Thursday, March 23, 2017

There Is Much More to New York than Cities!

When most people hear New York they think of a city, skyscrapers, busy streets and a lot of noise. Others think of fine dining, plays, Broadway and nightlife in general. However, I think of the great outdoors. I have enjoyed camping, hiking, and fishing in the Adirondacks with my wife and kids. The pancakes and trout that I fixed for breakfast were incredible!



Well, I did have problems with the pancakes one morning! After making a dozen flapjacks and getting eaten alive by mosquitos, I decided to grab the bug spray. When I grabbed the can of "bug spray", I noticed that it was actually Pam cooking spray! Oh no! What did I put on the skillet!
Coho Salmon, Lake Ontario

Trolling for salmon and lake trout in Lake Ontario was a riot as well. We caught some absolute beauties! My favorite part was the fresh grilled salmon we ate between days of our two-day trip. My buddy Matt was the grill master and he got an A+ rating!
lake trout on Lake Ontario
Another first rate fishing adventure in New York can be found on Lake Erie at Dunkirk Harbor. I caught the biggest smallmouth of my life there. It was twenty-five inches long. (Take that "No Fish Cliff!") I caught him on a two toned wacky rigged Senko.

Twenty-five inch smally


The trip that I look forward to the most every year is the opening of the bass season on lake Chautauqua! The bass fishing is incredible! The comradery is fantastic as well. My brother is the originator of the trip. We took our sons there fifteen years ago, and we have been going back ever since! My brother's good friends have been kind enough to put us up for a few days each summer. They have a beautiful home on the lake, and they are very generous!

My son, Will, with a nice bass, Lake Chautauqua
My six-pound bass, Lake Chautauqua
We have used a variety of bass lures on Chautauqua. We have caught some real nice fish on jitterbugs in the evening. We have caught some large bass on spinnerbaits as well. I caught a five pounder on a small white twister tail jig in an attempt in catch perch!  Smallmouth bass have been caught by our group on tubes and hair jigs. My personal favorite lure is the plastic worm. Noteworthy colors are green and black. As is usually the case, fishing around docks and weed beds is very productive. The lake is usually clear as gin. Any lure that works for you in clear water I am sure will work here!

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Don't Forget the Hens!



We all love to hear the cackle of the rooster as he flies up out from cover and displays his majestic tail. The hen, on the other hand, gets overlooked. We do not shoot hens in the wild, and rightfully so! We need to try to perpetuate the species. The pheasant farm is a different proposition altogether. The birds are not normally going to survive. They are released to train our dogs and to shoot.

My pointing Lab, Gunner, does not care if that bird is a hen or a rooster. He is an "equal opportunity" pointer and retriever. He gets just as excited at pointing the female of the species as he does a cock bird! He loves retrieving!
 




Late in the winter, the pheasant farms run out of roosters. It becomes an all hen hunt. Some upland hunters decide to shelf their weapon for the year at that point. However, the "Suzie Bird" of the pheasant variety can be fun!

The one drawback to shooting hens is that sometimes they fly out rather than up! This characteristic makes it dangerous for the dog. I have had to pass on the shot because my dog was in line with the bird, but When it landed in our field when got a bonus flush.




Hens will get up, though. As you can see in the photo, this hen got up in the air quickly. Shooting hen pheasants is still better than watching hunting shows on television

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

STRIPERS!


Nick Mallencore and a 41-pound striper!

"Are you interested in a stripper adventure in Tennessee?" was the text I received from a good friend about seven weeks ago. I was shocked at first, then I laughed! I showed the message to several other friends before I asked Doug if he knew what he had sent! Not to worry, no jokes about teeth or smell! 

Six weeks later, I had just cleaned the area around the dryer and pulled it away from the wall. The tool box in one hand and dryer belt in the other, I was ready to tackle the job. I just backed the second screw out of the dryer when my phone rang. It was my old buddy Doug. "The stripers are running in Tennessee! Ready to go?" Doug seemed rather excited. "Uh," looking at my mess, "When are we leaving?" Doug's reply was typical of us retired folk, "How does 7:00 PM sound?" I got the nod from my gracious wife. Thanks to the time zone change, at 1:30 AM we pulled into a motel for a nap!

We were on the boat by 9:00 AM. Nick was the owner who extended the invitation. What a great guy! You can imagine my surprise when I stepped onto a boat with no gas motor! That's right, no motor. His motor was in the shop for repairs, but that was not enough to deter him. Nick is a diehard fisherman! He had a boat that was set up perfectly for fishing. He did the restoration and modifications himself. The electric trolling motor pulled us across Cordell Hull Lake to the target area quite well. Along the way, Nick pointed out huge blips on the fish finder. "These could be stripers, big catfish or even sturgeon." I was amazed to be on a body of water that had the potential to produce such a large catch! 

We trolled for hours back and forth in the target area. Nick had three stripers on at once there the day before. We were trolling mostly husky jerks using planer boards and dipsy divers. The techniques are identical to what we use when trolling for walleyes on Lake Erie. Nick spent the time telling us about his knowledge of stripers, which was quite fascinating. We followed up the encyclopedia lesson by sharing fishing stories. Nick had a hearty lunch packed, and the fish left our lunch time undisturbed.

Without warning, lunchtime came to an abrupt halt. One of the large trolling poles was bent nearly in half! The reel sang in excitement as the fishing line peeled off with a "zing." I reached for the pole as Nick yelled, "Let him take line! It's a big one. You won't be able to turn him!" The drag was perfectly set. With rod tip up high, the large pole took the force of the fish. Before it became too much to handle, the drag would release line. My job was easy, hold on. Nick turned the boat back in the general direction of the fish. "Tighten the line slowly." He instructed. The line started to slacken. Being an experienced fisherman, I knew the fish was running at the boat. I reeled as fast as I could to keep up. "No, No! What are you doing?" Nick asked. "He's rushing the boat!" I responded. "Oh no! Don't lose him." Nick's comment was as more of a wish than a command. The line tightened, and the fight was back in play! Fifteen minutes later the fish tired, and I was slowly reeling him up to the watercraft. Nick stood poised with the net, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the big fish. I couldn't help but notice that the net looked large enough to hold an average person.  For a moment, I saw a flash of a huge dark tail in the water. At a glance, magnified by the water, it appeared that I had hooked a whale! "What IS that?!" I begged. The puzzled looks on the faces of my two partners were all the answer I needed. Finally, "Moby Dick" came to the surface! "What in the world?!" I had to ask. Nick had tried and failed three times before he netted the fish. Once in the net, I dropped the rod and grabbed for the net. Together we pulled him over the gunwale. "It's a paddlefish!" Doug exclaimed. "Wow! I have never seen one anywhere near that big!" Nick was astonished. I had never seen one at all.
Author and 38-pound paddlefish

It was finally time for pictures! I also caught a yellow bass that day. I had never seen one of those either! It was a day for firsts. Although I did not land a "striper" that day, I did have an exciting experience. We decided to cast crank baits for white bass late in the day. On my second cast, something hit my plug and snapped the line so fast there wasn't time for the drag to release line! Nick asked how it hit. I said, "Well...it was as if I was going down the freeway. Then I cast my line and snagged a Chevy truck going the opposite direction!" He assured me that I donated the deep diving sexy shad crank bait to a "big striper."

Nick shared some meat from his 41-pound fish. We all took "striper" home to eat.

What a great trip! Nick Mallencore is taking classes this summer to obtain his charter captain's license. I highly recommend Nick as a guide. Nick's motor is back on his boat, and the stripers are in trouble!


Monday, March 13, 2017

HOW TO BREAK A DOG OF GUN-SHYNESS

The only dog that I ever had who was gun-shy was a golden retriever named, Benny. I became his proud owner when he was already a year old. He was deathly afraid of loud noises! I immediately made inquiries as to how to correct this issue. One friend of mine, Chuck, said that he went through several beagles trying to find one that was not afraid of gun noise. He was so desperate that he went to the pound for several weeks to find a beagle. He took the first one out in the field, and fired his gun. He never found the dog! Five times this happened and five times the furry rabbit hunters disappeared. Oddly enough, dog number five looked eerily similar to the first dog. Chuck looked at me very sternly, “You know. There might be a good reason why these dogs are in the pound!”
To a man, every hunter told me that a gun-shy dog was no good. They simply cannot hunt. I took this as a challenge! After all, this wasn’t the first dog I had ever trained. At the time, I was a successful track and football coach. I could motivate and train kids, why not dogs?!
I acquired Benny, because he would not stay out of his neighbor’s chicken coup. This was a good attribute for a bird dog, but not for one that wants to live very long! I was happy to take him in, but the wife said that he could not stay in the house. What a laugh! Not only was the loveable golden retriever permitted in the house, he was on the couch with “Mommy” in no time!
Benny entered our lives in April, and he had never hunted. Right away I started retriever training. I bought a new duck trainer dummy and duck scent. The training was going well. He loved to retrieve, and was eager and willing to learn. After a week, I decided to test his noise sensitivity for myself. I tied him to the end of a fifty foot rope, and led him into a field. When I fired the 20 gauge light load he nearly pulled me down trying to get away! He hated it!
The training emphasis had to be changed immediately!  Teal season was five months away, so I had that long to get him ready for my 12 gauge. Six weeks after that I would be shooting my 10 gauge for the opening of duck and goose season. Luckily for me Benny loved to eat treats! His two favorites were hamburger and cheese. Well, who would turn up there nose at a good cheeseburger? I was unable to locate any magic cure for this ailment, so I had to develop my own plan, so I developed a schedule. The amount of time for each Phase and for each step was a mystery, but I had a workable plan with measureable goals. One key to the training was that he had to be trained every day without fail!
Phase One of my plan was to use a cap gun outside. I wanted to avoid pots and pans or anything other than the gun looking noise device. I was going to need to retrain his visual response to the sight of a gun as well as the sound of a gun. Step One: I took Benny outside on the end of a fifty foot rope, while I held a cap gun. When he saw the gun, he stretched the rope out to fifty feet six inches! Day one, I pulled him to me for a piece of burger after the shot. The next day he stretched the rope, but he came to me eagerly when he saw the treat! The first few days he would cower waiting for the noise. At the point where he was no longer cowering at the anticipation of the cap gun, he was ready for step two. We had been working on “Sit and Stay” commands since his arrival. I was able to apply that training in the next step. Step Two: Benny was able to sit and stay while I walked away to twenty five feet. He was not fond of the sound, but he came to me immediately after the cap gun report. After I was pleased with his response at twenty five feet, he sat at twelve feet, Step Three. Step Four followed at six feet. Step One took three weeks, but each subsequent step was shorter and shorter. I did not eliminate retriever training drills, but they were reduced to three days per week and shorter in duration.
Phase Two of my plan was still with the cap gun, but conducted in my garage in order in intensify the noise level. I was able to begin Phase Two in mid-June. Step One: The dog was commanded to sit and stay at the opposite end of the garage, approximately twenty two feet away. From the other end I fired the cap gun, no rope was used. He was not able to escape as the doors were closed. He flinched significantly at the intensified gun shot as I suspected. He was still eager to come for his treat, but not until I put the gun away. At this time in his training I began teaching him hand signals. As I had done previously, I pretty much followed Richard Wolter’s book, “Water Dog”. Step Two was to have him sit and stay in the middle of the garage. Step Three was to have him sit next to me in the garage while I fired the cap gun. By the end of July he was able to sit next to me and turn his head away waiting for the shot. He quickly turned to me painting and wagging his tail for his treat when the noise ended.
Phase Three was outside with a 20 gauge shotgun. My son, Will, had the dog on a leash seated at one hundred yards, and I fired the gun. After the shot, I called Benny to me for his treat. We repeated this three times in a row. When Benny seemed comfortable with this distance, we moved him to Step Two at fifty yards. Step Three followed at twenty five yards. Finally, the third week of August, Benny sat next to me while I fired the 20 gauge, Step Four. Steps Five was a repeat of Steps One through Three with a 12 gauge shotgun. He passed Step Five in three days. I probably did not need it, but I followed the plan.
Three days before the start of teal season, we introduced Phase Four. I sat on a bank at a local pond. It looked very “ducky” with cattails and duck weed. The golden retriever sat next to me while my son hid in the cattails behind us.  Will threw the retriever dummy over our heads into the water in front of us. As the bird passed overhead, I shot into the air. When the bird hit the water, I yelled “fetch him up”! Benny took off like a rocket! It worked! He did not flinch at the noise at all. From the time he saw the bird, he was totally focused on the retrieve!

On opening day of teal season, Chuck and I were poised to shoot as the sun rose. Fifteen minutes after shooting time, Benny retrieved his first blue winged teal. It was a textbook retrieve.“Now that is a miracle!” my hunting partner marveled. He was right. It was a miracle. This miracle came with much time and patience!

Sunday, March 5, 2017

The Great Goose Hunt that Wasn't

As I stood knee-deep in swamp muck and duck saturated water, I was glad I wore my waders! What a strange hunt. We were hunting a corn field for geese! Randy's dog, Hunter found the black duck, unbelievable! I forgot what a good nose he has. "Hunter! Come here, boy. Fetch it up!" Oh no! He's not coming to me. That rascal his heading straight back to his owner!

This expedition was spawned in the imagination of my good friend, Randy. He was remembering a hunt that he and I had twenty years ago. On that day we visited his high school cross country coach who has a farm near Sandusky Bay. We went on a hunt there in late November and bagged a pair of giant canadas in the one goose zone. One goose per day was our rationale for not returning sooner, but the limit has since been relaxed. It was time to try it again.

It is a three-hour drive from my house to the Bay. Consequently, it was an "early morning" that November day. Anyone who is a serious waterfowl hunter has rolled out of bed in the middle of the night in order to reach that magic destination. We are usually willing to make this sacrifice for the opportunity for good shooting. There is no such thing as a guarantee in hunting. This hunt was no exception. We had no "intel" on the current goose migration, only a forecasted cold front moving in from the north. I received a call from Randy that Matt and I needed to join him on Wednesday before Thanksgiving for a goose hunt at his former coach's farm. That meant that we had to pack up 100 full bodied goose fakes and shells. It took a few minutes to load all of those dekes in the back of Randy's truck, but we managed. We loaded our guns and two dogs and were on our way!

Our merry band pulled off the road beside some corn stubble barely before shooting time. The decoy bags had to be carried some 200 yards off the road to a small mound in the field. It is important to be respectful of a farmer's property and not drive in their fields. As I picked up the last bag, it clanged. "What in the heck do you have in this bag?" I asked Randy. "It weighs a ton!" "I saved that bag for you!" Was his response. "It has some mojo mallard decoys and poles. I thought they might add some movement." "This bag will have plenty of movement when I hit you over the head with it!" I said with a grin. Randy was smiling from ear to ear listening to me complain about being his pack mule! All in fun, we rib each other and laugh all the time. You have to have fun, because life is too short.
It was cold, below freezing, but the ground was still soft. We had no trouble inserting the silhouette stakes into the ground through the thin frozen layer. As we plunged the mojo poles into the field we could detect the faint odor of manure used to fertilize the field.

Shooting time came, but no birds were in sight. This was not terribly disturbing as goose peak movement hours are usually closer to 10:00 AM, especially when it is cold. The sunrise was beautiful. The beauty was short-lived, however, as dark gray clouds moved in rapidly from the northwest. It wasn't long until the dark gray clouds of autumn dominated the sky. "Perhaps this cold front will bring in some migrators!" My wishful thinking was echoed by my partners. The wind picked up as predicted and the temperature seemed top drop even more. Randy was babbling on about the flight times of geese and suddenly paused. "Are those ducks?" He added to his monolog. I turned my gaze in the same direction to see a flock of hundreds of ducks approaching from the north. "Let's get in position!" I mumbled as I flopped down. Everyone quickly took their places among the fakes. We did not have room for our layout blinds in the truck, so we used corn stalks and weeds as cover. The feathered migraters coasted high overhead to our chorus of hail calls. To my surprise, the flock made their way downwind and began to turn. They swung wide around our blocks still too high to identify, but we knew they were big ducks. They kept turning and now clearly descending on our party of pretenders. The made a tornado of ducks! It seemed like it took ten minutes for them to get close enough to see clearly, mallards! Without warning four ducks broke out of the swirl and locked their wings straight at the mojos. "Take'em!"Randy yelled. I hesitated because of the vast numbers of birds hovering overhead. The scatterguns sounded off and all four mallards were on the ground waiting for our two eager labs, Gunner and Hunter. "Alright!" Randy barked out playfully."Who shot the hen?"  I stood up, both literally and figuratively, "I did! It was the only one left!" my late arrival to the party resulted in a brown mallard, frowned upon by our group. "I thought I said pick out a green head!" Randy pronounced judgment. "You did not!" The ribbing did not have a chance to last very long. I was saved by another huge flock of ducks. This group followed the same pattern. They drifted downwind and began to turn until they formed an avian tornado descending on us! As the hoard of ducks circled out of range two green heads broke off and came screaming in just off the deck. "Let these go!" Randy said what we were all thinking. "We want green heads, Bill, but bigger groups!" That was Randy getting a shot in at me. I didn't have to look at him to see that ornery grin! The pair coasted on through. I followed them until I couldn't turn my neck any further. When I looked back I saw a group of eight dropping right in our laps! It seemed like a shame to shoot at groups this size and educate hundreds of ducks, but you have to play the cards that are dealt you. I picked out a green head, sat up and folded him up like a bath towel! My hunting partners did likewise. "Why did you shoot?" Randy looked at me as if in disbelief. "I said no small flocks. I didn't say take'em!" "Who died and left you in charge of this expedition? I don't need you to tell me when to shoot!" Matt just stood there and laughed at us. It is all good-natured kidding when you are scoring waterfowl. Matt announced that he removed a black duck from hunter's mouth. It is not unusual to find black ducks in flocks of mallards. The good news was that we could shoot more ducks. We were allowed four mallards and one black duck each. It was time to take inventory of our duck pile.

We counted our collection of six mallards (one hen) and two black ducks and discussed our limit options. After twenty minutes of watching one humongous flock after another pass us by, we finally had one small flock look our way. The small flock was about fifty ducks. my trusty lab, Gunner sat on my left. He blended in well with the corn stubble. He watched intently as the ducks circled. Each time they got downwind they would glide motionless like a kite, then move on. One hen mallard left the circle parade and drifted in slowly into the wind. "Bang!" A gunshot shattered the singing of our feeding chuckles. Randy shot the lone female! "What?! What happened to pick out the green heads! You want to talk about shooting into small flocks! That hen was alone! You gave me ten miles of grief, and you pulled that stunt!" I was letting him have it. All randy could do was lay there and laugh. he had it coming and he knew it!

Shortly thereafter another large swarm of ducks slowly cruised by at high altitude. The tornado soon formed to our serenade of hail calls. Several times there were small groups that dipped own out of the flock but did not finish. All we could do was lie on our backs and feeding chuckle with an occasional "Quack". Gunner joined in with a soft whine as he shook with excitement. Twenty ducks finally committed, and four stayed behind upside down in the decoys. A fifth bird fell out of the sky on the far side of the field.

Those birds made five for Randy, so he went to the truck to eat and get warm. Matt decided to walk across the field to see if he could find the duck that fell. I elected to stay put as I only had three on the day. No sooner than Matt was out of sight, but forty ducks were in my face coming straight in. I waited, but they didn't want to finish. As they started to drift off to my left, I sat up and unloaded my gun. I could not believe it as I watched them flying away! I almost did watch long enough when one bird fell straight down out of the flock! It wasn't pretty, but I didn't get skunked! Randy came walking out in the field, "Hey! Do you have any dead birds on this side of the road?" I said, "I believe so. Why?" A black duck crash landed into that timber on the other side of the road. Well, Hunter found that bird and Matt found my drake mallard on his way back.

My shooting might not have been great, but I filled my limit. At any rate, it was a heck of a "goose hunt" for not seeing any geese!