So I have a few minutes to kill. Haven’t played with the different features of the WordPress app on my phone much so I decided I would try taking a photo and posting it to the blog from my phone. Thought it might be handy for the ‘A View From…’ posts.
Looks like it worked…cool. Learned something new!
How is it that a fish can tell when you’re not paying attention to what you should be paying attention to? How do they know when you have one hand busy with the paddle, slack in the line and your attention is on what’s happening with the paddle instead of what’s happening at the end of your tippet? I’ve always heard that Santa Clause knows when you’re sleeping and he knows when you’re awake. He’s even said to know when you’ve been bad or good…but these are freakin’ fish we’re talking about, not Santa Clause! I missed the first four strikes I had this afternoon because I was distracted and I have this sneaking suspicion the fish knew exactly what they were doing and they were teasing me.
I haven’t had the yak in the water since last fall, mostly because of weather and timing rather than lack of want. Weather even almost caused me to miss out again today. I was planning to get up early this morning, load the truck and head over to the pond but I woke up to rumbles of thunder and noticed it was raining a bit when I was coherent enough to take the dogs out. I wasn’t too concerned about the rain since it wasn’t pouring buckets but sitting in a kayak out in the open in a pond waving a graphite flyrod around isn’t exactly the smartest thing to do when there’s lightening about. With that in mind I decided to wait a while to see if the weather got better and took advantage of some unplanned free time to add a few new Munzees to the map in downtown Newnan and then have lunch with my mom.
By the time we finished lunch it was starting to look like the rain might be over for a while and there hadn’t been any thunder in a while. Since things were looking up I loaded up my yak and my gear and headed over to the pond.
I rigged up, pushed off and paddled over to one of my favorite stretches of shoreline.
This is where the fish started messing with me. As I said earlier, I missed the first four before I put this one in the boat.
The next stop was a shallow cove near the top end of the pond. A creek channel winds its way through the cove and there are usually a few fish to be found in the bends and holes. Today was no exception.
As it turned out, the rain had only mostly stopped. There were a few more light showers during the afternoon but nothing hard enough to even be considered mildly annoying. Actually, it felt pretty good.
I cruised back over to the other side of the pond and began to work the edges of the weed beds. Once I figured out the bass were in the edges of the weeds and nearly every little pocket in the edges of the weeds would hold a fish it was game on. I spent the next two hours working a stretch of shoreline about two hundred yards long and lost count of how many bass I caught like this one or a little bigger…
Finally sometime around 4:00 the fish finally seemed to turn off and I decided to loads up and call it a day…a pretty darn good day.
Connie and the girls were off to hair appointments and running errands this morning. Noticing it was cool and overcast outside I decided to push back my to-do list for a little while and hit the pond for a couple of hours instead. Hey, sometimes fishing takes precedence, right? I didn’t see a much activity around the edge of the pond so I tied on a white Stealth Bomber and started searching. It didn’t take long to tie into a nice little bass. After a bit I noticed a little movement in this weedbed…
I dropped the Stealth Bomber near where the motion had been, let it sit for a moment or two and then gave it a twitch. The result…
Between fish, I had some company this morning. This water snake made a couple of trips back and forth across the pond while I was there. I never got quite close enough to be able to tell what sort of snake it was.
A couple of the ducks that frequent the pond left me some fly tying materials. Today’s score…some mallard flank feathers. Might have to use them for a Steve’s Illegal, a wet fly pattern I found a few years back that’s a killer for trout and bream…
A morning fishing for me just wouldn’t be complete without a little snafu or two. I’m still not sure how I managed this one today but I’m sure it took talent.
The girls are supposed to be out and about again next Saturday so I hope the conditions are a carbon copy of today…and maybe I could do without the snafu…
Valley View, Young Harris, Georgia – View south toward Young Harris from an overlook in the Brasstown Valley Resort.
Munzee Name: Cupid Falls on His Arrows, Young Harris, Georgia. Cupids Falls, as seen from one of my Munzees.
I have a fairly long commute to and from work every day which gives me plenty of time to listen to the radio, make faces at other drivers, talk to myself or just to think as I drive. As I was heading home one day last week I had what I thought was a great idea for a series of blog posts. So just what was this grand idea? Well, as many of you know I’m into Geocaching and a somewhat similar geo-location game called Munzee. Both games have taken me to some pretty neat places. Sometimes it’s a place with a great view and sometimes it’s just an interesting location. So why not pop up a very brief post every now and then with just a picture of the view or whatever is interesting about the location (not of the cache or Munzee location itself), and a very brief description that includes the name and general location of the cache or Munzee. What’s the point? Hopefully to get folks interested in either or both games by showing them some of the places they might go or interesting things they might see as they play. Hey, its worth a shot, right?!
So lets get this ball rolling.
Munzee Name: Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, Pooler (near Savannah), Georgia. It’s not every day you get to look up the tailpipes of a Phantom F-4C fighter jet…
Maybe the front end looks a little more familiar.
BTW, too my Savannah area friends…yeah, I know, I didn’t call or email to try to get together. Was a round-trip day trip for work…10 hours driving for 2 hours of work…fun, fun…
The mice cook things the cat doesn’t care for. Tonight’s adventure…Shrimp Sliders. ConnieLou doesn’t care much for shrimp. Me, Jenna and Ashley, on the other hand, are shrimp fiends. I went through a phase that I didn’t care much for shrimp myself but sometime 10 or 15 years ago, my taste for the little buggers came roaring back in a big way.
I saw the recipe for Shrimp Sliders a few weeks back on Necessary Indulgences, one of the Big Green Egg blogs I read regularly and they just sounded way too good. Since ConnieLou is off with her best bud Linda tonight, me and Jenna decided we’d give ‘em a try. I printed off the recipe and we headed off to Publix this afternoon to get the goods after Jenna finished up her Saturday work day for the spring musical at her high school.
Once back home I went ahead and mixed everything up and shaped the sliders so they could chill in the fridge for a little while.
I followed the recipe and instructions reasonably closely but to me, recipes are more like guidelines (Pirates of the Caribbean movies fans will get the reference). I add more or less of whatever is on the recipe and often substitute other things to suite my own tastes. Needless to say, I can ‘cook’ quite well but I suck at baking where a recipe is more like a formula in chemistry class and must be followed with some degree of precision.
Cooking was pretty simple…about 4 ½ minutes per side, direct on a raised grid at 350 degrees and they turned out just right.
Put ‘em on a slider roll, add a little wasabi mayo, pair it with your favorite beverage (tonight it was a Boulevard 80-Acre Hoppy Wheat for me) and some chips and you’re good to go.
I really haven’t fished much this spring. Seems like we’ve been on the go almost constantly and when weren’t going and doing, the weather hasn’t exactly cooperated. I’m not sure what happened this weekend but all the pieces fell into place for me to go visit the pond for a little while. To top it off, conditions were almost perfect…warm and overcast.
The only way things could have been any better was if the wind would lay down a little bit. Fortunately the wind wasn’t constant but when it was on there almost were white caps on the water. Probably a good thing I was feeling lazy and decided against taking the kayak. I really didn’t feel like chasing it all over the pond instead of fishing.
All in all it was a good couple of hours. There were some good weed beds starting to grow around the edges of the pond…
And the bass were in the edges of the weeds where I thought they would be…
The bream were further out on a fairly shallow sandy bar and should be bedding about now. Caught a few good sized redbreasts and a couple of very nice bluegill.
Now I’ve got to get my Ride back in the water soon to be able to get to a few spots I just can’t get to fishing from the shoreline and put another bend in my rod…
That’s right, the skunk is gone for this year and it’s a huge relief. Its mid-March and I’ve only managed to get managed to get out to fish twice this year. Yeah, I know, sad. But that’s a different discussion altogether. I didn’t catch anything the first time out and even today I was beginning to wonder just how many trips it might take to get the skunk off till next year.
I wanted to go to the subdivision pond I spend a lot of time on but the wind was up here and I knew I’d spend more time trying to keep my kayak under control than I would fishing so I opted to go to the pond at my sister-in-law’s place. It’s a great little pond but last fall the neighbors cleared a bunch of timber in the upstream watershed. Now, every time it rains the pond muds up for several days because of the runoff. We got another good rain earlier this week so, sure enough, the pond was off color…very off color…as in looks like YooHoo drink off color…
I started out casting a black Stealth Bomber hoping that a bug that moves a lot of water might raise a fish or two. No dice, not even in this little cove where I’ve caught many fish…
My brother-in-law’s dog, Mabel, came out to help. I had to remind her that she’s a retriever and not a pointer…and at that point in time, there was nothing to retrieve. She eventually occupied herself by removing assorted sticks and limbs from the pond.
With nothing happening on the Stealth Bomber I switched to a little white micro-Clouser minnow and moved to the small but somewhat clearer pond across the driveway…
It only took a couple of casts to hook up with this little bream and the skunk was off.
No one ever said the first fish of the year had to be big, right? I managed to catch a couple more before it was time to head home and cook up some supper. No more skunk…I feel so much better now.
…to see comet PanSTARRS. Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s a comet visible in the skys of the northern hemisphere these days. PanSTARRS put on a pretty good show in the southern Hemisphere for the past month or so. Now it’s made its made its swing around the sun and it’s our turn. PanSTARRS has been a bit difficult to see the last couple of days because of its proximity to the sun but should become more impressive over the next few days as it moves away from the sun. However, it won’t last long since it also will begin to dim as it moves away from the sun.
How about a little PanSTARRS trivia. This comet’s full name is C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS). It was discovered June 6, 2011 by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope located near the summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii. Unlike Halley’s Comet which swings through our solar system every 75-76 years or so, PanSTARRS may well be a one-timer since astronomers’ calculations put its orbital period at about 106,000 years.
So…have I got your interest? Want to see a comet?
Since PanSTARRS isn’t a particularly bright comet, you might want to grab a pair of binoculars before heading outside. Sure, you can use a telescope but an ordinary binoculars is perfectly fine for comet watching. Also, if you have one, a compass will be handy too. Again, nothing fancy needed, one of the little zipper-pull compasses or even a toy compass would be fine. OK, you have your binoculars and maybe a compass, now you need a good place for observing. Look for a place that’s away from a lot of light and that also has a low horizon…meaning it isn’t ringed with tall trees or buildings. School parking lots and some church parking lots can be great places to observe, as are pastures or planted fields. Parking lots around shopping centers often have low horizons but the presence of a lot of street lights will make your chances of seeing this comet iffy at best.
Since PanSTARRS is low on the horizon, your best opportunity to see it will begin 30 to 45 minutes after sunset and will last until the comet itself slips below the horizon. Once you’ve found a good spot for observing, try to arrive a little early to give your eyes time to adjust to the increasing darkness. Also, it’s a good idea to take your binoculars out of the car and let them acclimate to the ambient temperature so the lenses aren’t foggy.
OK, the sun has set and it’s getting darker. Time to find a comet, right? First, find west. You can either pull out your handy dandy compass and orient yourself or just look for the moon. It’s a waxing crescent right now so look for just a small sliver. Once you find the moon you’re in the ballpark. Time to get down to the nitty gritty. The following finder chart from Sky & Telescope Magazine should help…
Now before you take off to go look for the comet, here’s something you need to keep in mind. This chart is based on the observer being at about 45 degrees north latitude. I live at about 33.4 degrees north latitude so my view was a bit different. Moral of the story…you’ll have to adjust a bit for your latitude. BTW, as you have probably guessed, there are astronomy apps available for your smart phones and pads that can have you looking in the right place in no time.
If you’re somewhere near the same latitude as Atlanta, Georgia (roughly N33.8), the comet should be a little to the right of the moon and down just above the horizon. It should be visible to the naked eye in darker locations but you’ll probably have to pull out those binoculars in areas with more light. Once you’re looking in the right spot you should see the comet which looks like a fuzzy star with a tail thats pointing upward and away from the sun. With a bit of luck, PanSTARRS will be visible for the next couple of weeks.
Here are a couple of recent photos of PanSTARRS. First, a shot from my friend Jimmy Westlake, astronomy professor at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs, Colorado…
Next, a shot taken by Steve Morgan, instructor of astronomy at Young Harris College (My Alma Mater, GO MOUNTAIN LIONS!) in Young Harris, Georgia.
If for some reason you’re not able to see PanSTARRS don’t dispair…comets Lemmon and ISON will make appearances later this year.
