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Post by rickolney on Jul 23, 2008 18:13:45 GMT -5
Anyone else here do either? Let's have a discussion. You start it! ;D
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 23, 2008 22:30:04 GMT -5
Clipper is a bass fisherman. I'm a fly fisherman. Clipper sits in a boat, I guess. I jump in the stream and wander about over rocks and riffles. Clipper is in much better shape than I. Go figure. (Could be the result of my stopping for pancakes on the way home.)
I come up and fish the tropy secton of the W.Canada and downstream fairly often, although I haven't been up to do that this year. (Couldn't fit it in the Boilermaker weekend and, let's face it, gas is over $4 a gallon.) So I content myself with a few pretty nice streams down here in the Catskills: the Esopus and the Schoharie, being the streams I spend the most time on. It's tough to get on the Neversink these days, and the smaller streams are tougher to fish, but I do like the Plattekill, which flows right nearby me, the Ten Mile up in Green County and the Roelaf Jansen Kill ("The RoeJan") across the Hudson in Columbia county.
I don't hunt anymore, but I love to take my black powder muzzle loaders out back in the woods and fire a few balls. I love it when it goes BOOOOOOM and lots of smoke swirls all over the damned place! Makes me feel like I FIRED a real gun! I am currently murdering a 10 inch oak tree. It's not the ideal game, but it stands real still.
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Post by Clipper on Jul 23, 2008 23:33:49 GMT -5
Better shape than you , Dave? LOL. I find that hard to believe. I fish from a boat because I can't walk the creeks like I used to. I fell an broke 3 vertebrae in my lower back in 1996, and my knees are so full of arthritis, I can hear them click and snap when I bend them. Probably from too many miles crawling home on them drunk when I was younger, haha!!!
I have done very little fishing this year, due to my dad's poor health and his health problems. I spend as much time as I can with him, as I am watching him fail over the last few months, and when he is gone it will be too late to ask the questions I would like to have answers to. When my mom died, she took information to her grave, that we all wish we had asked her about, and recorded for posterity.
I try to see him at least every other day for a couple of hours or more. Sometimes I just sit and watch TV with him, and we don't talk hardly at all. Some other days, we talk about the times we have had in my 61 years on the earth, and some of his experiences and his friends going back to his youth.
Hunting also became a thing that was strictly curtailed by breaking my back. I still will hunt when I move back to NY, but I don't bother down here. The mountainous terrain down here is too much for my bad back to climb around on, and the deer here are smaller, and with all the hickory nuts and acorns around here, the venison tastes like crap anyhow.
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Post by rickolney on Jul 28, 2008 12:24:43 GMT -5
I don't hunt anymore, but I love to take my black powder muzzle loaders out back in the woods and fire a few balls. I love it when it goes BOOOOOOM and lots of smoke swirls all over the damned place! Makes me feel like I FIRED a real gun! I am currently murdering a 10 inch oak tree. It's not the ideal game, but it stands real still. I have fly fished before, Dave. I can't say that it is my favorite type of fishing ... but when I'm feeling like some alone time, I'll head up into the Adirondacks and fish a few spots. I've never been much a fan of the West Canada, although I've fished it when I was younger. Yeah, I know. Some real nice fish have come from that piece of running water. Like Clipper, I have had my time hunting and fishing diminished the last handful of years due to aged parents that have since passed. I plan on hunting North and South this year though. I'm tired of my old huntin' buddies feeling sorry for me. No more sympathy and kindness venison from them! ;D I had wanted to get back up on the St. Lawrence this summer, but I'm not sure now. I have a schedule to keep in getting some things accomplished on my property. We've got this family gathering mid August that I'm involved heavily in, and I promised my grandkids I'd take them to the State Fair. That tallies up to too busy right now. Hey! Either of you got any pictures or (better yet) stories to share!? I do, but I'll need to back my stories up with pics. So I'll have to dig them out and scan a few of them. Give me a few days. I'll come back with some.  |
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Post by corner on Jul 28, 2008 12:37:03 GMT -5
i hunt and fish my hunting buddy and i are always looking for good places to hunt deer seems most private land is posted if any body has got a good spot or willing to let 2 sfae h;unters hunt your land holler...i used to up until 1988 when the cousin who stated me hunting died rent froma farmer near the town of morris havent been back since my cousin passed but that was always rpoductive probably 20 of those 300k house on it now
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Post by countrygal on Jul 28, 2008 13:32:31 GMT -5
My husband hunts and fishes. He's gotten some pretty nice bucks and moose. He likes to go fishing on the St. Lawrence. He also ice fishes. He caught a couple lake trout that were 31" out of the lake near Cooperstown.
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 28, 2008 17:26:05 GMT -5
I don't hunt anymore, but I sometimes sit in the back of our house and look out the window and watch my nephew hunt deer out in the pasture where the they mosey out of the woods at certain times of day. I tell him I'm just there to keep count! He's the only one I let shoot out there these days (some others bow hunt from time to time), except for a close friend who is ex USMC and a firearms instructor. (And a retired P.O.) (My nephew is a cop in Holyoke, Mass. and would have appreciated one of the posts we've all been arguing about. I know Holyoke sounds like a quaint New England town, but it has one of the highest urban crime rates in the state.)
I'm going on the Esopus Creek Wednesday and will fish Prince Nymphs and probably bead head Pheasant Tails, and maybe a sulfur dry if there is a hatch. I gotta tie a few more tomorrow. The Esopus stays cool all summer because it's a tailwater with water fed under the mountains almost twenty miles from the Schoharie Reservoir through the Shandaken Tunnel (aqueduct.) I often fish right at the portal outlet, and when the flow is on full, it's quite a sight and I stay well back from the turbulence. But in the summer, it so aerates the water and kicks up bugs in the stream bed, that fishing is really good near the junction of the creek and the portal.
Corner you're right about dwindling property for hunting. It's even happening along streamsides. Too bad we're so far away from you.
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 28, 2008 17:32:43 GMT -5
CG, I'll have to tell my friend from Marcy who has also been fishing Otsego Lake near Cooperstown. That's a big fish! Even for Lake Trout.
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Post by rickolney on Jul 29, 2008 15:49:03 GMT -5
Well I fish the St. Lawrence as often as I can, but primarily I'm one of these guys that hikes all over the northern 1/2 of NYS to walk trails and take a shot at catching native rainbows and brookies. I also bass fish and have fished and caught salmon. Even did some deep sea fishing a few times.
I have not ice fished since I was a kid. It was on 4th lake. Froze my ass off.
I've got a couple favorite hot spots down south near Otselic. I know of a place that's off of Route 80, but you need a 4-wheel to get into it after the first snow. Hunt on my own land and up north further up off of Uncas Road. Hunted bear further north from there. Hope to get more time in the woods this fall. It'll be time to sight the guns in soon.
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 29, 2008 19:12:01 GMT -5
Hey Rick, you really take advantage of the area you live in! Know what you mean about Ice Fishing. Never tried it, but it seems boring. And cold!
Your hunting for bear reminds me of the time I pulled up behind a station wagon waiting for a train and something registered in my brain as I became immediately distracted by the kids in the back seat. When I finally looked back out my windshield, there lay a bear staring out at me! Dead, of course. I wonder how long the guy's wife complained of "that awful smell" in the car.
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Post by rickolney on Jul 29, 2008 22:37:13 GMT -5
Hey Rick, you really take advantage of the area you live in! Know what you mean about Ice Fishing. Never tried it, but it seems boring. And cold! Yes, it was. It was one of the few things my Dad did for a time that I didn't want (after the first couple times) to be right beside him doing it too. ;D That is a funny one, Dave. I have one for you. I have an Uncle (my Dad's oldest brother) still living, although in an area Nursing Home. Anyway, during a time in the early 1980s, he was without a car. He's a life long bachelor. Back then, he had a friend that was a few years older than him, and the guy owned property up in on the Tug Hill plateau. Well, you know that Tug Hill area is a huge stretch of land. I get a telephone call from my Uncle that Thursday night. He's calling to ask me if I can come up to his friend's place and pick him up on Sunday afternoon. Not wanting to turn him down, I agree to it and get the directions. I get chugging along in my Chevy Vega. It was bright orange in color. It wasn't that old. It had that hatch back. Anyway... I start out that Sunday and I'm following his directions okay. Then... I get to this turn he directed me to make. Only it actually goes onto a truck trail. No paved road. It reminded me of the roads down at Mt. Unger (if you know where that is?). Anyway I'm chugging along and the woods are getting deeper and darker. I went about 5-6 miles on this road ... and then I see it. It's a house, set back from the road. And there's my Uncle and his pal. They've got a big black kettle on an open fire cooking something. I park the car and walk up to the two of them. There, on the ground, is a partially skinned and gutted porcupine. It is the largest porcupine I'd ever seen. I get the .50 cent tour of the place and learn that the house had been moved there many years ago and that there is no electric, no running water, and it is a pack rat's paradise. And the bugs!? Bugs as big as your fist, I swear! Well, I knew my Uncle could be eccentric...so I managed to get him moving to gather his things and as he's putting stuff in the popped hatchback ... I spot a big plastic bag of fresh meat. I ask him, "Hey Unc, what's in the bag?" He replies to me that it is both porcupine meat (that his buddy clubbed in their garden) and also some raccoon meat. Yeah, seems they had one bothering them. It had gotten in the house that night before or some such nonsense. Well, I got him home that night. I vowed to myself that I'd never do it again. So a couple days go by and I come out of work. It was hot that summer and when I open the door to that Vega ... a stink smacks me in the face. I open all the doors, pop the back hatch and start looking for it. And what do I find? A dried up goo like substance in my spare wheel well under my spare, obviously, and I drive home in this stench that can only be the spilled juices of those two butchered animals.  I was never able to get that smell out of the car. My Dad even got some stuff from a local Funeral director that they use on cleaning in their line of work after a badly decomposed body is brought in. It didn't work. I scraped that car at Crash's Auto. That's my stinky dead animal story. I teased my Uncle about it off-n-on over the years and it became a joke between us.  |
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Post by dgriffin on Aug 1, 2008 20:59:14 GMT -5
Summer Blues, Here's what we're dealing with on the Esopus durng the summer. As a tailwater (downstream from a dam) the water is somewhat controlled. Supposedly, that is, as long as it fits in with keeping the Ashokan Reservoir full. Note too the temperature variations. I didn't get there this week, due to some unforeseen difficulties, but will try next week. tinyurl.com/5duymjBy the way, here's similar data for the West Canada at Kast Bridge. (Can't figure out why the W.C. data doesn't include temps.) waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?01346000 |
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Post by rickolney on Aug 7, 2008 13:06:20 GMT -5
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Post by stoney on Aug 7, 2008 14:16:20 GMT -5
Is that you, Rick?
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Post by Clipper on Aug 7, 2008 22:07:48 GMT -5
I think so Stoney. It's either him, or Larry the Cable Guy! I am not sure which. I think I saw the flannel shirt somewhere, but Larry usually cuts the sleeves out of his.
Nice fish Rick! A man after my own heart with the facial hair. Kathy always asks me why I culitivate on my face what grows wild on my butt. I just tell her it's a "man thing", kinda like standing up to Pee. We do it BECAUSE WE CAN! LOL!
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