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June 2008
Ethanol, boats an interesting mix
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With E-10 gasoline (10 percent ethanol) available virtually everywhere in metro Atlanta, most boat owners are filling up their tanks with the blended fuel.
That’ll be especially true next weekend. The July 4 weekend will be one of the busiest of the season on area lakes.
E-10 is either good or bad for boat engines, depending on who you ask, but it’s clear that word is getting out on what to do to prevent problems (such as clogged fuel lines, problems with older boats with fiberglass fuel tanks).
That doesn’t mean the problems have disappeared.
No matter how you feel about the subject, E-10 is here to stay.
What’s your story on E-10?
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Fishing is hot, but is it too hot?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Is it ever too hot to go fishing?
I suppose the answer is dependent on how well they’re biting.
If you’re drop-shotting over a deep brush pile and you’re catching fish, then the answer is probably no, it’s never too hot to go. If you’re not, well, then air conditioning sounds awfully good. Aluminum hulls and searing heat are not a good mix when there’s little action at the end of your line.
Still, I go and I’ll tell you why. I remember an interview several years ago I had with Doug Hannon, the “Bass Professor.” Hannon has caught more 10-pound bass than most people on this planet.
The thing that most stood out in the interview was that Hannon said he always had high anticipation for trophy bass to bite in the dead, and hottest part, of the summer. The reason? Big bass, he said, are simply different than run-of-the-mill 2-pounders. They feed when smaller fish don’t. They’re more apt to bite a lure when smaller fish aren’t. Whatever the reason — genetics, etc. — they have to eat more to grow large.
“The times when I’ve caught the truly big bass were when you couldn’t buy a bite, ” Hannon said in the 1999 interview, explaining that only skinny or extremely large bass will feed when other bass aren’t. “I used to take heart in those times when they weren’t biting, because I figured this may be my day.”
The same may be true during the middle of winter, when the fishing slows as the water temperature drops. The Massachusetts state largemouth record (15 pounds, 8 ounces), for instance, was caught while ice fishing.
We all know it’s hot outside. It’s summer in Georgia and 90-degree days can make a trip outdoors a miserable one. What do you do to get your outdoors fix? Grin and bear it, or catch those TV fishing shows from your air-conditioned den?
Do you have a tip to share?
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Dad and the worm story
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I will miss my father the rest of my days. It’s been five months since he passed away and there hasn’t been a day in which I haven’t taken pause to remember something about him.
Many of them are about hunting or fishing.
With Father’s Day coming up, those memories have been bubbling up pretty frequently. And many times they’ve been brought on by even the smallest of circumstance.
One hit me the other day when I was at a store which sold nightcrawlers.
It made me think of the days as a kid in Wisconsin when me and my three brothers (but I did most of the work, by the way) sold nightcrawlers to local fishermen. We had a prime location right there at the corner of Brown Boulevard and First Street in Rothschild, next door to the post office that hired me every winter to shovel the front walk.
We put a sign up in the front yard and sold the big worms by the dozen. Business was brisk on Thursdays and Fridays as fishermen readied for weekend trips to the Wisconsin lake country to the north. Of course, it provided us with all the worms we needed for our own fishing trips, many of them for sunfish and bullheads at the Wisconsin River, a 5-minute bike ride from the house.
My father fashioned an old 50-gallon oil drum with a door and lock and buried that sucker in the ground behind the house. We put the nightcrawlers in there to keep them cool through the summer.
Funny, how during that time we needed a lock on the worm box to keep people from stealing our prized worms but never — I mean never — locked the doors to the house.
We made a little money, but the fun was in catching the nightcrawlers, which emerged from the ground every night, and in particularly large numbers during or after a rain. With a flashlight gripped by my incisors I would shine the light at the ground and pick them up, gently pulling them out of their holes so as not to break them off.
I remember once when us young entrepreneurs realized we could dramatically improve our botton line if we helped Mother Nature in bringing those big ol’ worms to the surface. So we watered the lawn — a lot. The wetter the ground, the more nightcrawlers would come out at night.
We had one of the greenest lawns in the neighborhood nearly every summer.
Dad pretty much left the worm biz up to us. That is, until he realized we were running up the water bill. He put a stop to the watering and our inventory plummetted.
Then one day, with our annual two-week family vacation around July 4th just days away, Dad asked about the worms. Did we have enough for vacation? “No, we’re sold out” was the answer.
The watering began again, and we never heard another word about it.
For many outdoors enthusiasts it was dear ol’ Dad who introduced them to hunting and fishing. What’s your best story in the field with your father, and how important was it in shaping your interest in the outdoors?
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Pending world record at Lanier
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’ve known for years that blueback herring was actually a good thing for the quality of fish being caught out of Lake Lanier.
The illegally introduced baitfish, which has been used as legal bait for most of the past decade, has fattened up spotted bass and stripers to trophy sizes.
Lanier fly-fishing guide Henry Cowen reported this week that a client of his, Gary Lowe of Atlanta, caught and released a pending world line-class fly record spotted bass on May 23.
Lowe used a Cowen-designed blueback imitation fly called a Cowen’s Baitfish to catch a spot weighing 4 pounds on a 20-pound tippet. The current International Game Fish Association 20-pound tippet record is 3.5 pounds. The IGFA will review the catch before awarding it world-record distinction.
There are bigger spotted bass in Lanier, for sure. But Lowe’s catch is further proof of Lanier’s emergence as one of the best spotted bass fisheries in the country.
“It is my opinion that other records will be broken on Lanier,” Cowen said.
Cowen said the 2-, 4- and 8-pound tippet records — all under 4 pounds — are certainly attainable.
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