Boot Beach 2010...Day 3

Day three had all three of us fishing together. The water looked promising, and a day of fun fishing was about to begin. It was nice to be laid back on not really care if we caught fish or not. Day 3 was about enjoying each others company and having a good time. It's not often anymore that the 3 of us are able to get together and fish.

Here is Dad and Ben at the start of the day.

After a little hole hopping, we ended up in some unfished waters, and the old man of the river struck hard and fast......out of no where Ben and I both looked up to see, yet again, Dad's rod doubled over and him fighting another fish!

It didn't take him long, and this little lady was at the bank, with my meat hooks wrapped around her tail. She was a beautiful fish and fought well. Once again, another wild steelhead, so......out come the pliars and a quick dehooking.

A little quick admaration of such a beautiful fish before she was then sent on her way.

Not 10 minutes later i hear warhoops comming from Ben. It was his turn to do battle. He did a great job, even if Dad and Brother Mark were full of lots of fish fighting advice. Ben reacted like a pro., and i'm sure bit his tounge due to all of our suggestions.

We got a quick "grip and grin" of Ben, and this pretty little lady was sent on her way too. What's that on Ben's head you ask? A camera, of all things. Yep, he got both dad's fish and his fish on video! Have to admit, as we watched it later that evening it was prettty darn cool! Hummm, fishing video's could be in the near future!

After that last fish, Ben was satisfied as we all were. Mission acomplished, over the course of the last 3 days we'd all caught a fish and had a great time. We ended up back at camp and had a good lunch and the decision was made to hang out and finish the trip off with a short hike down to the river from the camper. By the time it was deemed to go fishing, Ben was preocupied with building a fire and a bike jump so Dad and i headed off for the last witching hour of light to make a few last casts.

It didn't take long and once again i felt the surgeing headshakes of a fish and watched as it came to the surface. Only to have me gear come flying back to me. Leaving only a scale on my hook as proof that i had indeed had a fish on, which was to be the last of the trip.

Dad and I fished till dark. I just soaked up the peace and solitude that only a river can provide while makeing those last few last casts. Color faded to black and white, and the orange glow of the sun was about to disapear, as i snapped one last picture. My favorite picture of the trip.

I'll call this one "Old Man of the River"

Thanks "Dad" for such a great trip. I'll think of it often, as i anxiously await our return to such a special place.

Signing off from the North

where rivers make things right in the world....and we catch a few fish too...which is nice!

Mark .....The Iron Skillet

Boot Beach 2010.....Day 2

Day 2 of Boot Beach 2010 started out with questionable conditions. We'd recieved lots of rain overnight, and the river rose quite a bit, but hey we were here to fish. Lucky for use we'd brought along a few secret weapons and they paid off!
We started day 2 up river in one of Dad's favorite spots, we'd fish though the hole once, and we're going back through some less likely spots when i looked down to see dad's rod doubled over and it was fish on! This battle was exceptional for a fish that had been in the river for awhile, another hard fight and another fish with an adipose fin attached. Here he come's headed in.

A soft landing, and a quick pop of the pliars, and this guy was turned right around on his way. A healthy splash of his tail, and sailing back to the depths of river deserved high fives and a feeling of satisfaction for dad.

We fished awhile longer here, and i managed to loose 2 fish, seeing both breifly. Guess i'm just a little rusty. We headed back to the camper for some lunch then a quick trip into town for some gas and ice and a plotting of where we should fish this evening. The river was on the clear and dropping meaning for some more promising fishing.

Once back we headed down river into where i'd caught my fish the day before. Within a few casts i hear the rustle of boots on the beach and look down river to find dad doing this once again!

Another fish on! And this one was making a big splash....indicating a BIG fish!

Ya, it's a big fish!!!! Gotta wait for it though.....

WOW! Now that's a HOG and a hatchery fish to boot! Gutted and gilled this fish tipped the scales at 13 pounds, so if you add 2-3 pounds for the guts and gills this steelhead was in the 15-16 pound class. That's a nice winter fish in any river!

So, that ended day two of the trip. Just as we arrived back at the camper brother Ben arrived and we had a great dinner of fish taco's, cold beer and an evening filled with a lot of bullshit!

Stay tuned for day 3.......

From the North where we head south to see big fish too...which is nice

Mark...The Iron Skillet

Boot Beach 2010.....Day 1

Well once again February has rolled around and the annual Boot Beach Camping trip was finally here. I think this is the third year we've fished during presidents day weekend, and it has never let us down yet. This year was no exception......so, here is how the story goes.....

My original plan was to come down thrusday afternoon, but those were changed since i had a JOB interview, and i wasn't about to pass up anything with the word JOB in it, so i did my interview on Thursday, and Friday morning i headed down to meet up with Dad for some fishing, while hopeing to here a ya' or na' on my hopefull job before cell phone service was lost........
At 11:30 cell service was lost and i arrived to find dad in the camper tying up some jigs, and getting things ready for some fishing. He told me how great Thrusday had been, with him catching 3 steelhead, with two being hatchery keepers...this trip was looking good already!

We had some lunch and fished a few spots, and then headed back to the camper and hit one last hole before calling it a day and heading for some dinner.
Luck was on my side and within just a couple of casts it was "FISH ON!"
This guy put up a great battle, lots of big powerfull runs and more than a couple of great jumps. After a few minutes, he was getting tired, and a quick visual inspection showed an Adipose fin still attached, indicating a wild steelhead that must be released.

A quick flip of the pliars, and me manageing to dump everything out of my pockets....He was ready for a quick "Grip and Grin" photo, and sent on his way back up river.

And that concluded fishing for day one.
We headed to "town" and along the way came into cell phone service once again. Low and behold i had a message from Barlean's with them wanting me to call them regarding my interview. With some phone tag and left messages, i finally got a call back just as dad and i were getting ready to eat some good looking Pizza! A short minute later it was a high five with dad, i had been offered the job!
What a day.....what a year! For the first time in over a year i felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders! I was to start on Wednesday at 8 a.m.......man...what an awsome day!



Stay tuned for days 2 and 3.......


From the North where things are looking up....which is nice

Mark...."The Iron Skillet"

Welchs' Bet's

Well, today found me home again with Isa. Thankfully she is on the mend and should be headed off to "school" in the A.M.. I'm amazed how fast a little medicine can work it's magic. She made a drastic improvement between yesterday and today! She felt well enough to help me work on the boat. She wants to go fishing, you know! As does Dad, but it's hard to justify with the work situation and all. The reality is, the boat has almost 2 year old gas in it (it does have a double dose of fuel stabilzer in it) and needs to be run. So, the last few weeks i've been chipping away at adding things in preperation of a fishing trip. I think after today, with the help of Isa, "Welch's Bet" or is that "Welched Bet" or "High Five" or "Big Red" ..........is ready to go on it's first fishing trip with me at the helm.
I know this may bore most of you, but this has been my bright spot as of lately, and i'm going to give you a little recap of the things that have been done over the last few weeks......so, bear with me........here goes



So the first addition to the new boat was installing my 9.9 yami. from the old boat. A great trolling motor, and i hope it will be a good fit on the back of this old gal.

In order to mount the kicker motor i had to install a new fuel water seperator system, that had two ports, and can directly draw from the 100 gallon fuel tank (yes, you read correctly, 100 GALLONS!). The nice thing about this new system is any water can be drained from the bottom of this filter system, and hopefully will ensure clean fuel.
My next big task was mounting my other fish finder/gps to the one dad left in there. At first i was just going to run one unit, but the more i thought about it, the more i liked running two. Why run two you might ask? Well, now i can run one unit in full screen gps mode, and the other unit i can run in full screen fish finder mode. Overkill you might think? Naaaaa....we're talking man talk here......more is always better! The nice discovery was the placement of the new gps antena. Notice the "hockey puck" with the cord near the window in the picture below. A little Marine 5200 and she was glued in place recieveing a perfect signal, even with my hand placed over the top! (A good thing, to say the least)!

A view from the helm postion, the cool part of these two units is the fish finder mode unit i put on a swivel base and will be able to turn it, so i can see it while running the trolling motor from the aft of the boat (Told ya i was gonna get a little detailed here!)A little more "messing about" and i discovered this old lowerance bottom reader in the dash. Dad had told me it didn't work, but to my surprise with a little bit of "elbow grease" i got this one up and running again too! Here's the proof, sitting in the driveway, she's reading 2' deep........and right she is! 2' from the bottom of the hull to the ground!Isa had a lot of fun today, She got to watch the movie Aladin up in the cuddy cabin, while i worked on the other stuff. I'd ask her quite often if she was done....and each time she'd say "nooooo dadda, i want to stay in the boat, we go fishing o'kay?". I told her this weekend, and i hope to keep my promise as long as the weather holds.And last but not least, we had to mount "woody" up somewhere. He still likes his postion on the bow. So i Think with a few zip ties we can accomodate his request!


So, from the North....

Where Boats, kids, and the promise of a fishing trip keep our chins up and we still spit into the wind too.....

Mark..."The Iron Skillet"

Hunting Daddy....We go Hunting...o'tay?

Well yesterday and today found me home with Isa. She's come down with a cold that's going around, and since i'm not working much, i was glad to stay home and have a little Dad time with her while brother went off to school. It was a pretty quiet morning yesterday, and i'd been working on some laundary and cleaning, when i realized it had become just a little to quite. So, i found Isa in her bedroom. This is what she had on! (Notice the vest on the floor, well that was to be next for her atire) She saw me and asked or stated for that matter....."We go Hunting dadda, Kaikai not here, just me and you...o'tay?" As she reached for the sky and asked me to pick her up.....

This going hunting thing has become quite the thing to do as of lately, especially since Isa recieved her very own pair of Bino's over christmas. Just last week we (Kaikai, Isa, and I) made a very special hunting trip....to try Isa's new special Bino's....we were to look for "Bears" and Dears'". So we bundeled up and headed out.....lucky for me there is a nice little trail to the beach from our house that is "just right" for a "Quick give momma a break hunting trip"...

As you can see Isa put her Binoc's to good use. She must have stopped and used them a 100 times....and each time she would tell me that "evry ting looks toooo smawll".....Note the picture below.....

It took awhile for her to realize that she was looking through them Backwards! I wasn't about to spoil her fun though, and eventually she figured it out.

Kaikai on the other hand had to be strapped in. He's not one to follow the path very well, and was insistant on aquireing every rock and stick that was available, making for SLOW progress.....Needless to say, he wasn't real happy about being strapped in....I call this the "ejection seat postion" lucky those straps held!

We ended the trip in a small field just before the house. As you can see Isa was a little upset that we didn't see anything, but fortunatly there's always a next time.

So signing off from the North....

Where we "hunt" in our backyards, look for "bears and deers'", and get to feeling better too....which is nice!

Mark...."the Iron Skillet"

Easy come....Easy Go!

Well as the title says......Easy come.......Easy go!
Yesterday Ol- Whitey" became someone elses. It was time to turn her loose. It was a good experience, and it proved that we COULD benifit from an economy car for me to drive around town (the savings in gas was amazing compared to the truck). The down side was that after Whitey's freeze up, she wasn't quite the same, and the fix-it costs were eating into the money savings department.
So.....off to the next owner.
A quick add on Craigslist and she was gone within 24 hours! The price you ask?????? Well, i'll just have to keep you guessing....but, more than i paid (she was free :)) or had invested. Now the quest begins for another free car, whose name may be Ol-White-Too!

Signing off from the North......
Where some things are free.....then sold for more......and old cars rule the roads!


Mark.....The Iron Skillet

Health care plans for pets? I wish!

I think i may need to write a letter to our new president. I'd like to ask him to incorporate one more thing into his new Healthcare reform...it wouldn't take much, just a little extra wording, a little extra money, and a whole lot of drama between two political parties. Whats the the extra you ask....how bout a little health care coverage for our pets....ya know they get old too!

All jokeing aside, i got a little dose of how expensive the vet can be this last Sunday (ya, sunday, when only emergency pet clinics are open). What happened you ask.................

Well, here is the story...

Saturday night before i went to bed i loocked up the house and shooooed the two dogs off to their kenel for the night. They both looked like there normal selves and off they went. The next morning, we woke and took our time getting up in the morning, and finally about 8 a.m. i deemed it time to feed the dogs. I opened the door to find my old trusty (crusty) Dingo sitting there waiting paitently for his morning vitals, giving me the evil eye! Something drasticly wrong with him..........The picture says it all, look at his left eye!

I was shocked to say the least, over night his eye had completley clouded over! No ryme or reason, it just did! I felt sick to my stomach, and instantly thought my poor old dingo was going blind, and raceing thoughts of his doom were flashing before MY own eyes!
With steady hands Nicole thumbed through the phone book to find "urgent pet care" and a quick call was made. By 9 a.m. Monty was being seen!
The vet himmed and haaaaad over what was going on, and told me she wanted to do some blood work, and it could be this or that or some more of this and a little more of that.....By this time i'd come back to reality and my pocket book was starting to talk to me! With me being mostly laid off, every nickle counts around our house right now....and vet bills ARE NOT part of the monthly budget! So the vet talked me into the blood draw and a few tests and then she told me what she thought it was......Basicly Monty is to FAT! Something to do with Lipid cells carrying extra fat in his blood stream and somehow that can cause the eye to cloud over and if not treated fairly quickly can cause damage to the eye (although she did say it would take awhile to make him go blind). Her final soultioun were some pregnazone eye drops (a steroid) and it would clear up fairly quickly, and a follow up with my regular vet on Tuesday for the blood work out come, and a final diagnosis.
The vet then disappered for awhile and came back with eye drops and my bill. As i read the bill i came down to the total......$275! I think me turning white as a sheet was signal enough, as the Vet quickly left the room leaving me only one option of leaving and paying!

So, pay i did......after i got home and started the doses on Monty, his eye started to clear within 1/2 a day, and today it's back to normal. As for me i've stared at the cost of the bill about 10 different times......here's the breakdown.....$100 entry fee......$130 for the blood draw & labs.....$16 for the eye drops....and the rest is taxes and misc. charges.


So Mr. Obama.....how bout a pet care plan?........after that i need to talk to ya about my unemployment benifits...but that's a whole nother post alltogether!


Signing off from the North........Where pets get sick.....vets cost a lot.....and i'm broke now too........which is NOT nice!


Mark.....The Iron Skillet