Love fall...crappie, perch, bow hunting and Argentine Chorizo

Venison Argentine Chorizo sausage

The fall season is well underway.  A couple of weekends ago, after splitting a lot of shag-bark hickory, Dave brought over his freshly packed venison Argentine Chorizo.  It was absolutely incredible.  I had never had anything like it.  John, Mark, Bill, Scott, Jessica and Tracy all enjoyed the food and company.

We have been pulling and resetting tree stands.   On the Suor property we took down a great stand that overlooked the infamous "mines of Moria".  The "mines" have been clearcut and leveled by a new owner.  We also took down the tall stand on the Quaker Meeting House side of the property.   Out in Bloomfield Tieg, Jessica, Hannah and Jake took down the stand by Charlie's and moved it east.  Great two person stand for gun hunting.

Last weekend was absolutely beautiful, a true Indian summer weekend.  With Hannah in school, Jessica in the Adks, Jake at Penn State and Tracy doing report cards I spent the weekend with Dave fishing.  On Saturday we went to Irondequiot Bay looking for perch.  We debated about going to the canal between Cayuga and Seneca lakes but neither of us had been on the bay for a couple of years.  It proved to be a good day.  WE tucked away in a bay and caught a pile of perch with some nice large mouth bass thrown in too.  We ended up leaving with 33 perch over 12 inches.  We probably threw back another 50 dinks.  There were lots of bait fish in the bay.  We caught these perch, surprisingly, 6-10' feet off shore.

Bow hunting with Jessica, Jake and Cole...and splitting wood

Sunday was a "change your life" kind of day.  I have great memories of fishing for crappie on Chautauqua Lake and Honeoye Lake in the spring for crappie.  But for some reason I had it in my head that crappie could only be caught during a very short window of time in the spring.  Well when Dave told me that he had connected with an "old timer" who crushes the crappie in the fall, named John, and that John was going to give us a lesson on Canandaigua Lake....my reply was, yeah, and the best time to hunt whitetail is in May....no one catches crappie in the fall.

Canandaigua Lake perch & crappie

Irondequiot Bay catch

So we go to the Naples boat launch where we are met by a young man named Dylan who worked with Cornell and was inspecting boats for invasive species.  Dylan worked the ramp all fall.  He told us of all the trout, salmon, perch and bass fisherman had been catching.  When I asked him how the crappie fishing had been and he replied that no one catches crappie in the fall to which I glared at Dave who shrugged me off.

Well John was indeed a great fisherman.  He took us to specific places on the lake using both live bait and jigs.  We caught crappie hand over fish.  My paradigm is changed and now I cannot wait to try this technique on Chautauqua and the Finger Lakes in the fall.  Crappie are GREAT to eat and they are a fun fish to catch.