My fishing profile over the past couple of weeks fits that classic profile of insanity; repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. My last SIX trips have been a species study in the letter “S”: shorts, saugers, sheep and sturgeon. Fishing where the Helix 10 says there are walleyes. Vertical jigging hair, Teddy Cat blades, plastics; pitching/dragging hair and plastics; pulling 3-ways with stickbaits, blades and jigs. All I’m catching is the four “s’ fish of the Apocalypse.

Deer hunting has lost its thrill. Focus is on harvesting meat to turn into jalopeno cheddar sticks as a main course for my open water m & M diet: meat and Metamucil.

A bowhunt 10 days ago yielded 29 lbs. of clean venison which used to be on the body of a 2 1/2 yrs. old 10-point buck with a VERY chocolate rack. Talkin’ dark, Saskatchewan chocolate. Never shot one even close to that color in this neck of the woods.

I was hunting a ridgetop stand in a light SE wind overlooking an old logging road as rut was winding down. Cruising bucks often come down this road from west to east under these conditions. Chocolate rack showed up right on queue. did a mouth grunt when he was at 21 yards. Game over.

Don’t claim to be an expert deer hunter. But when you do ANYTHING for more than 50 years you should make fewer mistakes than the deer do.

I’ve been fishing hard for about the same amount of time. More often than not have a good handle on what the fish are doing–
even if that means simply understanding their vote not to bite.

All boat ramps are still open here. The skim ice which was on some local backwaters is mostly gone with recent warm weather. Too windy to go out and reinforce insanity definition this morning. Got the ice fishing gear ready instead..

Skippy, the one voice in my head which still believes we’re still going to see a quick, hot open water walleye bite, will get his way just about every time we get decent weather between now and ice up. If he finally gets it right, he’ll take over this blog and let you know immediately.

Skippy’s twin brother, Calvin, the ice fishing nut, finally stopped his whining about getting the hardwater gear ready. We’re good to go. He’ll take over this blog two days after the tundra swans leave after 3-4 quiet, cold nights.

Right now, I’m gonna listen to Flash, the voice which called the shots most of the time when I was a firefighter. It is now a few minutes past noon. Noon is when professional firefighters catch a nap–if they can. Haven’t had to jump a rig for 16 years now–but some habits never die. nighty-nite.