All my outdoor adventures are put down here for you to see. My goal is to make you smile or maybe even learn something. If you don't, well it's a good read anyway.
Wish me luck.....
This blog is dedicated to my Auntie Nae and my Mom. They have contributed to this in their own way.
Thank you for all you have done and still do.
And a special Thanks to my Dad, he started me on my path by having time to take me hunting and fishing.
Thank you.
Well as I'm sitting here I am pretty much ready to go fishing next week. I still have to string up my Erie rods with fresh line, I switched from braid to a mono called Sunline. It seems to be a good strong line there's a couple captains on Erie that run it, the nice thing is it's 16# test with the diameter of 10. I got my Coho rods strung with it since that's the first lake I should be going to, I only say that because it looks like rain all next week. So more than likely I'll be on an area lake for the day.
Got all my tires in this week and had them mounted, 4 on my decoy trailer, 2 on my boat trailer and 2 on my wheeler. No joke the tires I took off the 2 trailers were bad, and wearing really uneven.
This is how my boat set for the day until I got back from Walmart.
Notice I put a rod holder above my step. I am always looking for a spot to put the rod while I work on whatever it is I need to work on at the time. It was also brought to my attention that the non slip grip pads where not all facing the same way so I fixed that.
I also added some new LED lights I got from Rural King, they were a steal at 30 bucks for 2. I still have 2 more to put up, but these sure did brighten up the boat side of the garage. The new ones are the first and third light.
With all that done I also got my trailer put on the pad on the side of the house with all my waterfowl gear in it. Pretty much just ready for the beginning of fishing season.😍🙌😍
Yep only one more week of projects before my fishing season officially kicks off. This week found me getting most of the little nitty gritty done. I finally got to the sewing I've been putting off for a while now. I did however forget one pair of pants that I'll have to get to next week.
I also made a step for the boat. Last year I found it awkward to get to the bow, where I keep the cooler. I found myself stepping to the side of my seat and balancing to the front over my seat. Since I didn't want to do a full body water check this year I made a step to make it easier to get to the cooler.
Yeah I know there's a cooler below the step right.... well that's my food cooler not my fish storage cooler. The step isn't permanent, I wanted it to be removable so when I'm not trolling I can take it out.
Neff get your wife..... I also diy'd some under cupboard lights, which I've wanted to do for a while. I have always hated how dark it is on my main food prep counter. I was waiting to get my hood up so find out if it was hard wired or if I had to put a plug in, in. Well, it was hard wired so I put the light plug in another outlet.
Before:
After:
I know what your thinking... what is that white thing hanging down? Honestly I noticed it when I posted this picture so hold on while I find out.
O.K. so what I found was the old battery operated light switch light that I stuck up there when I first moved in, don't worry its down and in my drawer now.
So that's pretty much it, I fiddle farted around with rods and reels, and decided to change out my trolling line. Retied some fluorocarbon leaders and stripped some reels.... you know just the usual prefishing rituals.
I should be ready when April hits to start up on Lake Michigan for the Coho "run".
Monday I was in bed almost all day, I think I ate something dicey on Sunday night, I'm not sure. I was just drained, it was all I could do to talk to Cliff (and he rattles on), so I just spent alot of time doing nothing. Tuesday I got my shopping done and on top of the usual I got on the inter-web and bought the stuff I was waiting for my tax money to buy, since I got that last week.
Wednesday I got 1 of my 3 remaining upgrades slated for this month done. Since I upgraded my downriggers last year I had to get a different way to transport them, on the boat doesn't work for me. So I decided to build a box, line it and I put some felt pads on the bottom so it doesn't mar the floor in the boat.
Yeah it doesn't look like much but it will do the job. The white rope is a handle there's another one on the other side.
Only 2 weeks left and 2 relatively small projects left, outside of the usual line change, tackle ogling, and trip to Cabela's on Monday.
Monday Cliff came over to help me move the stove back and install my hood. We mulled over different ways to get the end result and when we decided the best way we got to work. As it turned out I kinda took the supervisory position and let Cliff do what he does best.
These are the before pics:
This was the problem with the stove being a little too long. What you don't see is that the black pipe in the back is easily 2-3 inches from the wall making the stove stick out.... hence this issue.
So after we got the gas shut off, we pulled the stove out out and disconnected it, we made our first trip to Menards. Next was to run the black pipe, and with the stove out we started to figure out how to do the hood install. After we decided the best way to do the install we made another trip to Menards. After realizing that we didn't get any of the mounting hardware with the hood it was back to Menards. Once we got back to the 🏠 and going through the rest of the install we came to the realization that we needed to make one last trip to Menards. Well, after our 4th trip to Menards we decided to head to Moe's for a very late lunch, after we ate we got back we hammered out the hood. We even turned the power off for the fist time since I unhooked the hood 4 years ago. I think Cliff was being a little bit of a wuss on that one. When I first told him it was still hot his response was,"it's only 120", yeah but it's still 120. Anyway we got that done and then finished the stove, at the end of the day it actually was easier to move the stove than install the stupid hood. By the way on the hood box there was a pic and time for the hood install, it said 10 minutes. Trust you, me it was easily an hour or so to do that install. But we got 'er done and here's the pics of that:
I've always held to the "5 standard", it's not really a project until you have to go to the hardware store 5x's or more. Since we only had to go 4x's it was simply more of an undertaking than a project.
Anyhoo, here's the dammit part of the story.
So here's how I fixed the 2 issues, I flipped the cupboard door and switched my silverware drawer to limit the use of the dammit drawer.
This is how it turned out...
Just in case your wondering, that's deer loin cooking under that plate. 😁👍
By the way I also made a trip to the laundry mat with my white jacket and layout blind covers. I even cleaned up the garage a little bit too. You know put decoys and stuff away so I could walk in there.
With the house stuff done I'll move onto getting my hunting stuff organized and I still have an install for the boat.
Plus the usual old line replacement and lure upgrades, lots to get done yet, with the month flying by.
This week was the last week of hunting before the Turkey hunting break in April. Cliff got a coyote gun this year and wanted to try coyote hunting, which I thought he might like. This week we hunted Mississinewa for coyote and fox. The weather was better than it was last week but still not the best Indiana has to offer. With the temps from 30's to 40ish for the entirety of the day I really didn't think we would see much, but getting out would still be fun.
For the first half of the day we hit my best spots with nothing to show except hawks, eagles, and owl sightings. The highlight of the day was right around noon right before lunch, we headed way back to call a spot I knew had plenty of yotes in years past.
We were set up on a grassy "fencerow" between 2 fields about 10' apart, with the caller 15 yards in front of us up on a branch. We both had 12' wide paths to look down and Cliff actually had 2, 1 in front of him and 1 off to the right. We got to the 13 minute mark in the calling sequence and Cliff says,"Jeff" I look over to my right, at him, when I turn my head to look at him I hear the rustle of the corn stalks to my left. Cliff's motioning that he sees something in front, I told him to shoot it. He says that he only saw the tail and after another 5 or 10 minutes of calling we decide to slowly get up and walk down to where he saw the tail. Well after piecing everything together, this is how I feel it went down.
Cliff was watching the path to the right of him and didn't see the RED FOXcoming down the left side of the path in front of him. The grass pretty much obstructed his view, (if he had been in the chair like I told him to he would've had a better vantage) but I digress. The fox took the path that cut the grass where the caller was and when he picked up my scent, he gone. When Cliff said my name the sound I heard when I turned my head was the fox making a clean get away through the corn, the proof was in the tracks.
Cliff was pretty disgusted 😡 with the events and all I could do was put together what happened and laugh.... he didn't find it as funny as I did 😆😇. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful and eventually I was running out of ways to remind him what had happened with his first predator encounter. It was definitely a learning experience for him that he won't soon forget.... if I have my way.
The week before that Cliff and I went to Salamonie to get our steps in. We called in the usual i.e. hawks and eagles but no fur, it was a really warm day I think it was up around 50 💩. Other than that nothing to report.
The week prior to that week was my first week out of waterfowl and onto coyote and fox. I went to Huntington by myself and knocked around the property in search for coyote and fox. None of which I was able to locate... I was able to find where the turkeys are hangin' out, April's only a short couple months away 😉.
The week before that was the last week of waterfowl and boy did we burn it up. Sunday after work I went south and found birds on one of my fields..... finally. They haven't been there all year and when they finally got there they just took up residence.
Monday Jake and I got to the field and got set up a little after daybreak. The birds came in a couple small flocks but mostly one's and two's, we were done by 9:17 am. We decided to go to the truck and let the birds in to eat so we could get another shoot in later in the week.
Tuesday Jake had something going on so I hit my river spot since all the water had turned hard.
I had to wait all day but I did manage my limit and just when I was 1 bird out my buddy Jerry (who owns the land) came down to chat..... with his A-5. In 20 minutes or so I was able to bring in 2 double's which he took one from each and I finished my limit.
In all the time I've been hunting here Jerry always comes down to chat toting a shotgun. This was the first time he ever took a couple. It was a really good day.
Wednesday Jake got a hold of his buddy Andy to hunt the same field for the second time that week. It took a little longer than Monday... Andy's first time out this year... but we all pulled in a limit, plus a bonus bird that I was lucky enough to shoot. I think it's a hybrid Canada and Greylag goose, it's at the taxidermist as I write this. I think we were done by 10? in the morning and again we held off picking up decoys until the geese were done in the field. We had one more day to hunt and we thought we would be able to finish the season in that field.
Thursday it was the last day of season for me and we decided to give my field one last go for the year. Again it took a little longer, we think it was because of all the blood on the snow from that week. But we shot another 3 man limit out of that field. I want to say we were done by 10:30ish when we started packing up and heading to Moe's for lunch, which did every day we hunted this field.
The hunts on that field were alot of fun everyone was cutting up and having a good time.
I did get alot of video that I still have to edit but here's some after limit antics.
At the end of this week I put 20 geese in my freezer. We took 40 geese out of this field in 3 days, plus a stuffer. I think we all had a really good time, I know we all had a couple great hunts.
I'm sure you're all wondering where Cliff was. Well, I called him everyday and did everything but go to his house and take him at gunpoint, but he just couldn't make it. I felt bad cause he missed one heck of a season ender 😢.
Well now we're all caught up...
March is fix it month and I've got some projects to get done in the house and on the boat before fishing season kicks off in April.
I'll try to drop some pics and words to let you know what I'm up to.
