Through Anglin Eyes

Tuesday 3/9 - 3/13 Rob and Nick and The Big Wash....

2010-03-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

Rob and Nick came over from Ft Wayne for a long half day. Nick is dying to catch a steelhead and we are zero for 2 on trips. But, he did hook two fish today....one in dark water and one on gravel. Both were nice fish. Rob is "along for the ride" as he puts it. He and I talked about hunting in Alberta and maybe doing spring snows next year. Rob and I have a lot in common!

Well all that rain that's been holding out has finally come down the river. A good wash is was my lawn needed but I coulda done without the river gettin' messed up. I canceled Friday with Paul and Doc and looks like Robert is going to hold off for Sunday as well. Its coming down at a good pace now but we did get more rain today. I hope Monday works out. Next week starts to get busy and the wiggle room with reschedule disappears real quick.

I took Mitch to his baseball "draft"...or whatever they call it. It's a skills test that lasted several hours. I asked if RJ could give it whirl too but the cut off is 7 years old and he's only 5. Granted, he'd probably play better than most of the 7 and 8 year olds but rules is rules. Plus, the boss guy was really big and had red hair...kind of a fat viking looking dude with a Marine cut, so I didn't push the issue.

March 11th, 2010....The D and BS

2010-03-13T18:38:00.000-08:00

Dan and I hit The D for a few hours this morning. The water was coming up and going off though still fishable. I hooked one in a slot below gravel...I presume a female holding behind a redd that I couldn't see. Kinda surprised me so I punted after a few head shakes. I saw some newly worked gravel and one occupied redd but little activity in the way of traffic. 45.5 degree water.

We headed down to BS dam and slid in line. Dan with a two-hander showing off with a big 'Truder. I was feeling the urge to assimilate into the crowd and grabbed Dan's drift rod out of the back seat of his truck. I think it was a Cabela's blank, green Fish Eagle II that he rolled up in his signature pinkish red thread and used remnants of other corks to make this bizarre fucked up looking handle that was ill shaped and peculiar but oddly comfortable in the hand. t didn't take long and I was into a fish on a #6 chart/orange nuke. I kicked it's ass...a smallish female winter-run in great shape. As I let her go I said,"What a nice looking fish" a toothless hillibilly nearby followed me up with,"It'd be a lot nicer if it was on a fuckin' stringer". And with that gem of wisdom in our collective thoughts, I let her go.

Shortly thereafter I picked up another fish in the same tank right in front of a big rock. This spot is notorious to Dan and I because the majority of those guys that live down there never fish it. It's draped in line anyway so you can feel the line and then you get jacked by a fish that's laying in the hydraulic just upstream of the BFR. I landed it in the same place and one of the regulars, a good guy says to me, "Man...you don't play em at all do you?"....alluding to the fact that I usually get them handled before they handle me. I said,"Nope, I like to kick their ass and move on".

About 10 minutes later I nailed a big male that beat the crap out of me for a few minutes but then I had him on a rail coming in. He stopped just long enough to get fouled up in a bunch of line refuse and bent my hook out on a rock. These hooks are TMC 105 knock offs...not ever sure what they are....Daiichi maybe. They seem to bend a little more readily but the price is worth the gamble I guess. Adios Mr. Steel. I also landed two nice clean Redhorse Suckers....so technically I was the "hi rod" for the time I was there. Dan was sure to point that out to some of the nay saying, fly fishing guide haters down there. I can handle myself with the drift rod...been a while but it was good to give it whirl again.

Sunday March 7th, 2010 - Quick Drift

2010-03-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

I was able to race off to the river and meet Josh Lantz for a quickie evening drift. By the time I hiked in to catch up with Josh he had hooked two fresh chromers and had his ass handed to him. That's a great way to beat the cabin fever. It's game on now and there is no looking back. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those springs when guys will say,"Damn, I sure wish I'd have given you a call two weeks ago".

Saturday 3/6/10 Burning Gas in The Chicken Cow

2010-03-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

Dan and I took Dustan's Chicken Cow up and down the Joe for half a day today. The river looks about as good as I've ever seen it. Water temp was hovering around 45.5 which is amazing. Really looking forward to fishing the Joe this spring...unless we get a blow out of course. We hooked nothing but it was nice to get out and do some scouting.

I also spent about a half hour photographing the two Traveling Decoys from the Duck Hunter's Boat Page that were carved by the late Lee Harker. The decoys are destined to be given to Lee's grandson Blake in a couple weeks. A Bluebill and giant Black Duck...these two blocks traveled all over North America since October...its really neat to read the journals and read the signatures on the bottom. I do it every year....neat stuff.

Jay's Column: Last of The Mohican Players........

2010-03-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Who’s that crazy man in the street?

Published: Friday, March 5, 2010 8:39 AM CST
Like lots of kids back in the 70s, my brother and I as well as a few friends tended to try and reenact TV shows and movies we had seen.

There were westerns and war movies and of course films about the frontiersmen and their struggle with the Native Americans. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were honing our outdoor skills while we were playing cowboys and Indians in Charlie Creek Valley out the back door.

Jaws was also a perpetual favorite for us but that was reserved for the pool or the lake. Usually a big kid played the shark and he’d have to pull us off an inner tube or inflatable mattress that acted as the fishing vessel Orca from the movie. This was also a great excuse for the typically older kid to thrash and dunk a smaller kid because that was part of the game. The shark was a very coveted part to play.

One of our favorite subject matters was to pretend we were the three main characters of James Fenimore Cooper’s series of novels, The Leatherstocking Tails; Chingachgook, his son, Uncas, and of course the main character, Natty Bumppo. Depending on which novel you refer to, Natty went by a host of different names including The Deerslayer, Hawkeye, and the French moniker “La Longue Carabine,” which means The Long Rifle, alluding to his incredibly accurate Kentucky rifle and his ability to kill with it.

The most familiar of these novels was and still is “The Last of The Mohicans” which took place during the French and Indian War of 1757. While there is a newer, well-known film starring Daniel Day Lewis as Natty Bumppo that was released in 1992, the one we watched to inspire our play time was a PBS Masterpiece Theatre production from 1971. We had a VHS tape that was viewed so many times that it eventually wore out. I’m sure my mother was overcome with joy when that tape was finally rendered useless.

We had spent several years playing “Deerslayer” and “Last of Mohicans” in the sprawling backyard of our neighborhood. Each character refined to the point of realism that to this day I can cry out like the proud Chief Chingachgook did in the movie.

While in college in Michigan, my friends referred to this as the “Hoosier Yell” and inevitably it became a regular request in social settings and often led to some interesting situations at the bar as I’m sure you can imagine. If only they knew that I was summoning a childhood memory every time I did it. The bouncers never believed me anyway.

Incidentally, my younger brother Ryan always played Uncas, who’s character dies at the end of the book, the movie and of course every single time we played Last of The Mohicans. Would you expect anything else? He died a most violent death every time we played — it was perfect. Sometimes we’d make him lay there “dead” for 10 or 15 minutes to get the point across. My neighbor buddy Brian always played Hawkeye, which was the studliest part of all.

A couple years later, Brian and I had barely grown up enough to quit playing but my brother was still at it. While on a family vacation in the Canadian Rockies, Ryan had picked up all kinds of animal skins from a touristy fur shop. There was Ermine Weasel, bear, beaver and marmot skins as well as a coon skin cap and some leather bags just like a real mountain man would adorn himself with.

My brother, who happens to be an actor/writer now, could dress up like a mountain man so well that he’d sneak around scaring the crap out of other kids in the neighborhood. The ultimate touch was an accurately reproduced fake rifle.

My father owned a liquor store at the time and they always had a police scanner on at the store. One day there was a police call that a “crazy wild man wielding a rifle” was terrorizing a nearby neighborhood. The police were dispatched to the scene with sirens blaring. You see where I’m going with this.

It turned out, of course, that my brother had taken his act with the coon skin cap and tassel leather coat to a new level. He may have only been a kid but the police were convinced a crazed man in furs was going to start shooting any second. It was just like a Hollywood movie from another era, “Put the gun down and your hands behind your head.”

The officers figured it out pretty quick and even knew where to take him. The family laughs about it but just imagine if that happened now. Just imagine if a kid dressed up like a mountain man, carrying a very realistic facsimile of a real gun ran around scaring kids. Just imagine the consequences for the kid and the parents.

Times sure have changed. Now we have video games that portray much more violent themes that kids play behind closed doors.

I think it was a whole lot better when you wore it on your sleeve and did it out back in front of everybody.

Long live The Last of The Mohican Players.

Jay Anglin writes a weekly outdoors column for The Herald-Argus. Write to him at jay@anglinoutdoors.com.

Crumy weather...

2010-02-08T07:43:00.001-08:00

This weather pattern is hardly fit for a steelhead or a goose to eat. I'm ready for some action!

State of things....

2010-02-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

Well, the weather people were wrong again on the long range and fairly inaccurate on the long range. Looks like the big warm ups we were supposed to get fizzled out. Not terrible temps but not the big thaw I was expecting either. Goose hunting was fair at best yesterday. It's a shame that so many idiots thinks it's okay to hunt 3 or 4 times a year and jump hundreds of birds off a roost that several other parties are relying on for hunting success. 2 or 3 geese are harvested instead of dozens which ultimately is the goal of the managers that set these seasons. It probably doesn't help that every time we go the parties get larger and larger...more hunters to hide and more shots taken at the same birds.

Great Waters Chicago....

2010-01-29T09:37:00.001-08:00

I have some last minute work to do ie create a one hour program for my presentation at the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in Chicago this weekend. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of friends there. I'll be on my back killing geese Monday and hopefully swinging some flies next week as well!

Jay

Jay's Newspaper Column - Treasure in the attic is the topic

2010-01-29T09:34:00.000-08:00

Old Treasures - January 2010
By Jay Anglin

Occasionally you hear a story about somebody that literally stumbles into a treasure virtually right under their nose. I recall a couple years ago I read an article about a guy that was refurbishing his home and found hundreds of vintage movie promotional posters inside the walls of the home. Apparently the previous owner of the home had operated a movie theatre during what is known as the “The Golden Age of Hollywood” and took the posters home to insulate the walls. Obviously those Gone With the Wind and Citizen Kane posters didn’t seem all that valuable at the time. Today there are worth a fortune of course.

Some of these treasure troves stories have become almost cliché. Though, I am one of the lucky ones that discovered an attic full of vintage baseball cards so it does happen. Well I guess I didn’t really discover them, the entire family knew they were there. Like many kids, my Uncle Bill had a neighborhood hideout with a couple buddies. He came up with a brilliant concept for others to gain membership into his “club” which amounted to bringing a shoebox full of baseball cards to the next meeting for the initiation fee. Fortunately for me my uncle was popular and those kids had lots of Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron cards mixed in with their Yogi Berra and Ted Williams cards…among others.

At the beginning of each semester on my way back to college I’d stop at a well known card dealer in Grand Rapids and set a shoe box half filled with cards on the counter. The dealer would literally walk away from other customers like they weren’t even there, sometimes in mid sentence. He’d take my box of cards and say, “We’ll see what you have for me this time kid” and we’d disappear into his office where he’d use a loupe to examine each card.

Sometimes this took a couple of hours but he was a straight shooter and wanted to be sure I got at least a decent deal. After some deliberation, he would write a figure on a very small piece of paper, fold it and hand it to me in the palm of his hand. I always figured this was so there was no confusion, it was right there in black and white. This little act certainly added to the drama which I always appreciated.

I knew that he was going to make lots of money off these cards but selling them as I did served my purpose well at the time. I’d always drive north to the UP with a wad of cash big enough to cover those expensive book fees and hopefully enough left over to be the hero at the bar for at least a few days.

Not surprisingly, sportsmen have been collecting all kinds of knick knacks, guns, decoys, firearms, and what not for centuries. Just imagine if your Uncle was Daniel Boone. Think about it. Behind the scenes of the “outdoor world” there is a bustling industry of sorts, constantly shifting things from collector to retailer and vice versa.

Wednesday afternoon I was straightening out some of my fishing gear and enlisted the help of my son Mitch. At some point he was digging around in a cabinet and pulled out a couple of vintage fishing lures that I had plucked from my Grandfather’s tackle box a couple years ago that I had come across in….the attic at my Mom’s.

I never had taken the time to see what they were worth so I sat down at the computer and did some research. The first figure I came across for the better of the two was nearly $3,000 so I had to take a deep breath before I said, “Honey…take a look at this”. Like baseball cards, the value of vintage lures is based on how the lure is “graded”. It was obvious that this one wasn’t worth three grand based on its appearance alone but I knew it wasn’t junk either.

I took a bunch of close-up photos of the lure with the digital camera and emailed them to a few collectors I found online that I thought may be interested in purchasing this antique. I received a couple of replies almost instantly. One was laughable, the standard “it isn’t worth much, I’ll give you $50” reply which I fully expected. The next one was a little more reasonable but the guy had the “take it or leave it” thing down pat which is never a good sign.

The third reply came in and it was obvious that this collector was sincere and had a genuine interest in the lure. After we exchanged a couple more emails he bought the lure for a very respectable amount of money. He even covered the shipping! To think that with one flap of the garbage can lid this lure could’ve been lost forever with all the other junk that accumulates in my fishing stuff.

I wonder how many of those old fishing lures are waiting in the corner of some attic, long forgotten. Hey, your uncle may not have been Daniel Boone but you might want to take a look around the attic at Mom’s anyway.

Swinging with the long rod...

2010-01-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my buddy Dan and I spent half the day wading the St Joe below Berrien Springs swinging flies. This was not just a scouting mission, Dan also did his best to refine my spey casting technique. Occasionally I was consistently making decent skagit style casts but when he started to get into the "585 grains and a 10 foot cheater" and "remember the 180 degree rule...you know about that I'm sure" talk I pretended not be confused!

Okay, so I'm of Scottish ancestry and for whatever reason always preferred Irish whiskey but Dan has me sipping good Scotch now. As of yesterday he's convinced me to give a shit about spey casting as well and he always reminds me that I should be an expert because I'm "a Scot". Thanks old buddy!

We didn't hook anything or see anything for that matter but that was the first time in several outings the past week that Dan didn't.

Jay

Jay's Newspaper Column - Topic: Reel Maintenance and Disasters

2010-01-26T09:29:00.000-08:00

Spring Dust Off
3/5/09

If the weather forecast is any indication, lots of fishermen are going to be thinking about dusting off the fishing gear and hitting the water in the near future. It’s easy to assume that everything is in working condition and just go ahead and make that first big spring foray to the stream or the lake. Then, when you break off the inaugural fish because in reality, everything is not in working order
and your fishing line is all chafed and cracked and sun baked. And covered with spider webs, dust and evidence of rodent infestation and molded to the spool because you parked the rod and reel next to a heat register for the entire winter or put those rods in the garage where “they belong” according to your wife. Yes, you did it.

You probably assumed that like a good little fisherman you’d take the time in the spring to clean everything, lubricate the gears and put fresh line on your reels, maybe even replace a bail spring or two. Then you casually relegated your gear into the place where it won’t get in the way and totally forgot about it. If you didn’t, then you’re more organized than I am. You’d think that as a fishing guide I’d be on top of this. You’d think that I’d be coddling my gear, treating as if it was special equipment that required lots of special attention. The fact is it’s a heckuva lot easier to stick it in the corner and deal with it later.

Twelve months a year some of my gear is potentially being used and therefore in working order. Most hardcore fishermen always have something in rotation that works or if they’re really lucky, an endless fund for brand new gear. I wish I was lucky like that. I figure that due to economic conditions I keep hearing about I’d best take the time to see if anything can be fixed easily so I wouldn’t have to invest a bunch of dwindling change on new rods and reels. The other day I took the time to collect old reels and extra stuff lying around in drawers and tackle bags. Reels that hadn’t felt the exhilaration of a fish burning the drag for years and at some point were put away to be dealt with later. What I found surprised me.

I have a shoe box full of old reels that can be fixed for virtually pennies. Occasionally you can find the parts required for fixing these old gems from the manufacturer but in reality the reel repair guy is the best option. Most of the good ones have been doing it for so long that they have drawers full of obscure parts for reels that have been “obsolete” for decades. Not surprisingly there is a big market for those old reels and their parts. If nothing else you can eBay them for some extra cash. And speaking of eBay, it’s a fairly good place to find reel parts as well.

If you do an internet search you’ll find lots of reel repair services. The big box outdoor stores offer reel repair services as well. Locally there are some guys that do it on the side. If I miss somebody locally please let me know. Personally, I use Moe’s Reel Repair and Cleaning out of Cassopolis, Michigan. You can reach Moe at 269-445-2782 or email him at moedar@netzero.net

If all else fails take the reel and throw it in a dumpster and buy a new one. Don’t put it in a drawer or on a shelf expecting that some day you’ll take the time to fix it. Be sure and buy a good one too. There is nothing worse than equipment failure when it counts. Trust me I see it all the time when my fishing clients bring el cheapo gear they insist on using.

Back when I only had one good fly rod for steelhead, the reel that accompanied it was total junk. I was snookered by some guy at a shop in Colorado when I bought it. He told me it was a great deal on a quality reel and seeing as I was barely able to get to where I was going on what gas money I had scraped up, it seemed like the right thing to do. I hated that reel because it always failed me and despite my plan to replace it I kept hoping that it would miraculously reinvent itself into a quality piece of equipment. I would cuss and spit and throw it in the mud but alas, the next time I was on the river guess what reel would be tightly clamped to my 8 weight fly rod?

Then one fine spring day as I was working the steelhead over I noted that the reel was working perfectly. I noticed it because after 8 or 9 fish, I hadn’t paid any attention to it. The reel was out of my mind where it was supposed to be! Shortly thereafter I hooked one of the largest steelhead I have ever seen anywhere. It was big buck, 40 inches long and well over 20 pounds. He had launched into the air several times his immensity startling me. I dug my heels in and stuck the rod butt into my solar plexus to take this big boy to task. He was a stallion of a fish and I was already thinking that I’d have to race him to a taxidermist somewhere.

It was then that he took off on what we fishermen describe as a “blistering run”. At about 100 feet or so downriver he breached again, throwing water into the air in an impressive explosion. As he came down his flanks hit the water and the resulting slap could be heard for miles. And then he took off again at which point my reel blew a gear and the line belched off the spool into a giant ball of mint green Orvis fly line in what is known as a “free spool”. When everything finally seized up the rod almost jerked from my hands and for one last moment I thought of running after the fish. It was too late. The line was stretched to the max and finally gave way in a firecracker snap. The fish jumped his way down the river; my fly firmly entrenched in his jaw and about 4 feet of monofilament dragging behind. This act is often referred to as “giving you the bird”.

Surprisingly I didn’t cry all that much after that. After taking the reel off the rod I drove straight home. When I pulled up to the cabin I picked the reel up off the passenger seat and walked straight to the wood pile. I casually put the reel on a big round of oak and dropped the butt end of a maul on it with a swing that nearly snapped the handle. That reel would never fail me again

Okay, I made that last part about the maul up. But that’s what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I needed some starter money for a new reel and I ended up selling it to some guy for thirty bucks. Hey, I told him that it wasn’t a good steelhead reel.

January 21st, 2010

2010-01-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

I'm finally getting up to speed on this blog thing. What the hell does "blog" mean anyway...where'd that word come from? According to Wiki it's the shortened term for "weblog". So be it.

As you can see I've posted a couple of my newspaper columns from the LaPorte Herald Argus. I'll cherry pick some good ones(and probably not so good ones)and post them in a random fashion. I'll try to be seasonal at least!

The Anglin Outdoors website got another makeover so if you have a chance take a look.... www.anglinoutdoors.com

Jay's Newspaper Column - Winter snow

2010-01-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Snow Time
By Jay Anglin - January 2009

This week I proved to myself again that you can harvest a pair of geese over eight decoys in driving snow on a day that barely saw the temperature get about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. I was comfortably ensconced in my layout blind
out of the wind staring out of a little opening into the blur of white, listening for the telltale sound of honking geese on the wing. For whatever reason, it just seemed like the thing to do.

It was difficult to hear through the heavy fleece cap and two hoods so I held as still as possible so I could concentrate on the white noise beyond my cocoon. It didn’t take long and the show started as the telltale honks built up in the distance. I managed to work some “traffic” birds into my measly spread but sometimes less is better apparently. Even with the benefit of lightweight expensive “miracle fiber” clothing reducing bulk, shooting was tough at best with the multiple layers of insulation. I laughed to myself as I envisioned what I must’ve looked like. I couldn’t help but to remember the kid in the movie A Christmas Story that was so bundled by his mother he could hardly move.

What is it about getting all bundled up and lying in the snow that seems to attract people like me? It starts at an early age. There can be fifty gorgeous days in a row and I’ll have to tell the kids to go outside and play but once a blizzard comes along they can’t get their snow pants on fast enough. At approximately 6:00 am Thursday morning I heard “Dad can we go sledding?”

“Kids, I’d love to take you sledding but it’s way too cold out there”, I had to tell them on yet another snow day. My four year old son RJ looked at me with disdain. He is the daredevil. His first solo sledding run a few weeks ago ended in a spectacular crash whereupon he emerged from the heap laughing and began to jump up and down and bellow unintelligible gibberish.

“Whooahhh, that was quewel! Whoohoo man, yeah, yeah, yesss!.....blibbity, blabbity etc etc”. I had visions of future requests for sky diving lessons and really expensive doctor bills. But, he gets his love of the snow honest as his father has a particular penchant for inclement conditions like we have now. But at some point you have to be smart.

Back when I was attending school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I used to have to deal with these conditions throughout the winter months. I recall one time I swung though East Lansing, Michigan on my way back north after Christmas vacation to catch the Hoosiers playing the Spartans in an early January basketball game. It seemed like such a brilliant idea, I’d buy a student ticket for $4 by borrowing a real MSU students ID and be back in Marquette by about 1 am or so. The game was great and I did manage to get that cheap student ticket with a friendly ID loan from some guy in line. But I did fail to realize that the northern two-thirds of the state of Michigan was under siege by a massive blizzard. Note to self, always check the weather.

So I trundled forth in my trusty ’89 Cherokee and managed to convince the Michigan State Police blocking my passage at every major exit that I was up to the challenge and had to be back in Marquette before class Monday. I begged and pleaded and told them my ride could handle the 14 inches of snow and larger drifts on the highway. The road was only fit for the really brave and stupid and there were only a handful of us that hadn’t wiped out already. Interstate 75 was like a graveyard for semis and station wagons, mini-vans, pickup trucks and ’84 Caprice Classics. I safely arrived in Marquette about a half-hour before my first class thirteen hours after I left the friendly confines of Breslan Arena.

I skipped all my classes Monday by the way. Apologies to the police I spoke with, hey it was a long night. The best lesson I learned that entire semester was how fast I could go in four wheel drive on an abandoned expressway through a foot or more of snow. At night. You just never know when you’ll be confronted with a rare situation such as that and it’s always good to be prepared.

I did have one thing going for me that time and I know the police figured this. It wasn’t all that cold and with all the junk I had in my Jeep I could’ve probably lived out of it for a week or so. Its one thing to get stuck in a snow bank when it’s 28 degrees but entirely another to be stranded in sub-zero temps. It’s downright deadly in conditions like we are experiencing now.

There were several drowning incidents this week across the state that involved ice, open water and frigid temps. Just because the ice is good in one spot doesn’t necessarily mean its good all over the lake. Waterfowl keep holes open on most of the larger lakes so be careful. God forbid a potentially deadly mishap occurs at anytime but with temps like this it makes it exponentially more difficult for the rescue crews to do their job. And while they are doing their job their lives are also at risk.

I’m going to wait until the temp cracks about 18 and then I’ll load the crew up and hit the sledding hill. For now, they can practice in the yard.

Jay's Newspaper Column - Sledding is the topic

2010-01-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

Note...titles are as I saved them in my file and not as printed!

Slicker Than Greased Owl Shit
By Jay Anglin - January 2010

The kids got out of school an hour and fifteen minutes early Thursday so I decided I’d take them sledding. Whenever we go I fondly recall how much fun I used to have sledding. It seemed that my friends and I were always draggin’ a sled or an inner tube around regardless of where we were going. If there was a hill nearby it was mandatory to take a run or two.

I was lucky when I was a kid because just behind my house across the creek was arguably the best sledding hill within the Wabash city limits. Known in common circles as “Bakehorn’s”, it was the place to be whenever there was snow on the ground. You could always count on other groups of kids being at the hill too. You may see friends or foes but the sledding was always fun. It was a great place to socialize and hang out even if you didn’t sled. I had lots of “firsts” take place at that hill, some of which I can’t mention here.

I don’t know if it was sheer luck or if it was planned this way but there was a hose spigot about 15 feet from the top of the hill coming right out of the side of the house. Older kids would take buckets and fill them and dump them down the main run. The downhill speeds a good sledder could obtain on that boilerplate hard ice bordered on ridiculous, but if you weren’t up to the task a more gradual slope off to one side was designated as a “bunny hill” of sorts. And of course, on the opposite side of the hill there was a “suicide run”. I particularly enjoyed that side.

About 30 yards from the bottom of the hill was Charlie Creek. The ultimate accomplishment was to run the hill and continue on until you hit the creek. Of course, it was much preferred that the creek was frozen so you wouldn’t get wet but it never stopped us from going over the bank anyway. If the creek was frozen you could sometimes make it across and start going up the far bank. This was my specialty because I was a skinny kid and I had a fast sled. Getting air off the near bank and almost clearing the creek was the stuff of legend. I managed to do it a few times and how more ribs, legs, arms and noses weren’t broken is beyond me.

As a protective parent I’m always warning the kids about a shrub or a post or a big hole they need to watch out for, but the entire time I’m thinking how different things were back in the 70’s. My parents as well as all of the other kids parents would basically say, “Be careful” as we pulled the sleds out from under the bushes and left the house at 9am or so on a Saturday. Occasionally a bloody nose or cold feet would send somebody home early but usually we didn’t get back until sometime around dinner. This is the way it was.

Many of the kids had “buckle boots” which is nothing more than over-sized rubber boot that fits over your shoes. You’d put them on over your regular shoes but they had virtually no traction. It took some kids ten minutes to get up the hill and of course your feet would get cold pretty quick. My parents gave my brother and I decent winter boots but I was always jealous that I didn’t have those buckle boots like lots of the other kids. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the other kids parents either couldn’t afford real winter boots or didn’t care, so their kids got the rubber buckle boots instead.

As I recall, Mrs Bakehorn would have hot chocolate for us sometimes and on the weekends when it was busiest there would be a fire at the top of the hill to warm up. Occasionally our parents would even go on the weekends. In fact, sometimes they’d get us a babysitter and have adult sledding parties at night. The Bakehorn house had a nice set of flood lights off the back that lit the hill up.

I’m not sure if Bakehorn’s Hill is still active but if it is I’d be surprised. With today’s litigious society, such use of one’s property would be a risky venture. You’d probably have to carry an insurance policy like a ski resort. Plus, it seems like the majority of people in Northern Indiana don’t like the snow anymore. I think back at how much fun we had in those days and wonder why more folks don’t enjoy winter now. It’s here to stay so you may as well get out and have some fun. Sitting around and complaining isn’t going to make it go away any faster.

How many geese does it take........

2010-01-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

I spent Saturday and Sunday laying in a spread of 150 goose decoys. I had floaters, sleepers, resters, full body feeders and uprights, shells, sillouettes....a real nice mishmash of decoys. I set up at the edge of a lake where we've kept the water open with an ice-eater for the past 6 weeks and ran the decoys into the adjacent pasture. Both days I saw around 1000 geese and worked hundreds but only few made the fatal mistake of finishing in the decoys.

It was the last two days of the regular season and these birds were very well educated. Stale you might say. The conditions weren't very good either...barely a breeze, flat skies. This presented a very difficult calling situation which created the perpetual problem of not calling enough and yet always calling too much. I hate that.

But, in the end, the hunters prevailed and we got our birds. We'll get back at them on February 1st for the nuisance season.

First off....

2010-01-14T08:43:00.001-08:00

This is my first blog entry. I've always considered the term "blog" sort of unsavory. That's why it took me so long to get my very own......blog.

So, I will post my newspaper column here and random thoughts and stories. Be back soon!

Jaybird