Putting Things Away — A bit Smelly to say the least

December 18, 2023 (#270)

My very brief hunting season has ended. That means it is time to go through the list of rituals in my head involved in things in their correct storage places or at least jot down on a piece of paper some notes to myself so I can find the stuff when I need it the next time.

Hah! The people, and primarily the person who knows me well would tell you that there is not a written list of such rituals nor is there really a mental one either. People who read books about organizing rooms in houses, offices, garages and such shake their heads at people like me (and often tell me and others what they read about). Some, rather than just shaking their heads, get pretty annoyed by organizational skills like mine. 

To tell you the truth, there are frequent times when I get annoyed with myself too. However, I don’t think I have enough clipboards to attach lists for all the, what my wife calls “stuff” that I have accumulated over the years.   

Last week I remembered that my Thompson Center Hawken still had powder and a round ball in the barrel. I had taken it with me on my trip to Ron Buzzell’s cabin at Whitetail Mountain. I didn’t fire it at the end of the day because I didn’t want to fuss with it in an attempt to get it really clean. Instead I stuck it back in the gun safe. So one day as I was sort of straightening out the workbench in the basement I came across a deeply buried treatise on black powder firearms. That little book reminded me of a necessary ritual that needed to be done to prevent another episode that took place the morning of the 1999 Wisconsin muzzleloader hunt. That is a great safety story in itself that I have told to many people so what happened to me doesn’t happen to them. 

On the day that I decided to clean my Hawken, I placed a target about 30 yards from the basement door, returned to the door, grabbed the gun and placed a cap on the nipple. Instead of wandering outside a few yards I chose to lean the gun against the door jam and fire at the target from there. That way I had a solid rest.

Of course the sound would be deafening because our basement entry was actually a garage when the house was finished in 1937. There is a stone wall about 78” high on both sides of the entry so it is like a hallway with no ceiling.  On the day I was doing this I failed to remember that the wind was out of the northwest. 

The basement entry faces – NORTHWEST!

After placing the cap on the nipple I raised the gun and braced my left arm against the door jam, carefully tucked my trigger finger inside the trigger guard, set the trigger and placed the finger on the actual rigger. I took a careful aim and fired. 

The projectile whether it be a patched round ball or a conical shaped bullet zooms down the barrel at about 1500 feet per second and the instant it leaves the barrel all the smoke follows. There truly is a cloud of smoke. Black powder shooters do not see whether or not they hit their target for several seconds because of the heavy fog-like smoke in front of them. 

If you know anything about early firearms and modern black powder reproductions, one thing you probably know is that with black powder or modern black substitutes when the hammer strikes the cap sitting on the nipple a small explosion takes place and sends a flame into the actual powder charge in the barrel. A slight pause sometimes takes place then BOOM! 

When my cloud of smoke left the barrel there wasn’t anywhere for it to go because that northwest wind was stopping it from moving down range like it normally would. That cloud of blue smoke that was hanging in our basement entry suddenly got blown right back through the basement door. About a minute or so later our furnace kicked it and we found out that our system is working great. The furnace instantly started sucking cold air from the basement and the cold air returns were also working. 

In less than a minute our entire house smelled like rotten eggs!

It didn’t take long for the wonderful woman of the house to get some candles burning. I hesitated to go upstairs but in a matter of seconds I heard her say something like, “You didn’t plan that very well did ya?”

It was too cold to clean the gun outside. I attached the cleaning  “jag” that holds the cleaning patch, stuck a patch over the hole in the business end of the barrel and ran the ramrod down the barrel. When I removed it I added even more rotten eggs to the mix inside the house. 

My problem now is – I have the twin to the Hawken in the gun cabinet and it has a load in it as well and needs to be cleaned. 

I think I will pick a warmer day and get away from the basement to fire the gun and then clean it outside. 

I wonder if the lady will tell me that I did a better job in my planning.

Take Care!

Post Script:
This is the 270th story that I have posted on Oshaukuta Outdoors Word Press site. To read any or all of the stories they are posted by month and year. Just click on the month and scroll through them.

Splinting My Broken Tongue

December 12, 2023 (#269)

A couple of weeks ago I published an Oshaukuta Outdoors story that included an episode that caused the tongue on my boat trailer to bend and then crack. In the story I indicated that due to the bent tongue I was calling an end to my 2023 fishing from within my Sea Ark.

On Saturday, December 9^th I posted the story about going back to the river in the Sea Ark and getting action from five muskies on the trip. One reader texted me to question how it was that I was able to get the boat back to the landing and back home without having the tongue snap right off.

After I told the Second Bob about my tongue issues he drove out to look at it. He said he thought he could weld it up and make it workable. I think splicing is a good term for his plan. By the time that the tongue issue occured I was sure that the weather would be too cold to river fish anyway. So I told Bob that I was just going to order a new tongue from Don’s Marine in Lodi and have the trailer ready to go in the spring.

After thinking about it and after trying to winterize the engine unsuccessfully I knew I’d better care of that task by taking the boat down to the landing and winterizing it there. To do that though, I’d have to figure out how to get the trailer to the landing and back without snapping the tonge off.

The Second Bob had mentioned that perhaps splicing some metal onto the sides where the crack and bubble are might stabilize things. I gave it a little thought and came up with an easier but temporary plan. Instead of using metal to do the job I decided to use wood.

I figured that a 4x4x4 would do the job if I used some C clamps around the 4x4s and the tongue. I have a ready supply of 4x4s as a result of scrounging stuff out of the dumpster that was standing on the side of Highway 51 when the highway was closed due to the bridge replacement three years ago. I wa dumpster diving every day after the construction crew quit for the day.

I drove to the Do-It Center in Portage and bought four C clamps that were long enough to fit over the tongue and enclose the 4×4 which I would place under the tongue where the injury is.

While digging through my stash of used and unused discarded wooden materials I found a 4x4x4 that was perfect. It was 4” long.

When getting ready to do all the aforementioned ideas I backed my truck up to the trailer, got the coupler over the ball of the hitch then got my floor jack out. I stuck two short pieces of dumpster 4×4 on top of the busness end of the floor jack and starting raising the jack. The 4×4 on top of the jack made perfect contact and as I raised the tongue it straightened out. With the jack in place I unhooked the trailer from the truck. Once satisfied with my work to that point I measured the distance from the garage floor to the bottom of the tongue about a foot away from the hitch on my truck. I then lucked out and found a cutoff piece of 4×4 that was the perfect length and tapped it into place under the tongue. That allowed me to take the jack out from under the tongue at the site of the trailer’s injury.

The next step was to drop the C-Clamps over the tongue and 4X4 Guess What! I had measured the size of the tongue to be 3 inches square. That meant I needed a chunk of wood that was 3 inches square and not 3 1/2 “ like a 4×4 actually is. I was really feelng stupid at that point.

I wasn’t to be outdone though. After thinking about it for a minute or two my light bulb lit up. Gosh I thought, a 2×4 is actually an inch and half thick. All I needed to do was hammer some nails into a pair of 2x4s that were 4 feet long then do the C clamp thing. I found a pair of 4 foot 2x4s in my mess of bridge wood, nailed them together and cinched them down with two of the C clamps.. After getting that taken care of my boat and trailer were patched up pretty well. I stepped on to the tongue and jumped up and down to see if it would bend again.

It did not, so I hooked it back up to the truck and drove down to the landing. There I backed the trailer into the river. Next I climbed in and safely maneuvered through the items in the boat  to get back to the tiller. Once there I started the engine and performed the winterization method. It worked like a charm and took just a minute and a half.

That’s my answer to the reader who questioned me about how I was able to get the boat back down to the river with a bent trailer tongue and move five muskeis in one trip.

On Thursday of this week my plan is to take Ron Buzzell with me to the place where we know there is a pack or school of Esox musquinongy that we are hoping are hungry.

A Handful Of Muskies During My Last Trip — Or was it?

(#268)

For many reasons it was a fishing trip that is now a forever memory.

I can now say that I have fished in a boat on the Wisconsin River during all 12 months of the year. I can also say that for the first time I saw five muskies on the same outing. It is a personal best and beat out the time on the Chippewa Flowage 4 decades ago that I saw two on the same outing as well as a day on the Pike Lake Chain in 2019 when Ron Buzzell and I saw three in one day.

I had never given any thought to fishing while out in a boat during the month of December. I had fished in January and February below the Castle Rock dam with Reel Fishing Adventures friend and guide Captain John Lamb. On January 9, 1918 Captain Lamb coerced me into going fishing right below the Castle Rock dam. He told me the weather forecast predicted sunny and highs in the low 40s. I succumbed to his story and went along. Once there we had a blast. We caught more than 100 walleyes but just one keeper and Captain Lamb actually caught that one. On that day he also hooked up with 50# buffalo that was hooked right in front of the dorsal fin and later snared a sturgeon right in the top of its back. In our photos of those fish it’s easy to see the blood red hooks in the bodies of those two leviathans. On that trip amongst those 100+ walleyes I  might have caught about 20 or so while the captain did the rest of the catching. 

January and February of 2018 were also the months that the Two Bobs and Three Bobs fished together below the Castle Rock dam. If you read these diatribes I post on this blog site you know that the Two Bobs fish together often and even have a Wisconsin River Slough named after them. 

In actuality I named the slough Two Bobs on the day that the two of us found the awesome backwater area. After I started telling other friends who fish the area that we do that we named it Two Bob’s Slough they started calling it that as well. I’m creating a wooden sign that says “Two Bobs Slough” with my router and the plan is to nail it to a tree that will perhaps not blow down like thousands of river bottom trees have done in the past 10 years. Perhaps in years to come Two Bobs Slough will be identified on the Wisconsin River maps like Lib’s Island, which is listed on the current river map as Liberty Cross Island after the fella who owned the island before eminent domain transferred the property to Wisconsin Power and Light Company and now Alliant Energy. Another misnomer on the current map shows the Rocky Run channel and slough as Davie’s Slough when it really is Davis’ Slough named after the Davis family who were Town of Dekorra families who lived where the original site of the mill race, the mill, and flour house still stand. 

My first-ever fishing trip in a boat on the Wisconsin River in November occurred soon after Robert M. Thompson became my father-in-law. It took place during a 1980s era deer season when RMT decided that we could do two things on one trip: 1) we could catch a musky in Davis’ Slough and shoot a buck as well. It was the day after Thanksgiving. We launched his Grumman Sport Canoe at the landing that is just east of the flour house on the banks of Davis’ Slough just upstream from the mill race that still is easily identified. We had the rods and reels for fishing and the guns were loaded. It was a cold day but we were dressed warm enough to stay at it for a couple of hours. Our rod tips would freeze shut on us from time to time but it didn’t take much effort to clean it off. 

About halfway through that adventure there was shooting east of us and soon a couple of antlerless deer  were sneaking through the island between the river and Davis’ Slough. Quickly the rods were put down and the guns were in hand. Alas, the only whitetails we saw were the does. Our fishing success that day in terms of catching muskies resulted in as many of those as the number of bucks we harvested – none. However, obviously the trip is a forever memory for me. 

Of course during the current calendar year I returned often to the Wisconsin River during November and even launched my boat in Silver Lake during last month. 

December arrived and once I learned how easy it is to winterize an Evinrude Etec outboard . I was hoping to get some pleasant weather with temperatures in the mid to high 40s or even the low to mid 50s. On the second day of deer season I launched at the Dekorra landing and actually had some musky action I have written about previously. 

Today’s temperature prediction of a high in the 50s got me excited so I called the Second Bob and plans were made to get some suckers and head for the river in hopes of coaxing a hungry musky into a meal of suckers.  

The plans were made. I arose in an excited mood about being able to get my boat into the river in December and if fortune were on my side we’d get a photo or two of a river musky. A phone call to the Second Bob was made and plans were to wait a bit then get the sucker and get after it on the river. I drove down to the Dekorra landing to check for icy conditions and there wasn’t any . Soon after I got back home the Second Bob called to tell me that he could not go due to COVID-19 in his household. 

Rats!

 It would have been great to be together for this story and have the all-important second person in the boat to handle the netting chores if needed. I decided to go solo today so I made a trip to a bait shop for some suckers and bought half a dozen of the small ones which were about 4 to 5 inches long. I was soon hurrying home. 

Friday’s Trip

Many people would have a written a list of tasks that needed to be attended to before the trip could even begin. I always fail to have a written list instead relying on my memory.

That’s the part that gets me most of the time. Friday was no exception. I failed to cover all the tasks and it probably cost me a chance to get a musky or two or three or four or even five in my net.

I had been planning the trip since the first forecast predicted a high in the 50s for Friday. I needed to get things in the boat organized because I had already winterized it and had things stored away or somewhat stored away. I wanted to use live suckers for bait and had a plan for that until the Second Bob reported with the news of not being able to accompany me. Instead I decided to drive down to the Hwy. CS/I-39-90-94 interchange area and get some small suckers at the BP station there.

I did make the trip and bought half a dozen which cost me $4.22 plus about two gallons of gas to get there and back ($5.60). That’s cheap compared to $15 for just one 15-18 inch sucker. 

When I got back home, the dishwasher installer/repairman was there getting our new one to work correctly. As I was getting organized to leave he and I had a short conversation. That short chat derailed my thought process on preparing for the upcoming river trip. I’d pay for it before long.

I arrived at the landing and felt rushed. I was losing minutes from what could become a successful musky trip. After getting the boat unsecured from the trailer I backed it in but the boat would not disengage from the trailer. I pulled the entire rig out of the water and looked things over. I backed the rig back into the water with the same results which of course meant no results. I pulled ahead again and mentally went through my mental checklist. That’s when I realized that I had not removed the engine brace device that keeps it from bouncing around when being pulled down the road. Once I removed that and called myself a few choice descriptors I backed it in, parked the truck and hustled back down to the boat. The Evinrude fired right up and within seconds I was up on plane and headed for the destination where I knew there to be at least one musky that might be hungry.

After arriving I was eager to get two suckers rigged up and in the water. I had remembered to load the bucket with the suckers into the boat. However, as I looked for my two sucker rods I realized that they were back in my garage. That conversation with the Vern’s Electric fella had gotten me off track and in my normal excitement I left without them. 

Now I was faced with a choice. Choice #1 was to head back to the landing, load up the rig, drive home to get the rods then come back and launch again. That choice would mean losing at leasts 40 minutes of time on the water. Choice #2: forget about using a sucker and just cast some baits and reel them in slowly. The water temperature was 37 degrees and commonly shared fishing knowledge is to use slow retrieves when casting.

I chose #2.

I arrived at my first destination at about noon and started out with an original Bobbie Bait which is a dive and rise or jerk bait. So it lands, you jerk it toward you, reel in the slack and jerk again and again and again. After about 15 minutes with no strikes or follows I switched to the Suick that the huge musky followed on the second day of deer season. I was determined that if that fish thought my imitation for something edible was good enough to take a close look at two weeks ago that it might find it interesting again. At 1:15 pm as I was bringing the Suick back to me from my left suddenly a 3 foot long musky cruised right next to the boat and just behind the bait. I kept my excitement in control, completed the retrieve and started jerking the bait along with quick short bursts in a figure 8. The fish followed it around the eight and cruised back past me and I swear it rolled a bit to its port side, looked up at me with one eye and dove under my boat. 

Just as quickly as it had appeared it disappeared so I kept on doing about a dozen more figure 8s at various speeds but alas, it did not show up again. So I tossed the bait back out there hoping it might get ticked off about all the critters colored like that disturbing the underwater silence. 

At 1:30 and from the same direction a large muskie followed the Suick along the port side of my boat on the same path as the first one. The second one was larger and much heavier. I’d say it was in the 40–42 inch class. That one did not follow my figure 8 at all and just swam under the boat taking the same path the first one did. I kept on producing figure 8s in hope that the fish was lurking right under my feet and would suddenly attack my wooden fake bait. 

That didn’t happen.

There were sheets of ice floating down the stream I was fishing in. I switched from the Suick to a bucktail spinner bait just for a change. On my first cast I tried to land the bait on top of one of the ice sheets about 20 yards away from me. 

Plop went that bait as it landed right on the ice. It slid a bit. Ice is slippery you know. I started reeling and the bait slid off the ice and returned to me. I kept using that bait for about five minutes and switched back to the Suick.  At 1:41 an even heavier musky followed in and was about the same length as the second fish. The story is the same. The fish seemed to be just saying hello to me and letting me know they were living there. There must have been a pack of them down there or they actually were in a school learning about fake baits being dangerous.

By this time I was getting very excited. I had never seen more than 3 muskies in any one trip in my fishing life. I kept throwing the Suick. At 2:05 I had thrown the bait straight out from the boat. The sun was shining on the water from my right so it was easy to see it coming toward me as it got closer and closer. On that cast I did not see any fish following the bait.. I did a couple of figure 8s, lifted the bait out of the water and tossed it out there again. As I did I looked down a bit to my right and it appeared that the sun was suddenly shining on a log about 2 feet under the water.  My bait hit the water and before I started to jerk it back to me I looked at the log again and realized that it was not a log but a very huge muskie suspended down there. I could not see its head because I think that was under my boat. I think it was teasing me. Before I could get the Suick reeled back in, the fish disappeared under the boat. 

At 2:20 another muskie swam up to say hello but that one swam past the bow of the boat. By that time I was really disappointed for not leaving home before the dishwasher repairman showed up. If I had gone prior to him arriving I know I would have remembered to load up my two sucker rods. By that time now I was really shaking my head. I just know that if I had not left the sucker rods at home at least one of those fish would have swam right over to the sucker and ate it after passing on my Suick.

And that’s not the end of the story. 

Before I quit fishing at 4:05 I had my rod with the Suick on it lying on the rod locker with the Suick dangling in the water. There was only about an inch of the bait in the water but that was the metal tail on the end of the bait. As I was fiddling with my other rod a fish took a swipe at the Suick and fortunately I was able to grab the rod before it got yanked into the water. The fish did not get the bait. I had saved that rod and new reel for a second time.

That was it for me for the day. But what a great day it had been.

Another fishing forever memory and includes some good information for other fishermen.

Don’t forget the rods!

Until the next time –

Bob