Moths, and more buterflies

This post has some very cool moth photos, as well as a few more butterflies.  The moths are, well - they're just cool.  but since I only really find them on the porch in the morning if a leave the porch light on, they aren't very artistic.  Just neat photos of cool moths. 

I think the butterfly photos have more "artistic" qualities, even though I wouldn't know an artistic quality if it bit me in the ass.  I'm having more fun with the butterflies using different lighting techniques and various focal points.  Some accidental, some on purpose.  Oh well.

I just received a new 50-300 mm zoom lens for my camera, so I expect to be posting this stuff for a long time to come.

And - I actually went fishing last week, and caught a few fish.  I WILL post that rare event!

Enjoy!

                                  This is probably my favorite moth - reminds me of a bat

It's BUG Week on Flowing Waters!

Wow - 2 posts in row!!  I'm feeling like this might be a regular thing!

This week's photos are some bugs from around the house.  I'm really sort of liking this photography thing and I think I'm going to get a 300mm zoom for the camera.  Then - watch out.  I might actually get to take some REAL pictures.

Please click on the photos below to see them full size.

As always, thanks for your comments.

Joe

A new beginning for Flowing Waters

I can't imagine anyone will actually read this, since I'm sure the folks who used to follow this mess have long since given up on it. 

The truth is, the blog started as an online fishing diary, and I rarely get to fish anymore.  Work has occupied my every waking moment and I have written nothing for over 3 months.  I haven't even been out shark tooth hunting. 

But - don't cry for me, Argentina!  I have been bird shooting in Italy, South Africa, and Argentina over the past 4 months, and will eventually post some of those adventures.

In the meantime, I have acquired, and am learning to use, a real camera.  I bought a Nikon 3100 and have had a ball learning to use it.  LEARNING is the operative word, because I have barely scratched the surface.  But, with a big butterfly bush in the yard, I have had a lot of opportunities to photograph butterflies and other buggy critters.  I will be posting them here on  a weekly basis.

Please be sure to click on the photos for larger views.

I welcome any and all feedback, especially hints on how to get better!!

Joe

More teeth - but a GOOD ONE this time!

I haven't been out fishing since FLA, so there are no fish updates. And, I've really none very little fossil hunting.  But I did get out this past Monday, and it was worth the trip.  At least for me. 

I went to our local beach with my wife.  It was a beautiful day, and the tide was perfect.  I ventured down the beach like I always do, and started finding a good number of the usual stuff pretty quickly.  Mt first good find was one of the nicer Hemiprisitis (Snaggletooth) teeth I've found.  The ones I find are usually beat up and broken - this one was petty much intact.

                                  
                                                    Hemi on the left; Mako on the right



I found a lot of Tiger shark teeth - nice sized ones for this area.  Great day so far.  Picked up a cow shark tooth - the only one of the day - and a tooth I thought was a porpoise tooth.  As I got ready to go, I dug around the base of a tree root and, voila! - my best mako ever from MD!  A really nice "blonde" colored mako.  It was a great day!

And it would get better when I got home.

                                                      Cow Shark on top

                                                          A ring of Tiger Shark teeth

                                                   


The porpoise tooth intrigued me.  I've found 4 others in the past year, and this just didn't look like the others I found.  So, I posted it on the ID section of the Fossil Forum.  What came back made the trip a REALLY good one - I had found a pretty rare fossilized tooth from a Dwarf Sperm Whale!!  It has now become my prize find from the Calvert Cliffs.

I guess its a little odd to get excited over a broken 10 million year old tooth, but I'm pretty happy with it!

Time to resuscitate this blog

3 months is an eternity to go without a blog post.  It really means you've pretty much given up on the beast.

I came close to giving up on it, but there's still something inside me that wants to keep writing, at least periodically.

So - I am going to re-dedicate myself to keeping this blog somewhat constantly updated.  No matter how worthless and mundane the nonsense that comes forth actually is.

I'll start by going back to my roots - fishing.

I just returned back from a long weekend in Captiva FL.  The plans were to split time between fishing and fossil hunting.  In keeping with my past experiences, the weather turned to shit while I there - fronts blew through, temps dropped to the mid to lower 60's, brisk north winds.  On the one good day, it was only raining.  Like, raining buckets.

So, the one day I had set aside for fishing only got cancelled.  I was going out with an old friend - Dave Gibson - and after talking the nite before, we mutually decided that, for a simple, fun day of fishing, Friday wouldn't be much fun.  We'd be battling cold temps and high winds, post-front conditions, and the bay was a little torn up from the relentless winds and rain the day before.

No problem - I'd sleep late, and spend the day looking for shells, or drinking, or something.

I went out to the beach on Friday morning to look for shells and get some exercise.  Winds howled, and I was glad I didn't go out fishing.  Then I saw a guy walking up the beach, throwing a lure into the surf.  Of course, I had to ask him if he was doing any god.  "Not from this beach", he said, "but I got snook yesterday and jacks this morning from the beach between Captiva and Sanibel.  Throwing a spoon."  Of course, my fishing subconscious kicked in, and I was off.

I always bring a 3 piece spinning rod and a very basic assortment of lures on trips like this.  Bucktail jigs, Stingray grubs, spoons, Mirrolures, swimbaits.  I grabbed the one other guy on the trip who fished and we went to the cut between the islands.

The incoming tide was pretty heavy - a good thing.  I have no idea what works here, but I have a little bit of an idea on the basics.  Everyone seemed to be using live shrimp, but I felt like throwing lures.  We watched a small (20") snook come in, then a flounder and  a catfish.  I rigged up a 1/2 oz. swimbait and started to cast.  And cast.  And cast.

2 short hits (or maybe they were just mullet that I hit with my bait on the retrieve).   I was getting pretty close to calling it a day, when I got a hit.  A SERIOUS hit.  Lure stopped dead, fish jumped and took off.  By some unfathomable stroke of good luck, I had actually looked at, and set, my drag.  It screamed but held.  Long story short - about 10 minutes later I held my biggest snook ever.  Not a giant by Jupiter Inlet standards, but I'm pretty happy with it!

Hopefully, this is the beginning of more good things to come.

There are certainly more fossil stories coming!

More teeth

By this time, anyone who actually used to read this blog for its fishing content has long since departed, so I feel less and less of a need to aplologize for the fossil content.  Still, a little voice nags me from the far reaches of my brain, reminding me that I have become useless as a fishing blogger.

Oh well - shit happens.

I made it down to the local beach last weekend to take a walk and see what  I could see.  I got there at 7:00 AM but was beaten there by one other car.  With a low tide, I would be able to walk past the cliffs and get down the beach as far as I wanted to go, but there is DEFINITELY an advantage to being there first.  Oh well. 

The day was beautiful - chilly at first, but warming quickly.  I love being outside early in the morning - it's always invigorating.  It must have been the opening of deer season for some of the zones because I could hear pretty constant shooting from the Eastern Shore -  about 8 miles away, across the Bay.  It never ceases to amaze me how far you can hear across water.

Overall, I had a pretty good morning looking for teeth.  I found:

The best cow shark tooth I've ever found

A big hemipristis (broken on one side - would have been an awesome tooth if whole.)

Some pretty nice tiger shark teeth

Bigger than average ray crushing plates


Overall - a great day to be out shark tooth hunting.  Thanks for coming along for the ride.

A fossil adventure in FLA

I had to go to FLA for a short business trip but had a half (OK - 3/4) day available for some "me time".  In every instance in my past life, that would have meant go fishing.  Well - not this time.  And, for once in my life, I made a good decision.  On Tuesday there were record lows throughout FLA, and I have NEVER had good fishing there on cold post-front days.  But the fossils don't really mind a change in conditions.  Maybe when they were killed by the Ice Age or some catastrophic event 20 million years ago, but not now.  So, it was off to the Peace River for a day of digging for fossils.

Before the trip, I did my usual research and came upon Mark Renz' Fossil Expeditions on the Peace River.  His website sold me, and a little more research on Fossil Forum confirmed that Mark was held in high esteem by all those fortunate enough to have met and dealt with him.

Well, in person, he's even better.

Mark went over the fossils we might encounter at our meeting place in Arcadia.  We did a kayak trip, where I learned that I like going downstream, but don't like coming back upstream, even in the gentle Peace River current.  We tied up near a gravel area and started digging and sifting.  There were 5 people on this trip - 2 other couples, and me.  Absolutely great people to spend a day with.

The results of the dig were somewhat along the lines of what I expected - a TON of bone material, a fair number of smaller pieces of various teeth, and lots of rock and unidentifiable "junk".  The crown jewel of the area is , of course, the giant Megalodon shark teeth.  Our group had one couple find a Meg tooth and 2 Meg tooth halves, while I found a couple of fragments of Meg teeth.  The other couple found a few pieces as well.  That' s NOT to say I didn't find anything good - I did!  My best find was a fossilized Tapir tooth, followed by some fish tooth/jaw pieces, 2 croc / gator teeth, my Meg pieces, a softshell turtle shell piece, another turtle piece, a bunch of smaller sharks teeth, a possible echinoid, and a lot of Dugong rib pieces and vertebrae material.  The river is full of Dugong pieces.  The Dugong we were finding is an extinct relative of the one found in thewaters of the Indo-Pacific, and both are / were related to the Manatee.  Every scoopful of sediment held something neat.  I absolutely loved it and can't wait to go back, and I will absolutely book Mark again for my next trip to FLA.

                                            
                                          Mark (on the right) with fellow fossil diggers

                                            Mark's faithful fossil dog (can't remember his name)

                                                               Dugong rib pieces

                                             Tapir tooth - chewing surface

                          
                                               Tapir tooth - root

                                                                      Fish teeth , jaws

                                                            Megalodon tooth fragments

                                              A pretty big, but very worn, tiger shark tooth

                                                    Assorted smallish shark teeth

                                                           A decent little Hemipristis

Some of the haul on the kayak - gives a better perspective of the size and mass of the Dugong ribs


A few words about the day and the experience:  Mark spends the day rotating among the groups digging and sifting.  He ID's all your stuff for you if you have questions (and you will!) and is a treasure trove of knowledge and information.  He's also a keen observer of the incredible natural surroundings found along the river.  We saw a small gator while kayaking in, the usual amazing assortment of birds - herons, hawks, ...  Heard a Pileated Woodpecker, and saw a Red Shouldered Hawk attack a Green Heron.  He (the hawk) failed in his attempt, by the way.  Mark is entertaining and knowledgeable without any feeling of being anything but helpful.  A great guy and guide.

However, if you think that you are going to come here and simply walk into the river and scoop out shovels-full of Meg teeth, you are delusional.  That doesn't happen anywhere.  Are there Meg teeth here?  Absolutely.  Will you find any?  Maybe.  It's much the same as hiring a fishing guide - they'll determine where to take you and what method to employ but the end result is always in question.  You WILL find fossilized material - it's everywhere.  If you want to learn and appreciate the awesome resource, and maybe find some GREAT fossils, but definitely find neat stuff - this is the best money you can spend in FLA.  I'll do it again next time I'm there, and hopefully every time after that.

Mark can be reached at http://www.fossilexpeditions.com/  or by phone at  1-239-368-3252

Another Fossil post, and a contest!!!

Alright all you folks out there interested in my new pursuit of fossils.  [ That's basically Howard and maybe one other person]  Today is your special day.  I have a fossil-related contest, and the winner gets actual shark tooth fossils.  That's right - you can start your very own addiction right here!! 

We've been hitting the beach pretty hard recently, and it has been generally uneventful.  By that , I mean that, on a normal 2 hour beach search, my wife and  I will find about 120 - 150 shark teeth, but only 4-8 of them are what we put in the "good specimen" box.  The others go into a box that has, literally, thousands of teeth in it.  Small ones, broken ones, just normal, run-of-the-mill teeth.  And, every once in a great while, we (alright - she) finds something really cool.

Like the subject of today's contest.  The last picture is our first find of a certain unusual fossil.  Identify the fossil and I will send you a set of 5 each, 15 - 17 million year old shark teeth fossils.  One each:  Sand Tiger, Tiger, Hemipristis, Lemon, and Requiem shark, and a crushing plate from a Ray.

There haven't been any major storms to stir things up, and summer has the most people on the beach, so the "toothing" can be tough at times; still, here are a few of our recent finds:

                                     A really nice speciman of Cow Shark

                                   A good Mako for the area we hunt

                                            A couple of Hemipristis, or Snaggletooth shark teeth

                                              Some nice Tiger Shark teeth


AND FINALLY, THE MYSTERY PIECE.  FIRST CORRECT GUESS WINS!!

Brook Trout and Bears in Maine

While I haven't gotten out to fish very much at all this year, I'm at least getting out to the places I like to go, or the ones I've wanted to go to for quite some time.  This trip - the week before Labor Day - took me to Maine.  I would be working for the majority of the week, but had a few periods of down-time.  The guys told me that the creek on the property where I stayed used to have brook trout in it, but no one had fished it for a while.  (That IMMEDIATELY sounded like my kind of creek!!)  They also asked if I wanted to go bear hunting.  While I am a hunter, I have no desire to shoot a bear. But I'm always intrigued by different ways to hunt, so I agreed to go out on stand with the property owner for a couple of evenings to see if anything came into the baits.  First up - the fishing report.

The stream on the property could not have been nicer.  Beautiful, clear water, cascading waterfalls - it just looked fishy.  But  - there weren't many trout.  I consider myself to be a pretty good small water trout fisherman and I struggled mightily.  I really don't think there were many fish in the creek.  I purposely walked up to a couple of the deeper pool to see what I spooked, and - NOTHING.  No little trout darting around the bottom, nothing shooting up toward the undercuts at the head of the pool.  The water was cool but not uncomfortably cold - I almost think that may have been a problem, that it got too warm for good brookie fishing.  Also, there were precious few deep pools to have fish survive the long, very cold Maine winters.  Possible winter kill?  Or maybe its just the obvious - that I'm a crappy trout fisherman.  Regardless, measuring the net worth of a day spent walking the woods and fly fishing for wild trout is never measured by the shear numbers of fish caught - at least not by me.  I had a ball even though I only brought 6 or 7 little brookies to hand.  I did, however, nearly have a heart attack when a grouse decided to explode out of a small patch of cover about 3 feet from my head while I was walking in the creek.

                                         I expected more of these parr-marked youngsters

 

 

                                             Beautiful water, high expectations

                             There were SOME Brookies there, and at least this one stupid one!

I went out with the owner of the property 2 nights in a row to sit on baits.  Bear baiting is the accepted way to hunt bear in Maine, but I had never hunted over bait.  Like I said - I wasn't actually hunting, but I wanted to experience it and see what it was like.  Growing up hunting in a state where baiting of any kind for anything was illegal, I admit to having some preconceived notions about hunting over bait.  Well, the folks up in Maine take their bear hunting seriously, and there is definitely a science to doing it successfully.  The real science, though, lies in the use of trail cams.  Before game cams, the only thing you would know about an area was whether or not the bait had been hit since the last time you were there.  Now you can see the number of bears, the size of the bears, and the times they hit the baits.  Very cool!  Speaking of size, the owner paints a orange stripe around the tree and the barrel where the baits are placed.  The stripe is 38" off the ground and, according to the DNR, that is a BIG bear if its shoulder is as high as the stripes.  This guide helps you from shooting a small bear - they're tough to judge unless there are a few of them at the bait. 

Evening 1 ended with a total of 1 red squirrel sited.  Still, the anticipation that, at any moment a 400# plus bear could step into the clearing made it a great experience.  Actually, anytime you are in the woods for daybreak or nightfall, it's pretty special.

The second evening found us at a different bait  -  one that had been being hit in the afternoon.  It didn't take long to see we made the right choice - we watched 3 separate bears from 5:20 - 7:20PM.  All were about the same size - the first maybe a bit smaller at an estimated 104-150 pounds.  The next 2 were close in size and probably 175 each.  At the very end, one of the bigger bears was at the bait and ran like hell.  We saw another bear in the very dark background but it was way too dark to see how big it was.  So - 4 bears in one evening.  We certainly could have shot any of the 3, and a 175 pound bear , while not a trophy of a lifetime, isn't one to be embarrassed about, either.  But the owner has shot a few before and would only take a really big one now, and I just liked watching the show, although I could feel my "hunter instinct" kick in when the bear would show up.  On the way out from the stand, we drove up on a cow moose in a clearing.  A great ending to a great evening.  Oh yeah - the steak dinner that followed didn't suck, either.

                                                            The first, smaller bear

                                                     The second bear - a little bigger

     
                                                            Cow Moose





All in all, a terrific couple of days in Maine.