The morning started with Hemlock Lake like glass, a bald eagle flying overhead, and the air full of song birds. It is hard to believe this stunningly beautiful body of water is only 20 minutes from my home. This was our first time fishing this lake. It is 7 miles long and not a house on it.
We marked lakers on the bottom and hooked a few, but none in the boat. We used the same jigging method that John Gaulke had taught us on Cayuga and Keuka lakes. We also used live minnows and oak leaf grubs. The only one in the boat was a nice small mouth that Shu caught with a minnow.
Shu with a nice smalley
The sharp dropoff along the shoreline had us fishing adjacent to the hillside. The sound of the streams flowing down the hillsides into the lake was very relaxing.
I have been playing with Animoto and lifted slides from last year's fishing trip tfor this video.
This was an Air Cochrane trip to Nettogami Island, Northern Ontario.
We were supposed to go out this weekend to nail some perch on Seneca, but while the temperature was perfect, the 20-30 mph winds defintely made it impossible. Next weekend!!!!
So I was just looking at an album of photos from the fall that I took with a trail cam. I put this camera up for 7 days over looking a scrape at my friend's property in Bloomfield. There some 3 really big bucks and a ucnh of little ones. I ilke the photo of the doe actually laying on top of the scrape....talk about flirting?!?!?! I also like the turkey photo.
It is amazing how many deer there were at this scrape over the week.
Fishing, similar to hunting, is so much more than the moment when there is a buck in your sight or a fish on the line. It is the time with family, friends and self....it is the adventures you share....the stimulus of the triumphs and agony of the one that got away...
And so it was yesterday that Jake, Dave and I went exploring for Oak Leaf Grubs. We got onto Oak Leaf Grubs a few years ago when the gentleman in the picture below shared, after much pleading on my part, that Oak Leaf grubs is what he used for bait. Little did I know how difficult it was to get this grub for bait. Only one bait store in the area is able to order them.
Seneca Lake Monsters
Jake & Dave-Mighty grub hunters
The bounty
Last year we went out on a cold winters day only to find the stream frozen and we caught 3 grubs in 3 hours. Dave, Jake and I were going to go fishing yesterday AM on Seneca but there was a cold front moving in with 20-30 mph winds. We decided to use this time to try our luck panning for grubs. Well I am happy to report that after 2 hours we actually caught 65 of these grubs of gold. Jake was in waders using the bamboo minnow net and crab rake that were both constructed by his great-grandfather Willard Morton of Mayville, NY.
With bait in hand, the next trick will be hoping the weather gods give us a couple nice weekends to put these grubs to work.
Mitchell's in Charlotte can order these grubs....but what is the fun in that?
I have given up on the out in the woods an hour before work routine of the past 20 years. I have found that doing this only results in getting tired and cold by the time daylight strikes.....then you blow your hunting by fidgeting...I have been out in the woods at 7 am and have enjoyed seeing more deer than ever before in my life.
With 4 doe tags to fill I headed out to Bloomfield and enjoyed an awesome day of hunting, reading, and probably walked 2-3 miles up and down ridges hunting with a family member JP. Tons of turkeys today and the melting snow made it very slick walking down the ridges such that I took a slip and slide down a muddy slope worthy of the TV show 'Wipeout".
10pt with 11th point broken shot with Jake's 20 gauge single shot
JP and his "Bad Boy" electric buggy saved the day for hauling this big guy out of the woods. Brud is in Florida running the beaches with Molly so JP was called in to help. Very grateful that he obliged.
Today is the 7th day of gun season and we have had a lot of fun. Yesterday Jake and I were out to Bloomfield with Brud and a friend of his. In the morning Jake saw 3 bucks and I saw load of does. Later in our walk along the ridges I saw a nice 8 pt run towards Jake. The buck actually went 10 yards behind him while Jake was watching a group of a does when he turned the buck took off....a few seconds later he saw the buck again, only this time an even larger buck was with him.
Jake wearing his Great-grandfather's hunting coat
Jake was not happy.
Jake and Charlie unsure of the German sample platter
Another highlight of our week was taking Jake and Charlie to Swan Market, truly a male paradise....essentially it is a German butcher shop with more types of knockwurst, bratwurst, etc than one could ever imagine.
In the afternoon Hannah, Jake and I went out for an afternoon hunt. There was an incredible amount of water on the property we were hunting on.
Day three of the season was a good one. The wind was out of the NNE which dictated my hunt yesterday AM. I decided to hunt the area where my trail cam had picked up all those pictures of nice bucks the previous week. I purposely came at dawn break as I knew it would be quiet walking. I had observed the rut in full swing the last two days so I thought I might catch one nosing a doe or hear one grunting. Sure enough 100 yards into the woods this buck ran up to me with his nose on the ground. As I raised my gun he took off, and hunting with a black powder Omega 50 cal I was not going to pop off a quick shot. The buck stopped about 50 yards from me and presented his front shoulder between two trees. I shot, he ran about 100 yards and died literally on the main tractor path.
I got him home and tried to call in the tag # to the DEC, but their system does not allow you to use Blackberrys to key in the report. This is an unfortunate flaw with their system as I had to find a land line to call it in.
That evening Jessica and I headed out to the Krause property and sat in the large platform. We counted 11 turkeys. At dusk two does walked up to us and Jessica did not have a quality shot. I took a shot, hit her, but after an hour of looking we decided to come back this AM to find it. Day 3 and our hunting party has 5 bucks hanging.....not too bad.
