10-25 thru 10-31-2011

10-25 thru 10-31-2011
Weather: The weather was very seasonable the entire week. We did have a little precipitation almost daily.
Location: The cabin at Moose Junction
Bagged: Grouse 1, woodcock 7, and two deer (Tupper got the deer and grouse and three of the woodcock).
Partners: Jake Tupper

Comments

It was my yearly late October hunts up to the cabin, and this time I had company along. We hunted birds and deer. I did not have very good luck myself, but Jake did do okay. Fritz did a pretty good job of finding woodcock for us one day, but after that he was wore out.
Fritz will be twelve in another month and I decided that it is time to retire him from the field. He is still worn out and it has been almost a week since he last hunted. Besides the birds he pointed, he also helped us track the two deer that Jake shot. It is really sad that Fritz will not be accompanying me on any more hunts. I have harvested many birds with his assistance over the years and we have shared countless days in the field and marsh.
Jake shot two antlerless deer on Sunday morning. He shot both deer around 9 am and by the time we ate breakfast and tracked them, the larger of the two was three quarters eaten by wolves, and this was in the time span of about two hours. Jake also almost made a drastic mistake on the other deer we tracked. Fritz tracked the deer for about one hundred yards and found it still alive. Fritz basically held back and Jake asked me to hold his bow. I was thinking he was getting his release on, well instead he thought he would play Neanderthal man and cut the very much alive, deer’s throat. He quickly found out that was a mistake, as the deer was not quite ready to throw in the towel and be neck sliced. The deer effortlessly bounded off and Jake was left dumbfounded and holding a clean knife. Luckily when we came back about one half hour later it was dead and still intact.
One morning on bow stand I had a rather interesting encounter. This stand is located where I had shot several deer and seen many others over the years. I did notice this year there was a very nice trail going right past my stand location and up into the oak woods. I figured it was some hunters either bear or rifle deer hunting that had cleared a path to make the oak woods on the hill more accessible. Well I was not even close in my assumptions!
Sitting on this stand at daybreak on Friday morning I heard a convoy of cars and trucks traverse down the road and then stop about where Jake had dropped me off just a half hour earlier. I soon heard voices, laughter, dogs barking and dog bells jingling. I had heard rumors of a field trial for English Setters, but I did not expect to be involved with it. Next I heard the dogs being unloaded and the laughter turned to serious conversation with the sound of dog bells crisscrossing the thickets and tangles between myself and the road. As the bells and voices got closer and closer it became apparent to me that I was parked right smack in the middle of a trail that was carved out by this group of field trialers. After about ten minutes I got my first glimpse of a bird searching machine of a pointer. The dog was covering ground at a frantic pace and leaving no bush un-sniffed. About twenty yards from my location I saw a grouse run in front of the dog and take sanctuary in a downfall. The dog immediately became rock solid and looked as steady as a statue on point. Several minutes later the second dog of the brace came upon the other dog on point and also came to a rock solid point. It took the handlers and judges several minutes to get to the brace and grouse. As they approached I was definitely looking to see if they were armed with shotguns and bent on killing that grouse. Seeing them unarmed and not bent on killing a bird and possibly spraying me with pellets, I became less concerned. I relaxed and watched the show, with the idea of startling the group of twenty or so trialers with my presence once the bird flushed. The handlers came in and flushed the bird and its escape path took it within feet of my undetected location.
As the spectators and handlers were re-grouping I now had the opportunity to surprise them. As they neared to within ten yards of my unseen location, I hollered out and said you could have at least pushed a deer past me. There were definite looks of surprise and disbelief. One female handler came up to me and graciously apologizes and informed me that they would be running the same course the next couple of days. I told her that the county forests are for all to enjoy and I was not upset and that I had the best view in the world of two fine working dogs doing what they so love to do.



Observations:

There are plenty of deer around this year: which is very apparent by the amount of sign in the woods and the deer along the roads at night. The grouse numbers are very much down, and I would rate the numbers at about a three out of ten. If Fritz was younger we would have done great damage to the woodcock this year. I saw no ducks and only one flock of about twenty geese. The rut does not seem to be in progress yet, there are plenty of rubs and scrapes but we did not see any buck chasing does.

10-24-2011 Mon

10-24-2011 Mon
7:00 AM – 8:30 AM
Weather: N/A
Location: Mississippi R. out from house
Bagged: nothing
Partners: none

Comments:

It has been a long time since I have been out duck hunting. Even though I still had lots of packing to do for my upcoming yearly to the cabin hunt I still wanted to see if any ducks were around.
I was very disappointed with the outcome, I never fired a shot. I did have a couple opportunities at some far ducks, but I am very conservative when it comes to shooting ducks past about thirty yards.

Observations:

There are not many ducks around and the ones that are here are very wary. The rice is pretty thick out from the house this year, and it seems to be having a definite effect on keeping the divers out in the main lake basin.

10-23-2011 Sun

10-23-2011 Sun
6:00 – 6:30 PM
H2O: 49 ˚, 4.96’ rising, 18.9 kcfs, clear
Weather: SW 12, 68 ˚, cloudy with rain in area, 29.74 falling
Location: Mississippi R. Pool 7 south end of channel
Caught: 1 – 22” pike
Partners: none

Comments:

I had finished my Coast Guard Six Pack class today and I wanted to get the duck boat into the water so I could slip out early in the a.m. and possibly get a duck or two. I thought I may pick up or bass or two at the end of the channel, but the only fish to come boat side was a lonely pike.

Observations:

The water temperature has gone down considerable since the last time I was out fishing.

10-16-2011 Sun

10-16-2011 Sun
5:00 – 6:30 PM
Weather: W 29 G 38, clear 56˚
Location: Fort McCoy
Bagged: 2 squirrels
Partners: none

Comments:

It was a quick night of squirrel hunting on the fort after my Coast Guard Six Pack class. The wind was very bad, but I did manage to bag a couple of the gray critters on the lee side of a large valley. I was hunting the south side of the fort adjacent to the quarry.

Observations:


There was not an overabundance of squirrels, but with the wind blowing as hard as it was I thought I did pretty well. Most of the leaves are now off the trees and the underbrush is barren of leaves.

10-13-2011 Thr

10-13-2011 Thr
5:30 – 6:30 PM
H2O: 63 ˚, 5.03 rising, 21.7 kcfs, clear
Weather: NW15, 63 ˚, cloudy
Location: Mississippi R. Pool 7 South end of Channel behind house
Caught: 2 LMB 12 & 13”
Partners: none

Comments:

I was going to try flat head fishing again tonight, but I could not catch any bait in the channel. I guess to catch bait this time of year a person has to go to the dredge holes on the lake.

Observations:

None

10-10-11 Mon

10-10-2011 Mon
5:30 – 10:00 PM
H2O: 63 ˚, 4.83’ steady, 13.6 kcfs, clear
Weather: S 7, 68 ˚, clear, 29.96 falling (2153)
Location: Mississippi R. Pool 7, Lake Onalaska and deep water adjacent to main channel
Caught: Bait (bluegills 6 and 4 perch), 1 – 10lb flat head & 1 – 8lb channel cat
Partners: none

Comments

It was another unusual warm October day. I have really been wanting to flat head fish and tonight I was committed to catch bait and fish them. I have seen lots of fisherman targeting the dredge holes on the lake, so that is where I started. Unfortunately the first hour was a bust. I did figure out that most of the fisherman were fishing the deep water for crappies.
On one of my last moves I happened to spy a couple fisherman catching gills along a weed line that extended out into about five feet of water and dropped into ten feet of water. Well, it was a good thing I hit the jackpot, because darkness was trying to be the spoiler to my flat head fishing plans. In short order I had an ample supply of small gills and perch and I was off to put the smack down on some flat heads.
The first spot I fished was a very deep hole that bottomed out in forty to forty-five feet of water. I really did not want to fish that deep, but from where I was anchored it dropped very quickly and I did not want to be fishing on a very steep drop. I fished this spot about thirty minutes and had two hits. The first one was one quick bite and my bait was gone, and the other one was a very subtle bite, with the fish coming unglued almost immediately.
The next spot I fished was in about thirty feet of water in an area that had quite a few submerged trees close by. This is where I caught the flat and the channel cat. The channel cat hit with such ferocity that it almost took my pole and the rod holder board in the drink with it.
I fished one other close by spot in about twenty feet of water, but had no action here.

Observations:

It felt like a summer night: light wind and light shirt weather. The river flow is very low and if there is any wind at all it makes fishing in one spot very hard while anchored. In fact the current is not strong enough to hold the boat in position if even a light breeze is blowing against or perpendicular to the boat.
The trees are losing their leaves very fast and the woods have really opened up in the past few days. We are also at or very close to a full moon. I have also noticed more ducks around the last couple days, nothing fantastic but at least I have seen some.

10-9-11 Sun

10-9-2011 Sun
4:30 – 6:30 PM
H2O: 65 ˚, 4.85’ falling, 14.9 kcfs, clear
Weather: S 7, 76 ˚, clear, 30.18 falling
Location: Mississippi R. Pool 7
Caught: LMB 1 – 12”, Pike (4) 22 – 25”
Partners: none

Comments

It was such a beautiful night tonight and I had been stuck in my Coast Guard Captains Class all weekend so I was ready to fish. My initial thoughts were to catch some bait and go flat head fishing for one last time. Well, I could not catch bait, so I went to plan B.
Plan B was bass and pike fishing. The bass or the pike were not overly cooperative either, but I did find one small concentration of pike near Cole’s Corner. I did run into a little bad luck with a spinner bait I had used on the previous 100 bass and pike; it broke! The Terminator Titanium spinner baits are as tough as they come, but they do have their limits.

Observations:

None