April Activities

Not sure about everyone else, but April is flying by!!  Not too much happening, except work...and even then it's iffy...but I have managed to get out and play once in awhile.

Last week, I took some advice and got out of town for a little bit.  Where to?  Where else?  Time to hit the Selway!  I left Thursday and found my favorite camping spot (up the Selway) wide open.  Actually, I basically had the entire river to myself; talk about blissful!  I fished the extreme tail-end of the steelhead season up the South Fork of the Clearwater with absolutely NO luck Friday morning...even when I switched rods and tried for just normal trout.  Oh well.  I had my fill of driving and headed back to camp where Butch met me later in the afternoon.  I had better luck fishing the Selway and even managed to pull a bull trout out of the eddy in front of camp.

The next day we went and looked at the falls and poked around for morels.  No morels, but not for lack of trying.  Overall it was just a nice, relaxing trip.  I actually could have used more time down there...


Camp Thursday night



Another view

 

River view



Breakfast Friday morning.  Never even got out of the bag!



Tail of Selway Falls

Now this is irritating me.  I've SAVED these rotated correctly.  Upper end of the falls. 
 *sigh* blogger



It rained, snowed, sleeted, blew, was sunny, calm...etc.


Okay, now that brings us to 10:31 a.m. April 21, 2013.  Heyyy, wait a minute, that was yesterday!  Yes, yes I know...but it'll make more sense in a second.

While Sarah was running a race, I decided to head into the woods and see what I could see.  So there I was, walking through a unit that had been logged about oh, two or three years ago.  South, southwest aspect.  All of a sudden, I noticed I had a shotgun in my hand!  Then I found a slate turkey call in my pocket!  All be darned.  So I'd find a dry spot (it was raining pretty good) and squeak on the call.  Pretty quick, I got a response from the way I had just come from!!  I hunkered behind a tree and called some more, and before I knew it, there was ANOTHER one responding from RIGHT BEHIND ME!  I sloooowly turned my head to look over my shoulder and almost jumped out of my skin!  This monster of a bird was five feet from me and coming in hot!  When I jumped, it flaired it's wings, gained about 10 feet of elevation (past my head) and stuck itself to the side of the tree!  I looked up and finally figured out I was looking at the underside of a pileated woodpecker!  Then the other one joined us and they just called and called...sounding like mockingbirds they were so close to sounding like my turkey call. 

Well, that was pretty darn cool.  I've never called in a woodpecker before!  I got wandering through this unit and every once in awhile I found myself stopped just thinking about what had just happened.  That's when something on the ground looked oddly familiar.  Yep, THAT was 10:31 a.m. April 21st, 2013...the first morel of the season!!  Pretty quick I found myself on my hands and knees searching as they were juussttt popping up.  The average size was about an inch and the biggest maybe two inches.  I picked enough for dinner and proof and then had to walk past all the little ones coming up.  This week is setting up to be perfect bluebird...so they should be gaining some mass by the end of the week!




Not too bad for the first of the season



These went fast!

After that, I took a quick drive around Fernan lake to see how many people were fishing.  Turns out there were quite a few, despite the rain.  That's when I noticed a loon out in the water acting like it was getting attacked by a pike!  It'd flop around and flap it's wings, causing a huge commotion.  Then it would stop for awhile and put it's head underwater to look around....pretty quick it was flopping and flapping around.  I figured if it wasn't flying away, maybe it was tangled up in fishing line!  A very likely possibility since just last year some folks rescued an osprey dealing with just that problem in the same lake.

So I ran home and got my wildlife biologist who was more than willing to go, loaded up the boat and headed out.  The idea was to take the big steelhead net, don some leather gloves, and carefully cut the line off of it.  Of course, in my haste, I forgot the net...but figured we could snag the line somehow.  As soon as we got the boat in the water and ready to go, it started pouring rain!  Even the folks on the shore fishing were packing up to leave, and there Sarah and I were, heading out in a boat to rescue a duck.  Of course, we saw the bird in question and another one on the way in, but not while we were out there.  The one we DID see while we were motoring around had absolutely no problem diving and swimming about a hundred yards at a time.  Definitely not tangled up in anything.  And...knowing that dead ducks float....pretty sure it either a.) got out of it by itself or b.) that was some sort of territorial display.


Grrr, blogger!  Sarah enjoying the weather.

 

See?  Smiles!

In doing some research this morning, I'm thinking it was a territorial thing.  Most likely that other loon was underneath it somewhere and that's why it kept looking under the water?  Who knows, it was weird.  First time I'd ever seen that in my life.  But, it sure looked a lot like this:

http://youtu.be/sxN88QOpzBg

Interesting day overall.  And by the time we got home, it was only 2:30! 

Coeur d'Alene Curling

We got an invite the other day to attend a free "beginning curling" class at the ice arena Saturday.

Sarah and I decided to go...one to just try something new, and two (at least for me) to say I did it once.  The instructors were part of the curling league that I guess goes on much like our trap league.  Nice folks, very patient and helpful.  I never realized how much goes into the game, but I guess it's like everything else...you know, shooting trap isn't just pointing the shotgun at the bird.  Driving isn't just mashing on pedals and turning the wheel....wait a minute, some people do that...errrr...a GIS specialist doesn't just make maps.  That's better.

Anywho, we had some fun sliding around on the ice, but never ended up playing a game.  There were some folks there that were pretty serious about the whole thing and it kinda rubbed Sarah and I the wrong way.  Shoot, before we went, I was going to dress up in my running tights (yea, I've only worn them once) and make myself into an "uber-competitive curler."  However, I was glad when I didn't because there were people there in their "uniforms."  Specialized shoes, modified brushes and supports "delivery aids," etc.  Geez folks, you're sliding a 40lb rock on the ice!  Oh well, it was entertaining.

My big event was actually launching the rock.  I guess I wasn't entirely briefed on what we were doing, because everyone was sliding along with the rock in their hand, never letting go.  Me, on the other hand, decided to just let go.  "How far can it go, really?"  Turns out, those critters slide for a very long ways.  But then that became a major catastrophe as everyone started hollering, "ROCK! ROCK! ROCK!" as loud as they could to warn the folks on the other side of the "court" or whatever.  At that point a guy on the other side just looked up, waited for the rock to get to him, then stopped it by putting his foot on it.  Yep, a truly serious incident.  But, it was embarassing.  (Of course, when everyone was yelling that, I had to try not and instinctively look UP.  We yell ROCK! to signal a rock rolling down the hill....not a slow, sliding stone on ice.)

We both agreed it would be fun if we just got some friends together and messed around with it.  But it's good to have another skill in our back pocket!



There were actually quite a few folks there...

 

Sarah up and at 'em with good form!

 

Instruction time

The way it's SUPPOSED to look

Well, after my recent success with rod finish, I decided to finish two of the other three I'm working on.  It was a pretty exciting night!  (For me anyways...I guess I'm simple like that.)  Just think, that other one took me darn near a month...and once I had the right tools and components, I can get two done a night.

Oh well, live and learn.

So these are before and after photos.  The "finished" photos are kinda cruddy, but the lighting was poor.  It gives you the idea of what CORRECT finish is supposed to look like though.  Ooh, and I have a video of a nifty little "invention!"



An OLD cane pike pole

Kinda needed some work

 

He had taped on guides and....still used it!



Old steelhead pole...same repairs



Woofta!

 

They were both his Grandfather's....



After taking off the guides, sanding, and refinishing with Spar Varnish

 

Not too bad (I didn't touch the handles.  I wanted those to remain the same.)




Hmm, sideways.  Just gives you an idea of how old they are based on the reels.

 

Purty

THAT'S how you do it!

Now, I only have one drying motor that turns at six revolutions per minute.  Yes, I could have simply done the "quarter turn every 15 minutes to prevent sagging" thing, but I really wanted the whole shebang to come out "poifect."

Check it out!  A little floss and viola!

Build a fishing rod they said...it'll be fun they said...

Well everyone...things just did NOT work out with that casting rod like I thought they would.  After getting the handle and reel seat on, things just kinda went to hell on me.  First, the butt wrap "thread art" I spoke of earlier was a bust.  I just simply cannot remember HOW to do that and was getting frustrated.  Finally, I decided on a simple wrap, some writing, and some decals as to not "clutter up" the rod.  That turned out really well, but I ended up smearing the writing and re-did it in less-than-perfect handwriting.  Then I found out my old finish was just that...too old...and set up very poorly.  The first time due to too low of temperature, the subsequential time due to bad finish.  So I scraped that off, boogering up a decal, re-tied threads and then tried Spar Varnish.  The first coat was really nice, but the second coat boogered it up.  I had to scrape that off as well. 

Finally I went to Cabelas (I hate going to that store) and the fishing dude there handed me "exactly what I needed."  Now, I actually SAID this, "If this works, I'm going to come back here and shake your hand."  He looked at me, stuck out his hand and said, "Might as well do it now."

I was excited and went home to apply this new finish.  After getting the bathroom (yes) to the proper temperature I tried this stuff.  Again, the first coat was okay, but the finish was still really thick.  Looong story short, it got boogered up over and over.  And I stripped guides, stripped finish, tried and tried and tried...but couldn't get it to work "correctly" (or at least how I remember it working in the past.)

Well, I got most of the guides done and they mostly looked good...the guides up near the tip looked particularily okay.  Some of the bigger wraps didn't, so I stripped some of those, re-tied, and carefully put my final attempt at finish on them.  It turned out "okay" so I called it good.

Yea, not the best...but not the absolute worst (trust me, I now know)
This guide got a lot of bubbles in the finish



Just another example



The fish decal I made look like an "old fish" after stripping finish

 

What I resorted to to get proper temperatures

But since I'm refurbishing two (now three) other rods of a friend's...I wanted to get NEW NEW finish straight from the manufacturer.  (I figured that the finish the guy at Cabela's handed me had been on the shelf too long.)  Well, I got on the website and watched an instructional video.  The finish looked NOTHING like what I was using...the consistency was vastly different.  So I went to their products section and poked around and found what I needed...but the bottles looked entirely different than what the Cabela's guy handed me.  So I scrolled until I found what he handed me...

....wait for it....

He gave me FIVE MINUTE EPOXY!!  To be used for reel seats, securing handles to rods, finishing fly wrapping...etc.  THAT's why I was having so many issues!!

Well, I was pissed for a while...until I looked at the rod again and decided, "If that's what I can do with five minute epoxy as a finish...I'm a flippin' chemical genius!"  I called it good enough and I now have a finished rod to give away.  I sure hope the recipient likes it because it took me darn near a month and caused a lot of bi-polar behavior.  Sarah's description is, "one day you were all happy and talking about how you figured it out.  The next day it was all wrong.  The next day, you salvaged it and were happy.  Unhappy and pissed the next day." 

I ordered the correct finish and tried some of it on a different rod last night.  Sure enough, it mixed easily, went on easily, didn't set up too quick, and looks amazing.  "Like glass I tell ya."

Oh well, the casting rod will be extremely unique and it's got a helluva story to go along with it.