn't it.

Yesterday, I was able to pull all of my tomato stakes out of the main garden and take up the rabbit fence that protected my beans last summer. Cleaned out the flower beds and another small garden spot by the house. Painted a nuc to use as a swarm trap for feral bees and put it out next to an open feeder. Wild bees drank up a quart of syrup next to it in about 4 hours. Dang ole time change, rolled over this morning and looked at the clock 8:30. Clouds keep me sleeping in later than planned. About an hour later I realized it was the time change. Tilled the main garden to cut stuff up and just lightly ruff up the surface some. Winds and sun the last few days had dried it out pretty good. Started sprinkling about the time I shut the tiller off. I spread a couple of bales of rotten straw that I had been weathering since last spring to add some organics to the soil. Gathered up a bag of lime and the hand spreader just as the sprinkle turned to drops. I managed to spread the lime before it got too heavy. Finally the rain turned to a steady shower so I gave up and got out of my wet clothes.

You could have told him about the Conservation Agent watching up on the hill or tell them you passed one in the bushes downstream that checked your license, that usually breaks them up and gets them off the river. But they will just move to another spot or change clothes. Ark. has a toll free number to report stuff like that, a license number of a vehicle and description of the violater helps. 1-800-482-9262 is the hotline number for Ark. Text 847411 if you have AT&T if you want to go that route. http://www.agfc.com/enforcement/Pages/EnforcementHotline.aspx

But herons were almost extinct a few years ago then they made a comeback, so you really have to take the increase in numbers of predators in the mix. How much gigging actually occurs in the upper portion of the Meramec anyway? The water is pretty skinny to run a jet boat. As far as stocking goes, our limited number of hatcheries limit production of trout to about the same amount as they raised back in the 80's. There have been improvements with O2 systems and better facilities, but they really can't keep up with the numbers of fishermen. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers raised over the last 30 years verses the number of fishing licenses sold. I think Shepard of the Hills is the only one that raises browns. The others located in the trout parks raise rainbows.

Herons and otters. Larger trout eat them too. Fishing mortality.

There has been a pattern developing, rain on the weekends, nice days during the week. Makes it hard to do anything on the weekend, but I will take all of the rain we can get. No complaints. I could do without the high winds.

That is the most reasonable price I have seen in a while. I saw some of the used mags my friend was selling out of his shop 3 for $15 before the fiasco at another shop for $48 each. Local AR shop is finally getting some stuff back in and it is all at the normal pre Sandy Hook prices. But it does not last long.

I would rather the giggers take the brown instead of targeting smallies. Smallies taste better..

I was thinking of something else like an angel harp. Thats a harmonica in my book.

Why would you worry about the end of time? Are you not prepared? Mayan calendar runs out. Near miss by an asteroid. North Korea threatens nuclear attack. Pope retires. Global warming is gonna fry us all. And Barack Hussein Obama is our leader. What is there to worry about Justin??

I can remember when it was a great little trout stream. The trophy area seemed to hold more fish than the upper Current River trophy area. But something changed it, don't know what. And like you, I never hear much about it any more. The only time I really spent much time there was when I lived close by back in the late 80's. I just seem to head other directions now. I would like to see what fisheries thinks may be going on there. It can't be usage pressure, all of the other streams get hit hard too. Flooding and drought has hit the others too and they don't seem to be suffering. What about stream temps. Low flows from the spring warming up the river maybe. Or maybe it is the otters.

Where is that sun today?

Right, it is a cold frame to start with. I can control moisture and heat the soil faster for germination. When stuff starts coming up, I remove the glass and let them run. If a danger of frost comes up, I put the glass back on or cover with plastic. I placed 2 of them on my lateral lines a few years back and they work great. Full sun all day, facing south. It allowed me to use some of the yard that was just dedicated to grass before. And of course, due to the laterals, I could not plow and dig. The glass is from old screen door sections I used to make a mini greenhouse years ago. I built a frame and screwed 4 doors to it. One of the extra pieces of glass made the top. I put some shelves in it and tried to use it to start seeds and plants in it early on. It never really worked like I wanted it too, so I dismantled it. Last spring, a hail storm took out several pieces of glass on the beds. I scrounged up some glass shower doors that dad bought at an auction to replace them. The lumber was from old packing crates I collected from a jobsite.

Planted 2 beds of strawberry today. One bed of Everglow and the other Jewells. Filled one of my raised hot beds with red potato starts today. I have not raised taters in years, thought I would try some this year for a change.

They were coming into the outside of the hive and feeding on the outside of the feeder, then leaving out. My bees would have came out of my hive and fed, then went back in. There is a little gap between the feeder and the hive body that allows outside access to the syrup. Robber bees have been a problem since last summer. I have my entrances choked down to about 1 or 2 bee widths to allow my bees to defend the hive. The feral bees can sense the food source and try to get at it. My bees will defend and keep them out. They will fight them outside of the hive in the air or around the opening. It one gets in the hive, you will see my bees drag it back out.