Bonus Erie trip and Vacation double issue

 Here's the bonus: The week before I went on vacation I made a solo trip to Erie. The first part of the day went pretty slow until I trolled out to the flotilla where I found cleaner water and fish that would bite.

This was the week I was supposed to go on vacation but moved back a week.

 

My vacation started at 3ish in the am, I got the car packed and was on my way. When I got 45min to an hour away from my house I pulled over for my first fill up. I put my card in and it was declined, I went inside and told the clerk what happened grabbed some ice and handed him the card and again it was declined. I then went out to my car and called the card company, in the process I noticed that the card I had was expired. Well, crap, so after trying to get the card turned back on just for June I faced the fact that I had to go back to the house and get another card. Halfway home I remembered I had a can of Sea foam tune up on the trunk, needless to say it didn't make it home. After I was on my way again I decided to hit the same gas station to see if the Sea foam had rolled off against a curb or something. I got back to the gas station filled up my car and got ice and when I left out, low and behold the can was in the middle of the parking lot right next to a storm grate, and it was still intact. WINNING.

So I picked it up and after the 3 hour waste of time I was finally on my way North.

So I am in Wisconsin and am in need of another fill up, I pull into gas station and do the tap thing. That didn't work it told me to insert my card. So I do then it says to see the attendant. I go inside and explain that I just want to get gas. She says to go ahead and pump and then just come back in and pay. OK, not a big deal, so I pumped, paid and was again on my way North. 

Skip ahead to the next day and I'm at the tackle shop ready to buy my license. I hand the cashier my card and.... it goes through, awesome, so I look around a little more and find a split ring pliers that I want. The cashier rings it up, and my card is denied. I didn't bring my phone so the cashier dials the number and lets me use his. After talking with customer service and found out it is just a fraud alert and it could take 2-4 hours. I asked for a manager, she let me know that this is just procedure and a code was sent to my and all I have to do is plug in the number. After I go to Rick's and insert the code I'm back at the Tackle shop buying the split ring pliers. 

Whew, I'm ready to go fishing...... and to that here are the pics.

let this 20 incher go

choked it

foggy

foggy

So at this point in the week I decided to drag some bait, I hadn't caught a walleye in a day or 2. So I stopped at the one stop on the way out to the lake to get some nightcrawlers. I remembered that I had saved an allowance card from work to use on vacation. So I pull it out and go to pay for the nightcrawlers, hit the credit button and the lady told me the card has expired. So now I had to go through the rigamarole of getting the card replaced. Which I did and all is good, but holy cow did I have card issues this trip.

This is the only walleye I caught with the nightcrawlers

The next picture is a blow up

There's a bear at the base of the stop sign

 

I was coming in from fishing and saw this bear on the road going from right to left. By the time I got my phone ready to take a pic, yogi realized what I was doing and took off for the ditch.  

I used the drift sock Rick

That was kinda my trip to the Falls I got to spend time with my Aunt and Uncle and do some fishing. The whole week was pretty windy and or rainy but it was still a really good time.

Pelicans

From the Falls I went to Cloquet for the rest of my vacation. One of the first things I noticed was the evil twins. 😈

Yes, this is actually how they look and my parents don't think there's anything wrong with them 😱. The good news is they are right below my the window of the room I stay in..... no happy dreams for me.

So, I hung out with my parents, hung some stuff inside the house for Mom. Dad and I set up his air gun, he got a good deal on a package deal unfortunately the scope was trash and that is where it ended up. He's good to go now. I also got to dig holes for 2 trees and sink 8 posts to put wire on to keep the deer from eating them.

 Corey and I had set up Saturday as the time to go fishing, since he sold his boat and was working on my Aunt and Uncle's cabin. He said we could use the pontoon boat to fish. So Addy, Logan, Corey and I head out for an afternoon of fishing. It kinda turned out like I thought we all caught some small perch and I caught some pike that were the size of the pike pictured above. Then Addy and Logan wanted to go back to the cabin to get some supper, which left Corey and I fishing.

Then this happened....

So... yeah that happened

After I realized I had a hook in my hand I asked Corey if he knew the string trick(youtube it), he didn't. So I kinda talked him through it, that didn't work out that good. First off we didn't have any good string but I had some paracord and when he went to pull it he didn't snap it because he didn't want to hurt me so he just kinda pulled it. Which hurt like hell, so now the days done and I gotta go to the ER because the only people that I have to help me are 10 beers into a good night. All my cousin Kris kept saying is I've got some pliers.... 

I quickly realized it was in my best interest to seek sober medical attention.

After 300$

Before 300$

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weird thing is it never really hurt. Tuesday I headed for home. 

Did I mention I hate Chicago?

The good, the bad, and the ugly (not necessarily in that order)

 Yesterday was my first solo trip to Erie this year. Of course with all my solo trips I arrived later than I had wanted. Anyway, I got out and set up in the same spot we hit 'em last week. Bad news, the fish that were there had moved on to different waters. Let the search commence... after a couple hours I finally boated my first walleye and after only a couple short hours after that I boated my second walleye. I knew that the clouds were going to move in for the afternoon and as with Lake Michigan, Erie has not been kind to me when it's cloudy. So the race was on to fill my limit before the clouds moved in, long story short it didn't happen.

one 22" 'er and a smaller eater

Once the clouds moved in I caught a goo sorry no pic but it's in the vid.

I also caught this cat.

 

Here's the vid:

So the bad is I didn't even get close to a limit, the ugly is the trash I was able to catch, the good however....

This 30" walleye is not only my personal best, but it's the biggest walleye I've ever seen live. A true Lake Erie donkey, by the way he's still in the lake for you to catch.

Busy last 2 weeks

 Monday afternoon Jake and I finally made it to Nebraska, got settled in and started scouting some spots to start hunting Tuesday morning. 

Tuesday we started off on a the "3000" named because that's how many acre's the section was.

We set up back by that dead tree in the background, unfortunately after the sun came up we realized we were just a little too close as the bird we were hunting was roosted only 100 yards away. Yep, he watched every move we made and then flew down in the opposite direction never to be seen again.

Midday after a short scouting session and dropping some clothes Jake yelped a couple times from a ridge top. 

We heard 2 distinct gobbles, one to the left which Jake went after and one to the right which I went after. My hunt went kinda like this, the gobble was to the West so walk straight north 4-500 yards then West the same distance set up in a semi open area and call.

Not the actual spot

 As I called and listened I knew the bird was getting closer so I repositioned and awaited his grand entrance. When he finally showed he just stretched his neck up and looked like a periscope going up at 25 yards. Since I just had a feeling this is where he would show all I had to do was move the gun a couple inches and cover his head with the red dot and wham... my first Rio.

He went 21#'s with a  9 and 1/4" beard and 1" spurs, a good 3 year old.

 Jake's hunt didn't turn out as good, he ended up chasing his bird in a big circle until finally the bird saw him at 100 yards and headed for the next hill.

Tuesday we started with another failed morning hunt

Then we regrouped for the midday hunt, and Jake finally got to punch a tag.

He got his bird at "the mud road" property which we named because the minimum maintenance roads

 and all dirt roads turn to snot when it rains. This section we couldn't even get on Tuesday because of the roads. He shot a mean old bird, he was a 3 year old with one broke spur and now very little beard. When Jake was looking to get the shot he yelped to get the bird to come out of strut and lift his head. Instead the bird gobbled right tword Jake, so when he shot he blasted off most of the birds beard. Good story for the mount.

Wednesday started with an alien sighting. When we were making out way to our first spot Jake looked up and saw this.

No joke there were 17 lights in the first string and I stopped counting at 30 in the second. They were going right over us, they didn't have any blinking lights and were way up there. I told Jake if we just end up at our starting spot (no memory of how we got there) and my butt hurts (they probe you) I'm going to be pissed.

Well, we made it to our starting spot and Jake had some time to google the phenomenon and found out it was actually Elon Musks space X project we saw. I was pretty happy to hear that, I didn't want to get probed.

We did make it to our last morning hunt which turned out to be yet another failure.

We actually set up on the furthest left tree on this day. This was our Tuesday spot.

 After making a 2 mile hike and setting up on 2 birds that when they flew down headed directly away from us, we went back to the truck and made plans for the afternoon hunt. After chasing more birds to Kansas we did a little scouting and found a couple birds on an ag field between the 3000 and the barn (where we stayed).

Well, we found the owner did a little knock and talk and got permission to hunt the prop. We sat on the field and watched the tom's roost for the night and then worked on a game plan.

There were 2 male turkey's one-Laurel was a skinny submissive Rio tom that followed the second bird-Hardy a nice Eastern around with his 7 hens. You knew which was the dominate bird because Hardy was always in strut and Laurel just kinda hung around with him. Laurel had no beard or spurs that we could see but we knew he was a he.

Anyway the plan was I would take Laurel and Jake would get Hardy, so the next morning we waited for the pair and the hens to fly down, so we could sneak in to the green path they were using and set up. 

We put out the DSD strutter and a hen decoy about 15 yards from where we were on a small hill. Jake yelped and cut a little to bring the hens over with the Tom's in tow. As soon as Hardy saw the strutter he made a B line for it, he wasn't going to let another bird on his turf with his ladies. As Hardy got closer to the strutter I whispered to Jake to let me know before he shoot's so we could shoot at the same time.

Well, I watched Hardy out of the corner of my eye, while waiting for Laurel to catch up. Right before Hardy was going to jump on the stutter Jake squeezed the trigger. When the gun went boom Laurel seemed to snap out of his stupid daze and dropped his head and took off leaving Hardy to fend for himself. Needless to say I threw out 2 shots that didn't connect. So Jake got Hardy and Laurel lives to be stupid another day. The only pic I got was on Jake's phone, if he sends me his pics I'll post it next week.

 So that's how our Nebraska turkey hunt went and ended. We had a really good time, the locals were super friendly, the accommodations were phenomenal and the landscape was really cool.

I think we may have even learned some stuff about these "hill birds", which are the birds we hunted. I guess there are 2 classifications of turkey's in Nebraska hill birds and bottom land birds, with the hill birds being the harder birds to hunt. I believe that wholeheartedly. 

Here's a couple bonus pics... there's these little waterholes all over the place.

 So we got home Saturday morning I worked Sunday and since weekdays needed help for the first time this year I worked Monday and Tuesday. 

 

 

Wednesday I took a day off work and headed to Lake Erie with a buddy of mine. The morning wasn't looking good but the afternoon looked like we could get on. So, we left town at noon and got set up on the lake ready to fish by 3:30 and after talking to the couple of guys at the boat launch we found out they really weren't biting. They were marking fish but they just couldn't get 'em to bite. Anyway, I was setting up the last rod when one fired. I gave that one to John and he was fighting that one when the second rod fired. We lost one at the net and put one in the box. Long story short we got off the lake around 7 and headed for home with this.

Mostly 22" 'ers

Have to agree.... they just weren't biting.