Yep... I did it again...

Well Monday I went back to the range to make my final adjustments before season... On the way there I did see 7 turkeys on the side of the road... on public, that was cool.

 

Anyway made to the range and again had a great time shooting. This is how my "fine tune" of my guns ended up before I put 'em up 'til season. To say the least... it went extremely well. 

After a couple rounds downrange I was able to finish with this.

22 mag 50 yards 5 rounds.

6.5 PRC @ 100 yards... I pulled the first round but sent the next 2 where they should be.

I didn't get a pic of my 222 but if you look at the first pic it is the top right 1" target with 2 on the top of the target and 2 higher.

 

After getting done at the range when I got home I decided to go out after those turkey's on Tuesday. I got up late, left the house late, got signed in late... and so on, you get the picture. Wait let's back up a little, when I got out of my car my morning coffee, OJ, and energy drink were all hitting at once. So I did what we do... I found a tree and commenced watering it....After a couple seconds of not hearing my urine hitting the leaves... and knowing I'm peeing.... I was wondering why? Well come to find out when I slung my chair over my shoulder and then slung my jacket over my chair... I was pissing on the hood of my jacket. Well I threw my jacket on the floorboard, rummaged through the car for a spare camo jacket and headed to "the" spot. It was a gorgeous morning and I was happy I had another jacket because it was cool. I sat down got ready and just watched the day start. 

 It was around 9:30 and I started setting an end time just so I wouldn't sit there all day, well I decided my end time would be 10 or 11 but no later than that. Not too long after I decided on that this turkey just walked by me on my right from behind. I was shocked.... I put the dot on her head and squeezed the trigger..... it was 9:42

Yep she was a mature bearded hen

After I got done cleaning my bird I decided to go duck hunting. So I got all my gear ready along with the boat, clothes and gun. Tuesday I was headed out to a spot I like, close to home, got to the spot, set up and waited for the sun. It wasn't too long before the sun was up and I had 4 mallards wanting to play, I chased off all but one. It was a great day.

That was the end of my outdoor adventure until this morning at 8:30 when my buddy called, said he shot a deer and wanted to know if I would come and help. Ummm????? Yeah!!! So I hopped up, put some clothes on and ran out to help with his deer.

The pic doesn't do him justice, he was a really nice heavy bodied 9 point.

I'm gonna do it again......

 I have never gone to the range to have a good time..... I always just go and sight in and I'm done. Not fun just something I have to do before I go hunting.

Monday was different... I had an absolute blast. I went to sight in my 6.5 PRC and the new Rossi 22 mag semi auto, and as long as I was going to be there I shot my 222 also. 

So the PRC was bore sighted at the gun shop that put my scope on. Needless to say it was way off at 100 yards, so after alot of shoot and clean and scope adjustments I got to this....

 I had a blast sighting this gun in, that's the fun side. The bad side is I sent about 100$ downrange 😖😢.... but it was still fun. 😍

 

Next up was my triple deuce, I walked the target down to 100 yards, and sent a 3 shot group left of center. After a couple adjustments and more money downrange I had it OK. (not to ruin the surprise but I'm going back again next week to get all of them EXACTLY where I want 'em.)  

 

Now the Rossi took the stage....WOW😲. I sold my Savage 22 mag bolt action and bought this Rossi semi auto.... Why?? 

Well I originally wanted a semi auto (15 plus years ago), however I quickly found out that the 22 mag auto was a unicorn. They had a really hard time making it run without jamming issues, and the ones that did figure it out were WAY out of my price range. So I settled on the Savage bolt, which had issues of it's own.

 

7 years ago I started hearing some hub bub about the Rossi 22mag getting the feed jams worked out and how reliable this gun was. I waited.... read the reviews and waited.... then this year it sounds like the coon prices will be up.... I know, what's the correlation?? Well that 22mag was my coon gun. After reading a bunch of reviews I decided to sell my Savage and buy this Rossi. I took my scope off the old mag and dropped it on the new one, not bore sighted, just dropped it on the pic rail and tightened it.

These were the first 10 rounds downrange.

😲😲😲😲 while adjusting it, the rounds tracked R to L.

Thought it was good enough to move up so off to the 50 yard range....

😲😲😍🙉 I cannot tell you how tickled I am with this gun. It ran flawlessly and was heaven to shoot, absolutely one of the best buys I have ever made.🙉😲😲😲😱 

 

Honestly writing this and I still can't wipe the smile off my face. So I'll go back Monday and send some more rounds downrange and fine tune all of them. I couldn't do it last Monday because I ran out of time, I shot from noonish 'til close at 5. 

 

Tuesday I went fishing on the pontoon until my neighbor was ready to pull it out. It was the first time loading it on the trailer he bought, it went on really good and very easy. 

Yeah there's no pics of fish for a reason... I'll let you figure it out. Hint:🙅🐟 

 

I had a pretty good week, hope it was good to you. 

Be safe. 

Well....????

 I didn't really do anything this week, just kinda hung out and relaxed. Didn't get any big projects done, or for that matter any small projects. I did get my mouse baits set out, and on Tuesday I did go fishing, but other than that.... really nothing.

It was everything I thought it could be. 

 

Darnit

 Well I didn't do a whole lot this week but I did get the decoy trailer cleaned out and got the wheeler put in it. Ready to go duck hunting... now all I need are some ducks and gooses and season to start. I was going to get a before and after, but when I remembered I was already halfway done. I wanted to go fishing with my neighbors kayak but I tweaked my back on Tuesday when I cleaned out the trailer, (thankfully it was near the finish line) so I really took it easy on Wednesday. I'm hoping I'll be able to get out next week, it's quickly coming to the end of fishing season for good for this year. 

So, not a whole lot for this week... 

I did however forget these pics from last week so here ya go....

🦌😁🦌😁
 does and fawns...

WOW

 I gotta say I'm gonna pat myself on the back a little bit and let you know that, I killed it. 

This week, not only did I get the boat put to bed, meaning, lower unit oil changed, both engines spark plugs cleaned, cylinders fogged, oil changed in the 4 stroke oil, oil topped off in the big motor, and the trailer bearings full up with grease. Oh, yeah my fishing poles drags backed off, all spool tensioners backed off, and reels covered with plastic. I've even got my first lineup ready for coho season in April, and that was just Monday. Tuesday totally different day took it easy, did a little bit of running here and there. I still need to change my fuel filter and I will be doing that next week. I did, however, get out and go fishing with my neighbors permission and kayak...

Wednesday I went out and removed an obstruction that was in the view of my game camera, chatted with my landowner for about an hour came home and did even less than I did on Tuesday. Now, we're at Thursday, getting ready to go to work. Got my duck breasts baconed baconized and fixing to put Em in the grease

 Next week, not sure what's gonna happen. I am going to change that filter and I will probably go dove hunting again. 

Had a good day.... still quiting

 Well, I couldn't find anyone to go to Lake Michigan with yesterday so I made it a me day. I wanted to be up and out by 2am, what actually happens when you don't set your alarm is you get up at 4am. I didn't have a whole lot to get ready, so I mosied around the house, had my coffee and left out for the lake around 5am. Since I knew I had all day it was a pretty realaxing drive, not in a hurry but putting a plan together. When I got to the launch, I was getting my boat ready and realized I didn't bother to get a fishing license😲. So I got on my phone (which I hate doing😠) and bought one, as it turns out I really didn't need it...... If anyone asked for it, I would've told them I was only washing lures, not fishing. That would've been very truthful, I hammered away at it all day from around sunnup 'til sundown before I called it a day and a year. I did have alot of company on the water, they were not helpful in my attempt to find fish however.

I turned out to be a pretty good day, it got pretty windy and cappy at times but I stayed pretty close to shore. The wind was out of the east which was where shore was, so the further out I went the worse it got, and I didn't want to get bounced around all day.
 

If I would've at least caught one I would've probably tried one more time but as it turns out.... nope. So I'll get the boat put to bed, along with my gear 'til next year.

I KNOW

 So here we are Wednesday afternoon, I should be fishing, but the rain doesn't wanna stop. And the wind doesn't wanna stop, so I'm contemplating what to do. I really, really, really want to go this week. Because if I don't many of the fish are going to be running upstream. So as next week shows up with rain, in the forecast more fish will be going upstream. I am contemplating going out tonight into tomorrow. Which I realize is Thursday, my home day, my I don't wanna do anything day, but as today progresses, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do that. With being said, I will not do a blog except this one, for this week. So you won't know what happened to me tonight into tomorrow. Until next week? And hopefully whatever happens is good. So until then, be safe, lots of love.

 

OK forget all that, the change in the weather has made me sit on the sidelines for this week. I got up this morning at 2a to see if I could/should try and get out. The rain just hung around all morning and all day, after 9a I'm glad I didn't go. However I will say, with next week being my last before the boat goes away, I am going to really try and get out.

 

This week I did get a camera I bought last year, set up and deployed. I set it out to see what's going on, on the property since I won't be bow hunting this year, so I just wanna keep tabs on it. 

Here's the first pic I got.

Decent pic with a nice doe

Oh yeah I forgot these last week so here we go.

pic of the moon before my goose hunt, I have no idea why the moon looks like that. 

When I took the pic it looked normal. 

found this guy North of the public I hunted for doves

 That's it for this week... Hope yours was great, be safe.

Quick

 That was how this early season started and closed for me... Dove opened on the first, and for the first time in 25 years I missed the draw.... don't know how but I did. So I sat out last week's dove opener and then goose opened on the 5th, which was as we all know, "a day of work", so I sat out on that also. 

I was getting good reports of geese from one of my buddies I hunt on so after work on Sunday I headed over to see for myself. I watched the neighbors set up and shoot a couple, but the magnawad just wasn't there. So I took Monday off with it being Labor day and everyone being out. 

Tuesday I did this...

That was the beginning and the end of my early goose season... 

I was going to go again last night but I got really lazy after the dove "hunt" had yesterday morning.

Speaking of dove hunting I walked all the fields on Tuesday morning and they were all crap but one. So I walked to the far end and waited. 

I ended up with 2 doves that field was also the field I hunted Wed. morning and "saw" 5 birds. So to end the early season I got 1 goose and 2 doves... I'll be fishing for the next couple weeks, then the boat goes away.

Nope, not this week.

 This week like next week did not look good and since I didn't find anyone to go this week I just stayed home. I have gotten pretty spoiled with running 6 rods and since all this week was questionable I just went around in Fort Wayne and made sure I still had hunting spots. I did get permission on all my spots so... that was good. However when I went to the river to do some planned trimming this is what I found.

their used to be a huge log here.... this is where I sat

That's the log to the right of me

Boy I gotta tell ya they had some water coming through done here this last spring, this is what I showed up to.

  If I were sitting in that chair looking out over the river this would've been the view I had. Do you see that huge root ball on that tree?

Just amazing.... I did end up cutting some limbs and found a new spot for this year. I sure hope the snow and rains come again next year and clear this mess.
 

Anyway I got that done, then headed up to my deer property and did some more trimming. I also got permission for 2 early season goose spots which opens on the 5th. 

So I hope to get in 2 goose hunts and a fishing trip next week, I really hope the weather holds. 

 

First trip

 After my last trip to Erie I swore it was my last this year. I followed through on that this week and made my way to Holland, MI. for my first trip on Lake Michigan.

We got a really late start because of getting kids on the bus, but I really wasn't too concerned. With the moon being full they kings seem to chew all night and will kinda start again late 🌄. We got to the launch about 10ish set up the boat, launched and headed out to the lake..... which was slicked out and gorgeous. We were going to start around 8o's but ran to around 100 fow to set rods and start the troll.

Once we got the 6 rods set it really wasn't too long before we had our first hook up. We caught and landed a decent steelhead to start the day.

It wasn't  too long before we had the second fish on which also turned out to be a steelhead. 

 

As you can see that one was... well, "special" not only was his face deformed but he only had half a tail. I realized now that I should've gotten a better picture. 

Anyway after that fish we had a lull where I did the usual by changing lures, speed, and direction to no avail. We did have a couple drive by's, before our last fish hit. I grabbed the rod and reeled in a nice Coho he's the fish in the left.

That was our last fish for the day. 

Moonrise

Me taking a pic of Cliff taking a pic of the sunset.

We did troll 'til dark and we were going to troll into the first hour or so in the dark, but my lights wouldn't work so that put the kibosh on that. We broke the boat down pointed the headlights I brought to the front and headed in.

After cleaning the fish I got in the house around 2am, yep another long fun day, but really good start for my salmon season.

 

We went 3 for 5 and got a real good idea for next week. 👍 

New firsts

 As much as I didn't want to I ended up at Erie again this week. Once again the weathermen lied to me. It was supposed to be >1 ft waves all day and when I got out it was just a little more. Before I left at noon thirty they were hitting 1- 3 with caps.... which kinda sucked and what made it worse was all the grass in the water. I had 2 fish in the box and was getting tired of getting tossed around so I called in and started packing up. 

I was shut down and had my secondary net resting on the cooler up front and the handle between my seats. A large 🛥 went by and threw me into a wake I was ready for.... my net was not. It fell into the lake and sunk ever so slowly 😫. Fortunately it was my secondary net and not my good one, but still....🤬.

After I gave Poseidon my net, I had the boat ready to roll, and started to the launch. The waves were choppy so I was going kinda slow as to not beat my boat up. I always keep an eye on my kicker when I'm under power so it doesn't flop over, I like it standing straight up. Well, it flopped so I slowed and put it back where it should be. The next time I checked it, the prop was dragging in the water, so I slowed and fixed it again. I haven't ever had it pop out and drop down so that was kinda unsettling. I see people run with their kickers down but I don't like to. 

So anyway I got back to the dock, loaded up and headed West. 

Not a terrible day, but the last day this year I'll spend on Erie. From here on out it's hunting or Lake Michigan. 

Well... I fished

 I had all intentions to go to Erie this week, even with the weather that moved in. My intended day turned out to be Wednesday, but when I got up and looked at the forecast again I just got that, "I don't want to roll the dice feeling" and decided to stay home, instead of taking my boat for a 6 hour drive..... So I texted my neighbor and asked if I could borrow his kayak to fish my lake, he said yes and off I went.

I was fairly unprepared even though this was a pretty impromptu fishing trip. I didn't kill 'em by any means... however I fished for around 5 hours and caught a handle full of fish. 

Yep they weren't huge but they were fun, and it was pretty relaxing. The fog and clouds stayed until around noonish when I got off the water because of the change from heavy mist to some raindrops. I'm glad I did when I did.

This bad boy was on it's way and got here not much after I screenshot this.

 

I'm hoping to get up to MI next week for some salmon, I got some new lures to try...

24 hours

However before I get into what happened this week, I forgot to put this in last week. After I got back from Erie I still wanted to catch a fish so I got ahold of Cliff and asked if he wanted to bring the kids up and kayak the lake while fishing. He said he did and made it up the next day. 

We were on the lake for at least 5 hours, I caught a fish right away then nothing the rest of the day.

It took Cliff until the end of the day, but just when he least expected it, he hooked one.

The kids had a great time casting a little bit, paddling and just playing in the water.... it was a good day.

Now onto this week....

I got up at 2am to get ready and out by 3ish, Cliff answered the call to go this week. I didn't even have to send out a mass text to find a reason to run 3 more rods. We got loaded up and headed out a little after 3am and that put us there at a good time. We got the boat set up and launched, I headed out to start just South of Green island, even though we noticed the water was pretty dirty. We trolled North past rattlesnake and headed West across the basin..... oh yeah the weather? Well the weather had 1' waves with a chance of rain from 9 to 11.... this is how it looked.

Yep this is how it looked all day and that rain... well it never showed up thankfully. 

Back to the story- We hit a very large goo, a short and our first keeper on the troll West. Keep in mind we were around noon by this time. We got to the "corner" of how far I was willing to go West and headed South. We picked up a couple more shorts, a white bass and a decent perch, and one keeper. When we go to that "corner" I pointed the boat East and started trolling for the gap between South Bass and Catawba Island. That's when our luck started to change. We started hitting pods of walleye and were able to pull out 1-3 per pod. Now we started to fill the cooler, when we got to the West side of Green we turned around and headed back, still picking up fish. We did this 3 or 4 times and before too long we were only 4 fish from a limit. We were on the far West side and we decided to make one more pass hook around Green and head in still on the troll until we got into 26 fow before throwing in the towel. 

Well that's what "we" agreed to, I on the other hand decided to make one more loop before Green to try and limit. We managed a couple more then started the troll in towards the landing. On the way we finally hit out 11th and 12th fish. So we broke the boat down and headed for the launch. We got the boat pulled out and ready to roll, took our pics before it got dark. Then we headed over to Mazuriks to clean them, they put a nice fish cleaning station in a couple years ago, and I knew I wouldn't feel like cleaning fish after driving all the way home. It isn't that far and it didn't really take that long.... the skeeters were bad.

Once the fish were cleaned and put in the cooler we pointed the truck West and headed home. Not sure what time we got home but I got the boat in the garage gave Cliff his fish, took the rest of the gear inside, sat down and my alarm went off again.....2am.

Stop touching me......

Doomed from the start

 Left the house at 2:30 am almost got to the state line and realized I forgot my wallet. So I headed back to the house to get my wallet and some drinks. I knew I was going to be "late" so I didn't get all antsy, I just took my time and got there. I got the boat set up and launched and headed across the bay. I went against the wind which was already blowing pretty good, pretty much ensuring that I was only getting one troll.

Pictures never do the angry lake justice when it's bumpy. I couldn't even hold a steady speed... I was anywhere from 1.1-3.1 sog, and that doesn't help me at all.

I did catch one fish and it hit while I was setting my lines. I had the pole in my hands when he hit and when he did, I don't know what happened but he managed to open up my finger and I started bleeding all over the place. I knew as soon as he hit that I had a goo on, he did put up a good fight. I got him in and got him released, I didn't know it then but that would be the last fish I would touch that day. I made a 4-5 mile troll and didn't hit anything but waves, and they were getting worse. Once I got to the point of Catawba Island I decided to pack her in and head for the dock. That in and of itself took me at least and hour to do because of the waves. I had to go pretty slow for 2 reasons 1- to not beat the crap out of me and the boat and 2- stay dry. Anyway I finally made it in and tied off on the dock. I saw a boat that was launching before I did, I asked him how they did. He said not good, and pointed at his windshield. The large bent corner piece of his windshield was blown out 😲.  I gave him my condolences and went up to get my truck. There were a couple other fishermen taking out and breaking their boats down that also said they didn't do well, which made me feel a little better.

When I got up and started breaking down the boat, another boat pulled up and I made a boat to boat comparison.......

 This is the boat I had....

This is the boat I should've had...

The guy said he worked at a marina and he was just going to drop it in and run it to the owners dock... Apparently it is only a 340,000$ boat.... I told him all I have to do is sell half my lures, 3 rods and grab 20 bucks and I'll be in the market to get me one. 👍

 

Anyway, I got the boat buttoned down and headed for the house...