8 Mile-R

 Well here in NEO (Northeast Ohio) mother nature has finally pulled her undergarments out of a wad.  The weather patterns are more stable, but still not consistent.

It was time today to increase my humping “old Marine Corps terminology” or hiking distance.  I went from 4.8 miles to 8 miles. When I was in the Corps we used to hump 3 miles in full gear in 40 – 45 minutes and now I believe I am humping 2.52 miles in an hour! Well, being 56 I think this is awesome.  Now, granted I am not carrying a mountain pack that weighed between 75 to 115 pounds lol. Gosh how did we survive lol but here I am.

I’m still mountain biking to work 5 miles each way and it takes me 30 minutes one way.  I am staying mindful of my pace and paying close attention to my breathing. It’s my endurance and stamina that’s my biggest concern.  Because I am concentrating on my stamina and endurance I am also concentrating on my breathing.  I was diagnosed with sarcoidosis four years ago and underwent an exploratory surgery “bronchial scope”.

I am grateful all the specimens they took were non-cancerous, but I was on some powerful roids for 3 months! I blossomed up to over 250 pounds! Now, I am at a feisty 200 pounds. Needless to say, I am grateful every day.

Here I am getting into better shape for my Maine trip.  It’s supposed to be a total fly-fishing trip. I am going to hike into two remote mountain ponds and float fish them. I aint going to lie if the weather turns to poo I will happily hike a tiny part of the AT lol up between Baxter and the Debsconeag wilderness area. It is a total win win for me.

Be well folks,

Sonder

Temps hot like the sun!

 

Well mother nature’s fury is being felt around here in these parts and its in the form of high temperatures. Here are some prime examples of what I am referring to.

 

The following data is coming from the National Data Buoy Center for the following buoys:

Maumee Bay Buoy

   Edgewater Beach Buoy

   Fairport, Ohio

   Ashatbula Buoy

That information will paint a vivid picture of what mother nature is up to!

The other thing that’s plaguing our fisheries is the abundance of plants that are growing from the river bottoms!  They are a pain in the arse and they are everywhere. Some places are bad, and these weeds can be found in everybody’s water to some degree.

In early May the weeds were bad on the upper Niagara River and she was 48 degrees as an example.

This is one of the several reasons I rather not fish in summer!

I chose to stay in my state this time and wanted to go look at a few tail waters and on dam dam lol.

I did not leave the house until 0930 after a full breakfast and fresh coffee.

I arrived at the first tail water and met an ACE (Army Corps Engineer) park ranger. I was impressed because I did not know this was even a thing.  They were putting together a little dog and pony show for the public. I bid them a good day and headed up the trail.

After about 10 minutes the tree ended and the freshly cut grass began. I have always been amazed at how well kept these places are in general.

Before I broke through the trees, I could hear the rushing water coming from the discharge chamber of the outfall. The flow of water was at the summer pool and at the cfs was about 100.

Obviously, she’s running at the bare minimum to keep water in the river course. As I walked up the bank towards the dam, I saw a lot of down wood and submerged wood. While It looked extremely fishy it was not fishable from the bank, in the river “unless one would want to take a chance on unliving themselves” due to shifting sand, and would not be fishable by water craft either. The submerged/partially submerged wood was biblical and severe injury would most likely occur. No matter how you try and fish it the task will be extremely tough.

I put my 3” milky shad grub on with the 1/4oz jig head and stepped into the water.  Holy sh!t the water was much colder than I had anticipated. This outfall here must have been bottom fed today.

The weed growth was manageable, but I did not hook any fish. I did not lose any jogs either win win lol.

I walked up to the outfall to fish it. I thought surely of any place this is going to have something lurking in it shad, white bass, or wipers.

Well, I was shocked no one was home. I thought of all the different holding places there between the slack water, rushing water, and the eddy pool, someone would have been home! I was way wrong and fished it hard for 20 minutes and then pressed on to the second tail water.

At this tail water it was closed during the height of Covid. I had never been here before and will most likely never be back lol.

You must be part billy goat to get into the valley and the river bottom and when you finally get to the bottom there is no trail that parallel’s the river. I did not expect a asphalt trail down there, but traversing the bank is a no go.  The river had a uniform depth and I only saw one hole really.  This for me reminds me of the Mad River in so many ways!  With the lack luster river structure meaning its just ungulates and the river bottom is consistently uniform. This is boring to me and now I only wade fish, so this type of river topography is boring.  I did hook and land a little egg filled smallie though. This tail water was also at summer pool and was flowing at 199 cf/s.

After hiking out of the abyss I headed to my third and last point of interest. This would be a dam I had found in some aerial photos.

I arrived at the dam I saw someone fishing on the river left. I decided to take a walk and ask one of the landowners if I could gain access to the river from their land.

She agreed to let me gain access to the river through her land.  I got to the river edge and strung up the eggbeater.  I covered a lot of water by fan casting long and short. I was rewarded with one tiny smallie.

I pulled up stakes and headed for home. The temps were hot a hades, but I needed to get out and get some exercise.

Be well,

Sonder

Headed outside to take a hike

Further conditioning for Maine! I will be upping this to biking to work Monday, walking on Wednesday and biking again on Friday to work!! On a side note I am down to just under 200 pounds.

Bucktail Basics

Emerald Shiner Variant

There are not many fly-tying materials that move in the water like buck tail and there are even fewer materials that shed water like it too. In saying that I am going to swing bucktail streamers next fall.

When I grab my switch rods this fall and go on the hunt for the Great Lakes anadromous fish it will be using the bucktail streamers I have shown here in the blog.

Shaminnow

Shaminnow

Shaminnow

I just came up with the one today an Emerald Shiner variant and shaminnow! Lol. I used to fish the Ohio River a lot with my fly rod and stripping basket. I used a gizzard shad pattern that was similar. I would hook walleyes, white bass, whipers, smallmouth, and one flathead.

This was using a 250-grain full sinking line and I used to have an absolute ball.

So, as you might know I am headed to Maine from the Baxter Area, Rangeley Area, and Old Orchard Beach. I have tied up a few bucktail streamer patterns for Brookies for the two corresponding areas. In doing this I wanted to tie a few for the upcoming fall to fish around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Emerald Shiner Variant

Emerald Shiner Variant

I would be targeting steelhead and browns in all the guilty areas. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Dark Skys of Northcentral Pennsylvania

In July back in 2023 I made the trek to the Susquehannock State Forest in search of a suitable area to take star photos.  There is a dark park and it’s nice located southeast of the area that I would find.  The Dark Park is called Cherry Springs State Park

After reading the reviews of the place and from having my own experiences from the other dark park there in Ohio I decided to put my map skill together to find another suitable area with zero people but still get the amazing views.

The build-up of this trip would be almost a year in the making. I paid close attention to the weather patterns and the moon phases to try and give me the best experience I could get from the area.  Between the cloudy days and the amount of precipitation it made it extremely difficult. This area has an elevation of 2270 feet above sea level and around the area I live in we are at 1100 feet above sea level. That does not seem like a lot, but when it comes to weather it is a lot.

I also knew I would be most likely climbing up the ATV trail I found in the dark of night.  The ATV trail has a grade of slope between 4% to 11% and with all the scattered stones you need to watch your footing with every step of the way.

Let’s fast forward to the actual trip I was just on. I have a dear friend Rob and when I spoke of this place, he said he would be interested in going if our schedules would allow it.

After the stars would align for us we would head out after work and drive the 4.25 hours ENE to the area that I had found last year.

We arrived at about 2200 and loaded our packs and headed up the mountain. You could hear the rustling creek making its way across the foothill of the mountain.

We hiked up and kept checking Garmin 64sx to make sure we were on track. There is nothing more frustrating than not knowing where you are at night and where you need to be going. This is coupled by the fact everything looks completely different at night. 

We heard a few deer snort and stomp their hooves and run off. When I was up here last year, I knew I could see a bear, but I never saw signs of bear scat or anything.

This area had been clear cut sometime between 2021 – 2022 from looking at Google Earth Pro timeline of the photogrammetry.  The area has ruts and lots of dragged area where they pull the logs out and is rough as a cob in some places.

Those are not clouds that is the Milkyway Galaxy

The overnight low was supposed to be 36 degrees and bonus part would be this would make the bug activity at night zero!  Well, we did in fact have zero bugs.  We did see a large bear scat on our way to the area we would be making camp.

We had stopped at a Subway to get dinner on the way in and I only ate half of it and stuffed the other half in one of my packs.

We found a suitable place to set up the tents in the complete blackness. Armed with our headlamps we put our tents.

We got the tents set up and started to relax and we could barely see the Milky Way Galaxy spread across the sky. It was faint but you could clearly see it with the naked eye.  I also knew the light discipline would not be the greatest at the dark park and this would be the other reason for wanting to climb this mountain and set up base camp here.

The views coupled with the complete silence minus the faint distant hum of a lone car every now and them miles away was the only noise for now.

So, after some bourbon and a few star trail photos and it being 0130 it was time to get some rest.  I set my alarm for 0430 thinking I was still home 4.25 hours west and I would be up before the sun.

Well, that did not work out and you can see why with the photos below. It’s still a nice photo but the sunrise washed out the majority of the str trails it has collected over the 3.5 hours!

This was a huge rookie mistake, and I should have realized traveling far east would make the sun rise sooner and not the same time as 4.25 hours west! I laughed at myself when I realized why and how this happened.

I woke up at 0430 and saw the glow on my tent and thought to myself “is that the moon?”. I then realized it was too bright to be the moon and in fact it was the sun. The sun well shoot I thought you traveled over 4 hours east and the sun would be seen earlier than if you were at home idiot. Lol

I got out of my sleeping bag and outside and sure enough in all her glory she had busted over the horizon and would have washed out the majority of the star trails that the digital camera had captured over the three and half hours I had it set up for.

I took the digital camera down and retreated to my warm tent. So, over night there was a very loud and very very vocal Whip-poor-will. For those who have never heard one enjoy and imagine this being so loud you would think it was at the top of your head! Call of the Whip-poor-will

I was able to fall back asleep knowing it was nature and not a man-made sound.

I woke up again about 0830 and it was time to get moving and break down camp. We did this slowly because their was no reason to be in a hurry.

I made some coffee with my Aeropress and ate some cliff bars. We further enjoyed the serenity of the landscape and how amazingly quiet it was still. The flies found us, but other than some caterpillars and butterflies we were never bothered by insects.

We broke down our tents and reloaded the packs and began our short hike downhill.

While walking down we stopped to take a photo of the bear scat of course! Lol

Immediately after that I could not believe my eyes were floating or rather gliding fluff balls in the air, there were these little balls of fluff! I thought at first, they were baby ducklings. Now, this all happened in about 30 seconds.

Then momma Ruffed Grouse popped up! She was not happy and looked at us as if to say “what in the hell are you?”.  She perked up her feathers in a defensive posture and flew into deep cover with her chicks. She was pretty and like I stated it lasted for about 30 seconds. It was like the momma was in disbelief that we were even there! I wish I had my camera out, but it would have been all over by the time I even got close to having gotten my camera out. The last time except from my childhood memories I had seen a grouse was a blue grouse in Montana.

We walked down the ATV trail and then headed for some lunch somewhere.

We drove though a little sleepy town called Benezette, Pennsylvania. They are known for herds of Elk, and I am guessing draw one heck of a crowd during the rut!

We stopped at the Benezette Hotel, and it had a decent sized restaurant.

After getting my fill of food and it was good we headed out to get back on the road since we had still to drive for three hours to get back to my house.

All in all, it was a nice quick trip. It is always nice to spend quality time outdoors with good friends!

Well folks I hope you enjoyed my ramblings until next time be well.

Sonder

So many questions