Phishy

Merry Christmas.... be safe on the ice...drive safe if you travel over the holidays and remember the reason for the season God Bless James

with the deer contest going on, I got curious....what was your best deer ever? Mine.... 2001... Oct 16, Bow kill.... public land....NW WI since then i've moved twice and haven't been able to pinpoint the deer movements in my new home areas..it takes time, but i'm keying into them...figuring out the land and where they hide..lots of winter scouting.....

OH greaaaaat! something else have to consider to add to the boat.. it would make it simpler setting up in the pich black at 4 am...

What ended up happening to me at the seasons end was a bit frustrating. I started out with a few fish on the dipsies, then I read something made me take my rings off. Then I did this and that and got all sorts of confused… I started listening to the chatter on the radio and I figure that’s where I zigged when I shoulda zagged…rule number one don’t listen to the chatter on the radio….rule number two go back to what you know…rule number three ask the right people the right questions…. Ever look at a compass when turned around in the woods and tell yourself “that’s not north! “and then go about as though the compass was wrong? That’s’ how I troll sometimes….When I can stop doing that, I’ll be a much better fisherman Depth (a.k.a. temperature) and speed probably the two most critical mistakes a person can make, have one wrong and you’ll catch fewer fish have them both wrong and likely failure will be the result.

Good golly miss molly, it not even Jan and I’m thinking salmon all too much.... But here she goes, by season's end I was typically in 70 -120 fow and my spread for two people looked something' like this: 2 down riggers off the back, one SWR with 1 color and the other 2 color (27 lb test) 10-15 feet 17lb mono leader and various lures from j-plugs to naked spoons , 10 and 20 feet off the bottom 2 super line dipsies (not mags one smaller, #1's?) Sometimes without rings, other time with, at various settings from 1-3, flasher/dodger and fly usually between 70'-150' line out (averaged 100'-120’) 2 in line planner boards (off shores) with one with 8 color the other 9 color, and 20 '-60' - 17 lb mono with plugs or spoons My most successful rods where the SWR and planner boards, I’m struggling to know where my dipsies are set, a couple fish here where caught on them, but I really haven’t figured out the art of them I have two wires and dipsies that I could run, but I haven't tried them yet My inquiry is where should I be running my dipises most of the time. I figure they should be pulling fish in from a distance but I can’t seem to get this mental picture of where they are in the spread. Am I running too many lines too far back? I think I’m running an inward w from above and a downward v from the rear . Thoughts

looks like someone has a little piece of heaven...nice bucks

Nice!!

a lot of good could come out of this, if the money is spent wisely... They've been working to clean up the PCB and Mercury on the Fox River here locally in Green Bay. last i heard on the radio was something about forcing some of the sources of population to kick in fer the clean up.....

Now that is funny!!!

Good Luck!! not much time left...looking promising!!

couple rod holder for my downriggers, the ones on my old set up are not working for me, they are weathered plastic, I tried 'em for a short spell and didn't like the sound commin from 'em, kinda like a creaking sound which i imagined a splash shortly after and ....

They (wind turbines) look like a scene from the War of the Worlds

ya found a good place to spend the winter dreaming and wishin'

Carferry from Manitowoc over to Ludington???

By golly dem dares crazy...dat many sleds on dah ice suretodraw atension to dah fishin hole , don't you know....

Not quite an superstation, but a change of luck ritual; open a beverage of the barley flavor or start to eat a sandwich….if all else fails….grab the pee bucket

…… Rabbit enchiladas…..drool……

Me thinks I was too light with my leader material...As stated i used 30 lb mono since it was what i had on hand I presume since i went so light, my fly whipped around too much which would explain some of my failures this past season. Thanx for the info, I'll put some pix up of my creations when i get around to trying a few up...

For those of you on the udder side of dah pond...Get ready for the temperature drop...it dropped 15 degrees in two hours...come on ice!! I hope we don't get the ice pack over here like last year...

well it's here winter.....not quite winter in my book as I consider winter the time I ice fish so it presently between ice fishing winter and not quite the end of deer hunting season winter, but still a resemblance of winter as it friggen snowed an absurd amount in 12 hours…seen worse but I like to complain… I digress… Flies and tying them…I’ve dabbled with spinner rigs for walleyes and even caught fish on my creations. I tied snell knot in tandem with hooks in the size 1 octupus variety on 17 lb fluorocarbon line with a few beads in various colors blah blah blah……I did a nice job…they worked and now I have too many to possibly use in the next five years…self control…out the window…credit card … finally have that down to zero.. for now.. My question pertains to the tinsel variety of the art of tying rigs. Line poundage? Type (assume fluorocarbon) tandem hooks? Treble hooks? Hook size??..Why? Do you add little spinner in front of the Christmas decoration that is supposedly resembling an alewife being slashed by a salmon? How about a trailing spinner? Other spinny things? Colors not so important to me, I’m going to indulge in glow, greens of various varieties, blues and pearls and whatever else seems to appeal to my whimsical ways….mix and match Ahh and tubes, I’ve seen the little straws from WD40 cans, air tubing from aquarium hose, straws from q-tips ( Nice !!)… The real expense will probably be line, so I want to get it right. I retied a bunch of flies I inherited from my uncle, but I used 30 lb mono. I’ve been reading and perhaps I was too light in my choice of line, i can retie if need be and now is the time… Thoughts? Thanx!

Unfortunately today I am in the middle of blizzard and work was called off so I have some idle time on my hands. There been some post that I am compelled to address. I choose this day to express my ideology. I concluded that if negative sentiments can be allowed, then so should be my opinions. We have a public forum in WI with the Conservation Congress and Spring Hearings. This apparently is where the public can input or comment on the way the DNR manages our resources. It is similar to the Citizen Advisory Council in MI. If you ever attend any of these meetings, most agenda items progress without comment, until it involves deer. And then all that seems to occur is finger pointing along with a ranting and raving. Often some off the wall proposal is conjured that may raise an eyebrow or generate good laugh, but rarely is offered a realistic approach to a problem. Someone’s personal agenda typically is attached to the screwball idea. Then the complaints start to fling around that the DNR never listens to what the public is saying. Perhaps we (the public) don’t always know what is best for the resource, and we don’t like the answer so we don’t hear what the DNR is saying. That’s why there are laws to prevent the public from doing whatever we want. Look at the result of unregulated hunting and fishing, or unregulated discharges into lakes, rivers, streams and the air that occurred in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Regulations are needed, but the quandary of how the regulations are determined is the real culprit. We don’t like being told what we can and cannot do; it’s basic human nature that can be plainly witnessed in child’s behavior. If we let children do whatever they wanted, many of them would never see adulthood, and even if they do, the quality of their lives might be greatly diminished by ending up on the path of demise. Look at problem children and their home life. We hunters are very much like children; we need discipline to prevent us from harming ourselves. Is the DNR providing the perfect guidance? Not likely, but similar to most parents, they probably are doing the best they can with good intentions, despite the tantrums and name calling that they must endure. The UP of MI and Northern WI had two severe winters in a row which decimated the deer herd; the same complaints are being resounded here in WI as the UP. Perhaps these things are common because they were the result of a natural act. Until the DNR can control acts of God, there will good years and bad years. Wolves are not the reason the deer herd is lower this year, we need to blame the correct source. Please bear with me as I present an argument to see if we can put the wolf predation into context. It is estimated that WI has about 665 wolves, for our argument I’ll go 700. If a wolf eats one deer a week that’s 52 deer per wolf a year or 36,400 deer a year. That’s a lot of deer, but this not happening all directly in my back yard. It is occurring over the entire landscape where wolves are living. WI has nearly 65,500 sq mile of land. Wolves are found in approximately 1/3 of the land mass, most of which is in the northern tier of the state, or 19,650 sq miles of wolf territory. 36,400 deer being eaten by wolves in 19,650 sq miles equals 2 deer in one sq mile per year (actually 1.8, but I rounded up). If there are 20 deer per sq mile in the area I hunt that leaves 18 for me to hunt. If there are 10 deer per sq mile, that leaves 8 for me to shoot. If there are 5 deer per sq mile that still leave me with 3. My point is, yes wolves eat deer and yes they compete with your hunting, but they are not the only reason you or I did not shoot any deer. To blame the wolf for failure to harvest a deer is a selfish statement. There are still deer there; the wolves are not eating them all. Wanting to eliminate them from the hunting equation simply because they directly compete with us harvesting “our†deer is purely selfish. We are not the only creatures on this earth that has the right to exist. To argue otherwise is probably narcissistic. With that said, do I believe we should have a season on wolves? Yes, but not for the same reason many people are offering. I suggest we need to cull the size of the wolf population down to protect them from themselves. Too many wolves can be a bad thing. In years with an already lean deer population, they can decimate deer populations to a lower level that many hunters find disagreeable; which doesn’t mean that the hunter can’t be successful, it just makes it more difficult. Don’t confuse what I am saying to mean wolves are to blame for a hunter not being successful. There are deer on the landscape, maybe not many, but they are there. We’ve been spoiled with mild winters and high deer numbers. This has created a lazy deer hunter that expects to see a deer on opening weekend and be home in time for the football game on Sunday. We need to harvest wolves for different reasons. As the deer population is lowered so is the carrying capacity for the wolf. Fewer deer means there should be fewer wolves, which will occur naturally overtime with diseases and starvation within the wolf population. Then barring that the deer population rebounds, so should the wolf population. This is the fundamental dynamic of predator prey relationship and people should be key players in the process by being allowed to harvest expendable surplus of wolves. Not all wolves born are going to make it adulthood; many will die due to the carrying capacities limiting factors. The landscape can only support “X “ amount of animals, the rest will die from something. The wolves that will die are the harvestable surplus. This harvest of wolves will not wipe out the population if regulated properly. In the past we hunted and trapped wolves when they were plentiful, but we eliminated them out of greed by putting a bounty on their head just because they compete with us. This was not managing the population, it was genocide. Wolves are a sustainable resource that can be managed. But at present special interest groups have gone to Federal Courts and blocked a state’s ability to manage their wolf populations. These groups are empathetic to the wolf and don’t care about other factors. The only thing that matters to them is their perception. This includes saving an animal which they believe is imperil from the cruelty of hunting. These special groups are much like the deer hunter in that they believe only in their perception. This reasoning is typically derived from emotions, not biological dynamics. But biological considerations should not be the only consideration that drives the decision to allow harvest of the wolf. Sociological effects should also be scrutinized. For one, the deer hunter should have a voice, particularly since it is the hunter that purchases a license that partially funds the division of the DNR to protect the wolf in the first place. Bear hunters have a great interest as wolves kill their dogs. Live stock farmers have an economic complaint. To strictly base a decision on science would be just as wrong as the complete elimination of the wolf. There is another limit other than carrying capacity, it is called social tolerance. Social tolerance expands into the realm of deer as well the wolf. In WI we have goals of deer per sq mile in delineated management units. These goals take into consideration the biology and social aspects. Examples of social aspects include crop damage, car collisions, and landscape damage. Ask a non hunter that has hit a deer with their vehicle or can’t grow hosta in their yard about their opinion on deer in their neighborhood. It will sound similar to a deer hunter that has to contend with wolves. Social tolerance is difficult to pinpoint as it is a moving target, as populations of people move out of the city into the rural landscape, these tolerance change. It is also difficult in that isn’t tangible. One can’t put a number on tolerance then put it into an equation to determine the number of animals that can be harvested, but it needs to be considered. This is true for deer as well as wolves. My point to all of this is to try discovering a common ground. I myself am a wolf enthusiast. I have seen wolves while sitting in a tree during a bow hunt. Rather than loath the wolf for killing my deer and ruining my day in the tree stand, I relished the experience and often recall the memory. Hunting shouldn’t be strictly about killing an animal and despising everything that challenges my ability to harvest game. We as hunter claim to anti’s that it’s more than killing, it’s an experience, the woods, nature, social bonding, etc. then perhaps we need to actually act that way.

I like what you done to it!!! Subtle differences make a huge impact! That view was from my front porch when I lived inland. (best hunting area of my life ..so far...) At the time I took the shot I was in the kitchen and noticed a glorious sunset so I grabbed the camera and ran outside, literally running down the road trying to get a good frame snapping shots as I went, I had missed the actual sun, but captured this one. I may have to make a trip to the library and pick up a book or two on the subject…

I found Keating’s and Porter’s books both very useful. If nothing else it kindles the drive to get on the water and think about fishing. I’m not the caliber of many of the folks on here, but I managed to catch a few phish this past season. A lot of it was all because of the advice I gleamed off this site. Last year was the first year since the early 80’s that I seriously fished big water and more importantly I was calling the shots, so I am in the same boat as you when it comes to relearning. The biggest thing I can pass along is to think, don’t just throw out a bunch of lines and hope for the best. The worse mistake I made last season was to pass a scum line and not fish it. I learned at the dock that this was where the fish were, I got skunked that day (it was my only skunk…knock on wood). If you’re not marking fish, move , if your marking but not catching, do something different than washing lures, change something, depth and speed being my first choices. If you catch a fish, try to figure out why. Was it a fluke? Temp? Speed? Depth? Also ask questions at the dock about rigs, not lures, but how where they running the successful lines. I learned about lead core and SWR at the dock. A kind person was willing to let me in on the technique and my fishing changed from there on out. Another hinted to me about the length of my flies behind the flasher. Subtleties in the bottom shouldn’t be overlooked. My best spot was anchored around a slight under point that extended out from 65 fow to 120 fow; the contours where otherwise parallel to shore except this little subtle slow tapering point over a mile in length. Was there a slight up well that pushed colder water and bait up? I’m not quite sure as I don’t have a temp probe. But it was something. …my point is that little details can make a world of difference between who’s catchin’ fish and who’s washin ‘lures…..think and ask questions then get out there and do the things that you learned that you weren’t doing, don’t just do the same things and expect the exceptional results without changing your tactics. The lake is dynamic… so you should be too.

to summarize for my pea sized brain, I interpret that to mean offset the subject of your photo horizontally and vertically, don't center it. I’ve always dabbled with photography, but never had any formal instruction, this theory may explain why some of my pix are better than others without ever know why. for example: Now I know and will try to take advantage of it….Thanx!!