Who loves fishing ?

[Amarok]

My apologies for derailing your thread Amarok

No apologies required. It's a discussion board, we're discussing.

If I can convince you to come visit, we could chase some stuff like this.

Appreciate the offer, but after working on the road a good chunk of my life, I've become very, very settled.
I rarely get more than 100 km from home these days. I have all I need for a happy life within that radius.

 

[Chefdave]

Same here, didn't waterfowl back then, was all about hunting deer.. bow, muzzleloader, shotgun...etc... if I recall correctly, one year as as young hunter in maryland I harvested 11 deer. (mind you maryland is plumb overrun with them things, I believe it has one of the densest deer population in all of the united states, seeing 20-30 deer in a days sit on stand was not unusual)

I donated quite a few of them to the Hunter's feeding the Hungry program back then. It was a great program back then, ton's of meat went straight to food kitchens feeding the needy

Nowadays, that's not what am after, much prefer the more social aspect of waterfowling, besides, have some great friends who still deer hunt, they are always happy to give me the stuff they don't want to mess with. I like to make Deer and Pork Boudain from hearts, livers and pork shoulders.

another neighbor just gave me some shanks, and neck roasts, and some front shoulders, the shanks and the neck roasts have a date with some jamaican seasonings in order to become a Jamaican style Deer Oxtails...

My apologies for derailing your thread Amarok, That pond picture you posted with threats of a soon arriving winter (which is still bit away for us here) had me imagining a flock of Mallards or Pintail filtering in at first light.

And since this post was originally about fishing.

If I can convince you to come visit, we could chase some stuff like this..

View attachment 251433

Hell yeah brother , caught thousands of pounds of yellowfin. Chumming and chunking with butterfish, miss offshore fishing a lot. Cool that you like to cook!! Yeah MD the last time I deer hunted, you could take 13 between gun, muzzle and bow, I have no idea what limits are now, yeah without deer hunting here, the deer would suffer starvation because of the overdevelopment of land, so many deer, no so much undeveloped land. Would luv to visit!!

 

[Chefdave]

Hell yeah brother , caught thousands of pounds of yellowfin. Chumming and chunking with butterfish, miss offshore fishing a lot. Cool that you like to cook!! Yeah MD the last time I deer hunted, you could take 13 between gun, muzzle and bow, I have no idea what limits are now, yeah without deer hunting here, the deer would suffer starvation because of the overdevelopment of land, so many deer, no so much undeveloped land.

 

[belleswell]

The water temps of our pond just hit 50 F, (10 C), which is when I cut off feeding them for the coming winter months. It may take a little longer here to walk on water as it's a El Nino year, but make no mistake, winter always makes his appearance in Michigan. I'll be walking on water soon enough.

Like you @Amarok, I started fishing when I was old enough to walk and it has always been a great love of mine. The diet of winter fish changes as the bluegills will be eating copepods and diatoms which are so small, they can barely be seen. That diet makes the fish caught during the winter months taste so much sweeter then they are the rest of the year.


Ice usually comes at the tail end of December on average, but can also show up in early December, or as late as mid January. He will arrive, it's just a matter of when. I plant fat head minnows in the pond for the winter months as the perch like minnows over diatoms and copepods. I planted two gallons of them the first week of October this year.


The solitude of ice fishing in a small shanty brings me peace and harmony. It also allows me to reflect on what can be important to me at the time. It also lets me reflect on a lesson I learned at an early age. Patience, which is something the whole world could use more of.

I fished our pond for the first time since early summer about a week ago and caught two hybrid bluegills, both of which were about ten inches or so.
I never use bait on the pond fish as that would be too easy. Instead, I use a Lil Nipper jig about 1/32 of an ounce with the barb flattened out and impart a wiggling jigging action on the retrieve. The fish are still easy to catch. I do it to assess the size and health of the fish and all are carefully released.

Lately, I've been spending some time skimming leaves and filamentous algae from the pond. The pond is surrounded by trees, so there are a lot of leaves.
If I can get to them within a few days of them falling into the pond, I can skim them off the surface. However a good rain will sink them and then it's quite a bit more work getting them off the bottom with the skimming net.

Lately when I go deeper with the skimming net to get some of the algae, I've been getting a lot of young of the year fish. Red eared sunfish, hybrid bluegills, large mouth bass, perch, and minnows. As I toss the algae and leaves into a Shapell ice fishing sled that is about a foot tall, I can paw through the algae and leaves and pick out the small young of the year fish and return them to the pond. The algae and leaves get tossed on a large compost pile which gets used in our garden. The veggies and fruit trees love it.



These bluegills and crappie were caught on a lake about 5 miles away. They are an easy bite in the fall.









Catch and release in our pond. I usually fish it two or three times during the winter. I've caught some very nice perch through the ice. The largest was a female filled with eggs that measured 16 1/2 inches. This one in the pic is about 13 inches.




A Jumbo stretching the one pound test line.





Tight lines M8s. Stay safe.

I always have a pair of these in my winter coat. I made the ones on the left along with some others like it I gave to some friends years ago.
It's better to have them and not need them, versus needing them and not having them. They can be used to pull oneself out if one falls through.
I used to be one of the first to venture out on first ice which was barely two inches. Nowadays, I wait for others to go first, and then I go. I'm never the first guy out there nowadays.




Steelhead fishing the shore of Lake Michigan

 

[Amarok]

I loved that, Belly Swelly(sorry, but that's how my brain interprets your SN )

The solitude of ice fishing in a small shanty brings me peace and harmony. It also allows me to reflect on what can be important to me at the time. It also lets me reflect on a lesson I learned at an early age. Patience, which is something the whole world could use more of.

This is such a big part of it. When I'm fishing, fishing is the only thing that exists. It's a personal rule(other than rare, required occasions) not to look at the time when I'm fishing. I fish till I choose to stop, or because Nature chose for me, not because of some arbitrary designation.

It's fishing for us, fixing cars or building models or growing weed for others, but that ability to lose ourselves in a passion is so important. While our conscious brain engages, our subconscious is free to solve problems or sooth stresses, or whatever needs doing. It's such a big positive, and people without that in their lives suffer for it.

Tight lines M8s. Stay safe.

You too, brother.

 

[Alexander]

Hell yeah brother , caught thousands of pounds of yellowfin. Chumming and chunking with butterfish, miss offshore fishing a lot. Cool that you like to cook!! Yeah MD the last time I deer hunted, you could take 13 between gun, muzzle and bow, I have no idea what limits are now, yeah without deer hunting here, the deer would suffer starvation because of the overdevelopment of land, so many deer, no so much undeveloped land. Would luv to visit!!

Last time i hunted there, technically there was no limit on deer.. they had a limit on bucks of i think 5 or 6 total between all the seasons (gun, bow, muzzleloader) but does were at one per day (this was in the suburban areas (i mostly hunted AA county) and the seasons ran from mid sept bow thru late january muzzleloading).

I used to be a City Manager for a car rental company at BWI, it was so easy to know when the rut started... literally overnight we would get 20 cars back in that had been in a deer collision, and would get many many more back over the next 20-30 days of rut activity...

One year, there was a very bad winter.. it was a couple years before 9/11.. had a crazy amount of snowfall... like 3-4 feet... people were snowed in for a week or two.. that year, right before spring arrived you would walk thru the woods and there would not be a single green leaf on any tree below 6 foot tall.. you would walk up on deer that were so exhausted and starved that they wouldn't even get out of their bed.

Where did you Yellowfin fish at? I try to make a yearly trip out of Galveston on a 30 or 36 hour party boat trip to the floaters.. basically reef fish during the day 50-60 miles offshore, then head another 20-40 miles out to fish all night on the Deepwater rigs for tuna. Blackfin, Yellowfin, an occasional Big Eye, sometime a pack of mahi or something else would come thru.

We would catch em three ways, Vertical Jigging (mainly for blackfin), Casting with swim baits, and also chunking using pieces of blackfin or flying fish etc.

I have made so much sushi from these trips.....

 

[Chefdave]

Hell yeah brother , caught thousands of pounds of yellowfin. Chumming and chunking with butterfish, miss offshore fishing a lot. Cool that you like to cook!! Yeah MD the last time I deer hunted, you could take 13 between gun, muzzle and bow, I have no idea what limits are now, yeah without deer hunting here, the deer would suffer starvation because of the overdevelopment of land, so many deer, no so much undeveloped land.

Last time i hunted there, technically there was no limit on deer.. they had a limit on bucks of i think 5 or 6 total between all the seasons (gun, bow, muzzleloader) but does were at one per day (this was in the suburban areas (i mostly hunted AA county) and the seasons ran from mid sept bow thru late january muzzleloading).

I used to be a City Manager for a car rental company at BWI, it was so easy to know when the rut started... literally overnight we would get 20 cars back in that had been in a deer collision, and would get many many more back over the next 20-30 days of rut activity...

One year, there was a very bad winter.. it was a couple years before 9/11.. had a crazy amount of snowfall... like 3-4 feet... people were snowed in for a week or two.. that year, right before spring arrived you would walk thru the woods and there would not be a single green leaf on any tree below 6 foot tall.. you would walk up on deer that were so exhausted and starved that they wouldn't even get out of their bed.

Where did you Yellowfin fish at? I try to make a yearly trip out of Galveston on a 30 or 36 hour party boat trip to the floaters.. basically reef fish during the day 50-60 miles offshore, then head another 20-40 miles out to fish all night on the Deepwater rigs for tuna. Blackfin, Yellowfin, an occasional Big Eye, sometime a pack of mahi or something else would come thru.

We would catch em three ways, Vertical Jigging (mainly for blackfin), Casting with swim baits, and also chunking using pieces of blackfin or flying fish etc.

I have made so much sushi from these trips.....

That was snowmaggedon back to back big storms, but we would go out of ocean city fishing center, on salty dog, captain rick eggerton, tuna ,mahi, cobia, etc 30 miles offshore, white marlin 60 miles offshorein Washington canyon, ham hocks etc, caught and released 5 white marlin total.

 

[belleswell]

I loved that, Belly Swelly(sorry, but that's how my brain interprets your SN )

How my user name, belleswell, came to be.

My wife and I owned a store in East Lansing Mi, where she sold things similar to a Pier One gift store, but smaller in scale.
While I was working as an IBEW electrician, building car plants, power plants, and even running a service van, my wife ran
our store. We had a few college kids who worked part time for us as help, so she could have a day off now and then.

We had a dog named Belle who went with my wife everyday to our store. She was a Lab/Dachshund mix and was our
store mascot. East Lansing is a college town and home to MSU. There are a bunch of students that live in dorms on campus
and with no dogs allowed in dorms, our dog filled the void for many of the students who would stop in regularly to spoil our
dog with hugs and treats. She had quite a following. These students had left home to live in the dorms while attending college,
and missed their pets. Belle was more than happy to snuggle up to these students who spoiled her.

Aside from selling gift store items, my wife who is quite the artist and has been published many times, including doing the
artwork for the patches that were designed for MSU when they went to the Rose Bowl. She put her artwork to good use with
Belle. She designed a t-shirt with a silk screened picture of our dog on it. Taking a page from Nickalodian
TV show at the time, "Nick at Night", she had a saying around the picture of our dog Belle that read "Belle is Swell". She sold
a bunch of these t-shirts as she was beloved by many pet starved students.

And that is how my user name came to be. The name BelleSwell was a user name that stuck with me. I use it at many music
and guitar forums and also became my user name for my email address. The name has stuck with me for over a quarter of a
century. She was a great dog.


Now that we are both retired and moved north to a wonderful country home with a pond, my wife still does a lot of art
for art shows and craft shows. She also does many pet portraits for people.

Here are a few she has done.

These were done for the Cardigan Corgi Nationals and she had 3 dozen of them that she did. She also has done work for the AKC, UKC, and
Westminster dog show.






Here is a drawing she did with acrylics on a tile she did a few years ago of our dog Belle.





Pet portrait with pastels. Many times the pet portraits that she does for clients is done as a tribute to a pet that has passed. I've seen a few start to shed a tear or two when they picked up the drawings.





Another pet portrait with pastels






Another one using pastels which is a compilation of a few dogs the client had owned.





These next two were done on shale/slate rock with acrylics and then framed.









Acrylics on rock





Acrylics - Kingfisher This one is from a picture I took of a Kingfisher. They always show up right after putting fat head minnows in our pond which I do twice a year. Once early spring and another batch of them in the fall to give the perch something to tide them over for the winter.





This song was done after watching one of our resident does drop her third set of twins in almost the exact same spot the last three years
at the far end of our pond. I probably took over a hundred pics of her dropping yet another set of fawns this last spring.