Winter to Spring

Once I caught my giant pike, my drive to get out and push the envelope on questionable ice diminished greatly. I have spent far less time spring fishing this year than last also because of a snafu with our government no longer allowing access to some of my favorite lakes. That is for another time and place...


Being a long time overdue here are some highlights to winter switching over to spring:


After visiting with Wayne Cochrane out at their family property, Rachel and I did some mild shed hunting. We did not manage to find a single antler, but an awesome coyote fatality duck decoy followed us home.


The weekend of March 12th, Lou and I headed out to Nick and Lisa's place to do some hardcore shed hunting. As often seems to be the case that time of year, the weather did not exactly cooperate, and we cancelled the shed hunting trip. Ethan joined in for some shenanigans both on the river and in the yard. Because there was still a fair amount of ice floating down the river, fishing was borderline futile but we tried anyway. We spent most of the time out shooting ice chunks with the pellet gun and fishing frozen shrimp out of our pockets... Thanks Poindexter...


The other portion of our time was spent cutting down (or attempting) trees in Nick's grove. He wants to restart the project and the old grove was mostly elm and silver maple. Some great slab indeed followed me home!


I believe the only pic I got of the entire weekend is waking up from a dead sleep with Lou curled up at my feet. She is a much better sleeping companion than Mocha; that's for sure.

As the season generally dictates, each year the ice is a littler different. When Megan, Ryan, and the kids came up for a visit the weekend of the 18th, we were kinda landlocked. Unfortunately, we were unable to do any fishing during their three day stay. No worry, we found plenty to do with the kids. A couple of snowball fights, some Frisbee with Lou, and starting my plants with the kids were some of the activities.

Probably my favorite part of the weekend is how well Mocha and my niece Myla got along. They adored each other! Mocha would follow her around as she shed food scraps like most children do. When she was well fed she would lay on her side and welcome whatever hugs were heaved her way.

The last week of March I was able to finally find a shred of open water and invariably found my pike. Nothing gigantic, but open-water fish nonetheless.

With the transitioning of winter to spring, it was nice to see open water again. I fought for a longer winter this year for whatever reason, but have greeted 50-60 degree days with open arms. Now that it has started to warm up, I have been chomping at the bit to get my gardens started!




Stay Tuned