Not much of a "Guard Cat"

I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know the hummingbirds are buzzing around, right behind her.

I guess it's a good thing that we didn't get her from the Pet Rescue with the intention of being a Guard Cat - we'd have been sorely disappointed. But she's very good at shedding hair. And eating.

Quick Caterpillar post

We've been staying busy here in So. Maryland, doing everything but fishing. The rockfish fishing should get nothing but better as the months go on, so plan on reading SOMETHING that has to do with fishing in the near future.

We spent Saturday afternoon at our company picnic. My wife and I fancy ourselves as keen observers of the subtle and minutiae in the ecosystems. In actuality, she's probably better than I am. Anyway, she spotted this very cool caterpillar on a stone path, so I had to take it's picture. It measured probably 3" long and was as fat as my thumb. Then the fun began - I know nothing about caterpillar ID.




I went online with my picture and, after working my way through several pages of the seemingly endless varieties of caterpillars, I found the identity of our mystery fellow. A White-Lined Sphinx moth. Which, in layman's terms, is one of my favorite critters at the butterfly bush - a hummingbird moth!!


Photo by Raymond Christensen

The caterpillar / butterfly / moth group could take a person years to figure out. I'm not ready to dedicate that kind of time, but I DO think they're pretty cool.

Finally, a little bit of fishing in MD

I knew I would get around to fishing sooner or later (hopefully sooner) but the loose ends of this moving thing are never ending. About 1/4 mile from our house is a pond in our development. Looks to be about an acre and a half. Shallow looking - a typical bass / 'gill / maybe catfish spot. I've seen people fishing there with some frequency, so I assume there is SOMETHING in these waters. Recently I got to try it out and see for myself.


The pond at the new house. The debris in the water in the foreground is hurricane junk clogging teh outflow pipe; the fallen tree in the back of the pond is from the hurricane as well



My first thought when fishing small waters is: catch SOMETHING. Anything. Nothing fits the bill for this better than the Cubby Mini-mites I used in IL. Suspended under a weighted bobber, they simply catch fish. Any fish.



the first MD fish!

The first evening out, a week after the hurricane, I managed to get a few small sunfish. Not much action, but something. I also talked to a guy who said there are bass in the pond to 5#. Even if they're 3 pounders, that's OK with me. Last nite, I hit it for 20 minutes and used only a 1/8 oz. buzzbait. Got 2 hits and landed 2 small (12") largemouth.


Pond bass. Bigger ones to follow (I hope)

Nothing to plan a trip around, but at least its a beginning. Next up will be my initial forays into the striper fishing of Fall. Since it will be from shore, I have no predisposed ideas of any success, but I am very anxious to give it a try.

Earthquake, Hurricane, and some yard critters

Today I experienced my third earthquake. The other 2 - one in PA, and one in IL - were very minor. Both felt like a train was passing by the house. Today's VA quake was a real one. I work about 45-50 miles from the epicenter of the 6.0 earthquake that hit VA today. The walls shook in the building for about 15 seconds (seemed like forever), stuff fell off of the top shelves, and I dove under the desk. People who were outside at the time said the building was swaying, and the cars in the lot were jumping. Not being a seasoned earthquake veteran, it was a little scary. But, now that it's over, it was actually pretty cool. (Since no one got hurt)

Now I see that Hurricane Irene is strengthening and is likely to hit NC on Sat. That will put it over my new house by late Sunday. YEAHH - 2 natural disasters in 6 days. Awesome.

So, after they closed our building for the day, I got home and sat outside with my wife to see a plethora of birds hitting the feeders. It was insane - hummingbirds, finches, cardinals, a titmouse, a nuthatch, and we saw a bald eagle and 2 ospreys overhead. I tried to get a hummingbird picture that was a actually identifiable as such - no easy task for me! So, here are a few pics from this afternoon.

What a beautiful day it turned out to be. Please click on teh pictures for larger images.


A juvenile 5 lined skink - apparently pretty well fed.

More Yard Critters

Short and sweet post - just a few of the critters I keep stumbling across in the yard. Btw - the spiders here are freaking HUGE!

I'll keep posting as I keep getting pictures. Cool weather is right around the corner and that means a few months of striper fishing!

Click on any of th ephotos for a larger image.

Starting over in Maryland

The move to Maryland has been about as efficient as I could have imagined, but I STILL hate moving. Aside from the physical hassles, though, there are parts of the move that have me very excited. I realize that going from Illinois to Maryland isn't exactly the ecological equivalent of going from the Amazon to the Antarctic, for example, but the flora and fauna of Maryland are substantially different from what we had in Illinois. And I am excited to discover and photograph all of it!

To begin with, we are now on an acre that is surrounded by mature hardwood trees. Shagbark hickory, tulip poplar - large, impressive trees. These trees are home to their own ecosystems that I didn't have in Illinois. We lived in a "cornfield community" - build the houses in a cornfield. No mature trees. Not much variation in the birdlife. We saw ONE squirrel in 7 years in our yard - and I think it was VERY lost! We usually had one hummingbird per summer meander through our yard. Here we had 4 at our feeder the first evening we put it out.

There were no lizards in our area before. Now the skinks are daily sightings. We have bluebirds in the front yard.

I am REALLY enjoying the diversity here. And that's just the yard - the Chesapeake Bay and Patuxent River are each a few miles away and offer a myriad of wildlife to enjoy. I see a nest of ospreys every day when I cross the bridge on the Patuxent River. Bald eagles are common as are all the shorebirds.

I'll certainly get back into the original focus of this blog - fish and fishing - as I'm here longer, but for the time being, you'll have to be content with the yard critters.

Hope you enjoy the photos, and sorry for the long sabbatical.



The first week were in the house, my wife spied this 4' black rat snake crawling up one of our trees while we were sitting on the deck.



This orb spider is HUGE - it has to be 4 inches from front to back. There are some seriously big spiders here!






We have a big butterfly bush at the deck in the back of the house. It is loaded with butterflies, many of which are not familiar to me. I plan to post a bunch of butterfly pictures.

Finally, my plans include some hummingbird pictures. The ones I've taken so far are so bad I can't post them. Bear with me - we'll get some eventually.

Testing 1 - 2 - 3: Time to re-emerge from my hibernation

I have a few pictures to download, and I'll get back to posting on theis blog. I know there are MILLIONS of you out there holding your breath, just waiting to read the next installment of the never ending drivel that is Flowing Waters.

OK - probably not - but I'll be back soon anyway!

Joe

The last day fishing Illinois

The ponds we fished

I really didn't plan to get out again on Illinois waters after the final day on my ponds, but you never know how things will work out. A neighbor's mom and step-dad have become 2 of our closest friends since we located here in IL. He is a fanatical waterfowler - he is retired and hunts EVERY DAY of the waterfowl season. He is a member of a Hunt/ fish club nearby, and likes to get out every once in a while for some bass fishing on their club waters. I was given an invitation during my 2 weeks between jobs, and I managed to squeeze in one more morning on the water.

This is the second time I've been on this water with Reid. The ponds are bigger than the ones I fish - we fish these out of a 12' jon boat. The water is clear and has great weed growth. I always feel like we should catch more than we do, but it is a great place.





The morning we fished, it was sunny and clear, with a high of near 90. We got a few hits on Senko-styled worms, but I finally "unlocked" the secret for the day with a pearl Zoom fluke. Which is sort of interesting, because I almost NEVER use flukes! We ended up catching 16 largemouth. Most were small, but Reid got one nice one (see picture).

Spending a beautiful morning with a friend on a neat piece of water is about the best way to end your fishing career in Illinois. I think I 'll quit while I'm ahead!



Bluegill beds near the shoreline

A bittersweet evening on the ponds

Saturday evening my wife, son and I decided to go out to the ponds and see how things were looking. The bass should have spawned by now but would still be aggressive along the shoreline. the evening was nice (weather-wise) for a change - no tornadic thunderstorms, no cold rain. We went to the upper pond first. This is the bass and gill pond. We were the only ones there and the surface was calm. I decided to see if I could catch some bass on an old reliable lure. (More on that in a bit.)

The fish were right where I expected them to be - from 1' - 5' off the banks. And I could see by the swirls they were chasing gills away from their beds. I went with a topwater the entire time, and I really did forget how many fish I caught. All largemouth. Some smaller males and a bunch of nice , spawned out females. These fish would have gone another pound to pound and a half heavier a couple of weeks ago. Suffice to say I got around 20 largemouth - enough to tear up my thumb unhooking them.





Now - about the lure I used. You can see it in the mouth of the 2 bass I have posted here . The first person who comments below with the correct name of the lure - name of the bait and the lure manufacturer - will win a new Lucky Craft Pointer! 1 comment per person.

We decided to go to the lower pond and see what was happening there. This is the mixed bag spot - cats, bass, gills, crappie, trout, walleye. The way to find out who is hungry here by throwing a 1/16 oz. jig head with a 2" grub - everything eats it. Tonight was a really odd mixture of fish - maybe the strangest I've ever seen. I ended up with 14 walleye, 9 crappie, 2 gills, and 1 small bass. No trout or cats. A truly bizarre mixture, but fun nonetheless. I only fished here for around an hour and a half, until it got dark.





So - why the title - a bittersweet evening?? Well, I recently (last week) accepted a job offer from a different company and am in the whirlwind process of selling our house, buying a new one, moving the family, and starting a new job.

[HEY - that's right - some of you said you wanted to buy my house when I posted pictures from the pond across the street. Good bass fishing! Here's your chance!!!!]

Getting back to the point of the post - the ponds are located on a club property to a hunt club my current employer is a member of. When my last day passes - this coming Friday - I won't be allowed access to the ponds anymore. This may have been my last chance to fish these glorious ponds. Oh well you'll have to bear with me as I embark on learning some new areas and fisheries. I told you this would be a journey rather than a destination. And the journey continues!



The sun setting on the ponds, both literally and figuratively

Ponds, ponds, ponds

Sunday evening at around 6:30 - after spending a full doing whatever it is we all do on the weekends - I asked my wife "So - what do you want to do? It IS Mother's Day, after all" I was tired and really didn't feel like doing much of anything. Until ... her response - let's go to the ponds.

It's amazing how quickly I can spring into high gear when it involves something I want to do.

Within minutes we were driving to the ponds to get in an hour of fishing. The evening was beautiful and the ponds were calm. I had decided, even before we got out of the car, that I would spend the evening trying to entice bass on topwaters, even though I hadn't had a topwater hit this spring. Well, sometimes your intuition is just right. Sunday was one of those nights.

I started out with a 1/4 oz. white buzzbait and started fan casting an area of 2 to 2-1/2' deep. Had one blow up on the bait on the second cast but missed him. I'll spare you the play-by-play, but suffice it to say that the fish were ON. I landed 12 bass in an hour, from 7 pm to 8 pm. White buzzbait, Sammy, and a Lucky Craft wakebait - not sure of the model - that runs just subsurface and throws out a big V-wake. Its really close to a topwater because the visual strikes are just like a topwater - the bass blow them out of the water. The fish were a combination of egg-laden females and smaller , aggressive males. They were not quite up on the banks yet but, with yesterday's 90 degree temps, I wouldn't be surprised to see them tight to the bedding areas this week. Here are a few pictures from the evening.

And, yes Howard - it IS a nice shirt!!







I also tried something I had never done before - I tried to get some topwater strike video. Results were mediocre but i think I got a few good hits captured. I'll play around with those tonite and post them as a separate posting if they're worth watching.

The next 2 weeks should be gangbusters - get out and get after those fish! Here is a poor, low light shot of the field full of deer we passed on our way out.

Catching Dinner over Lunch

Even though it was fairly chilly today, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get after a few fish over the lunch hour. Jesse and I went to the ponds with the intent of catching - and keeping - some fish for his dinner tonite.

Started on the upper pond. Lots of gills, all just short of being prime filleting size. They were JUST a little smaller than we like to clean, so back they went. Small grubs were the answer on UL rigs. We got a fair number of bass - mostly males. Jesse got one egg-laden female that was probably 2-1/2 pounds, and I had a big fish break me off in the rocks.

30 minutes down, 30 to go. And no fish in the cooler.

The lower pond held a little bit of everything. Jesse continued casting grubs while I went to a small purple and white tube. ***Newsflash *** - trout like purple and white tubes. A lot. We caught fish pretty consistently for the next 20 minutes. Jesse put a nice crappie on ice, and I followed that up with a crappie, 'gill, and walleye for the box. I also got 3 trout in quick succession, and a bunch of undersized 'eyes.

So - I put 3/4 of the fish in Jesse's cooler. NOT that I'm a fish counter - I'm just saying. I'm thinking that a half pound of morels would be a nice gesture of appreciation.

Sorry no pics - didn't feel like pulling out the cell phone

FINALLY the ponds turn on

The ponds I frequent have been slow to give up their treasures this Spring. With the very late warming trend and a lot of cold rain, the spring seems to be compressed into a very short window this year. Which means - you better hit it hard when it gets good.

And I think it is poised to get good in northern Illinois.

My wife, son and I went to the ponds at 4:30 this afternoon. We fished the lower pond for about an hour and upper one for maybe 45 minutes. It was good - real good.

The lower pond is the one with the mixed bag of fish - rainbow trout, walleye, largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie, channel cat. The upper pond has bass, gills, and cats. Joey hung out and explored stuff on the lower pond, while Stacy and I threw UL spin gear with 1/32 oz. jigheads with 2" Lindy Munchies grubs. In the hour we fished, we landed 7 trout, 4 walleye, 1 crappie, a pile of gills. Hits were frequent and you never knew what was on the end of the line. Stacy suggested we try the upper pond to see if the bass were biting up there. Even though all we had along was UL gear, we went up to try the upper pond.

Well, the fish were ON up there, too. I threw a small (1/8 oz.) spinnerbait while Stacy and Joey threw 1/16 oz. Beetle Spins. the gills and pumpkinseeds were bigger than I have seen recently, and the bass were holding about 10'-15' off of the rock edges that they use to spawn. Most of the bass caught were smaller males, but I got a few nice ones, including one BIG egg-loaded female. An absolute blast on an UL spin outfit!! We probably landed 30 panfish and 12-15 bass.



(Sorry for the picture quality (or lack thereof) - its from my son's phone)

If you have ponds nearby, get out as often ans you can over the next month. It's FINALLY time to capitalize on the pond fish!