I'll be traveling to Lake Fork for four days next week. Despite living in Texas for 31 years I've never been. Any tips?
i thought this was cool, and worth sharing: http://news.msn.com/us/809-pound-tiger- ... r-homeless the link sort of clues you in, but the basic story is that a guy donated his large shark to feed hungry people in texas.
i didn't catch a single bass in three days of fishing (close to 24 hours total). strangely i did catch one shad on a single spoon jigging for crappie under the bridge. i'm chalking this one up to it being a completely new lake to me and not on my ability to catch fish. i mean who can't catch fish in this:
do you guys have a preference in fishing from a canoe vs a jon boat? i already own a jon boat and is used strictly for pond fishing. i was debating on getting a canoe for paddling through some of the bigger lakes. opinions?
i've been fishing in a kayak a little over a year now. it's a lot of fun and i am able to go places a boat has no chance of going. it does take a little more research of areas (via google maps) to know exactly where i want to be fishing, but overall i have enjoyed it. i fish mostly inshore salt now, so if you are freshwater fishing, i haven't a clue.
i like kayaks and especially canoes for smaller bodies of water but will typically prefer bigger boats for more open lakes. i don't mind canoeing across larger lakes too much but if it's windy they can be a pain- however you can take a canoe deep into the wilderness with you too.
what toys do y'all have? boats? atvs? swamp buggies? here's my slab- 16x54 jon with a carbed merc 40 tiller. a new set of carbs and a reed plate kit will push it into the 65hp range. currently, it runs 34 lightly loaded. i still need power tilt and trim as well. but, it hunts, fishes, and hauls ass just the same.
only toy i have is my 2007 honda rancher 4x4. it's a nice mid size atv, lots of power and great handling but damn it is tough to keep propeller shaft oil seals in the thing.
set an early alarm on a weekend i was supposed to have off, in order to hopefully catch an armadildo that has been destroying my yard for weeks now but always seem to miss his awake time. he was right where i anticipated him, and while i know they do backflips after a kill shot (that's generally how you confirm if at distance), this fucker was doing an olympic tryout for a good minute and a half after a .40 hollow point to the neck/spine area. at this point, i'm thinking the vultures may look in the wrong place as he pumped out all his blood during his floor dance routine (had to move him because he was right next to my infant son's room).
I think I posted this in December but here is the hunting report if you care to read my musings. http://www.bdoutdoors.com/forums/threads/my-3-hour-bighorn-sheep-hunt.524233/#post3297716
The best season of the year has begun (hunting season!), so I went goose hunting with a cousin over the weekend. Didn't get to take the safety off even once, as we were hunting some very shy birds. The consolation prize was my dog being very well behaved on his first couple of waterfowling excursions, as he usually isn't a fan of being told to sit still and be quiet. However he kept it together and despite him not getting to retrieve anything we all had a good time. All things considered, I have a lot more confidence in my dog after this weekend and that matters more than bringing home a goose or two. On Saturday morning we hunted the Minnesota River and it was unbelievably foggy... 10 ft visibility in the dark made boating to our spot was lots of "fun." The scenery we enjoyed after the sun started to rise made up for that. At one point we had three geese come around the trees to the left in this photo and towards us, flying low and looking committed, but as soon as my cousin clucked once on his call they scattered. Some other small flocks were nearby but didn't want to have anything to do with us. On Sunday we parked the boat in some reeds along a small puddle lake and had a couple birds fly overhead just beyond shooting range, but they didn't circle back around. This is the look I get after telling him he can't go in the water for the billionth time. There was very little shooting around us on both days. Oh well. I'm hoping to go grouse hunting and deer/turkey scouting up in northern Minnesota this coming weekend, and the following weekend after that I'll be canoeing and fishing on Knife Lake in the Boundary Waters. Weekend after that is fall turkey opener. Life is good.
I'm hoping to go out for deer this season and elk, and with each I'd be glad of either a male or female harvested animal. I may go out for spring black bear, and I wish to expand my waterfowl and upland hunting experience soon. Fishing has been good this year, only things I haven't caught this year around here have been kokanee (Landlocked Sockeye) salmon and chinook salmon (I caught a couple of coho this year though out of CdA Lake, however. They love biting at Martin spinners, any color, tipped with a dead small shiner).
My first bow--'14 PSE Drive LT--65lb. draw weight, 29" draw length. All accessories on it are still the stock ready-to-shoot package pieces, so they work, but they're not spectacular. Concentrating on my form before I look into upgrades, though. First group at 20 yds. Flier to the right was the first shot and I punched the trigger. The rest were relaxed, and clearly much better (not too bad for the third time ever shooting a bow). This bow is silent and completely dead in the hand, so it makes it easy to shoot well. Practicing like crazy so I can hopefully do some late season hunting here in CT and down in MD.
I've got my general deer (good for a mule or whitetail deer) and my elk rifle season tags. Also got my calls all ready to go, and going to do preliminary pre-season sweeps of hunting areas and practice with my guns. This year, Idaho only allows bull elk to be harvested, and they hand-wave it away to wolves for the blame, despite the fact this happened: http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2014/01/elk-overrun-ranchers-in-elmore-county.html. Also, our wolf tag system makes no sense to me; if we want a viable population I think Idaho should issue less wolf tags. I know they really don't want wolves to even be a big game species, and would prefer to blast them all away to appease anti-wolfers, but I would prefer the predators here to have genetically viable populations as well as not being constant scapegoats for bad game management decisions. Also, it's so hard to even talk like a biologist about wolves because half of people you talk to think they're Satan's lapdogs and the other half think they're canine Jesus. I'm for wolf hunting, but against extirpation of big predators.
Throwing a large aluminum Jon boat onto the cabin of my Nissan Frontier has been the most idiotic thing I've done in the past year. I threw my lower back out. Evan how heavy is your canoe versus a Jon boat?