2010

Thursday April 29th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

Remember when I told you that the weekend wouldn’t be a wash-out? I finally got one right. It looks like there will be one pretty good line of showers and storms coming about midnight Friday night, a cloudy day Saturday, and a cooler day Sunday with a minor chance of rain as a second storm passes south of us.

Look for temps in the 70s Friday and Saturday and high 50s Sunday. It has been a breezy week, and that will continue through the weekend.

It is the opening weekend of inland fishing this weekend, and people are pumped. The El Nino winter and spring has lakes free of ice and water temperatures well above what they normally would be right now.

It is also a full moon today. That and the storms in the area should help the fishing along. The forecast for Saturday is cloudy and in the 70s, with the wind being the biggest challenge weather wise.

This would be a good chance to remind people to go and grab their fishing license ahead of time. It used to be a tradition for me to be standing in line at Fleet Farm that Friday night, wishing I would have done that ahead of time so that I could get out of town. That is a lost tradition that I don’t miss.

The spring greening is coming right along. Next week it will probably be time to start cutting grass. A lot of the trees are starting to fill in a little bit, and the maples are well on the way to making helicopters.

This week was a fun one for me. I decided that I was getting too soft in the middle, and that it was time for a spring workout regime. Firewood has been my friend again this week, and I got three days of hard work in. It feels great, and I am looking forward to more. The picture is from a poor perspective. It is hard to tell, but that pile is chest to shoulder high and about 25′ long.

As you can see I have a lot of little stuff along with the splitter logs. Usually I will take any branches bigger than a coffee cup. Those I take out in four foot lengths and process later. That adds up to a lot of little cuts, so I made a new firewood stanchion. I fill it up with logs and cut a lot at once. The first load in the new set up made 68 pieces of proper length firewood in 3 cuts.

It works pretty good, and I made it 100% out of scrap or recycled wood. It isn’t a revolutionary design or anything, I have been using that method for years. The reason that it is news is that I made a new one, and I thought I’d show it to you to help some of you with your ideas.

Slug sent an E-mail that let us know about their Kentukey Derby Party this weekend.

We have a Kentucky Derby party at Bear Point Yacht Club every year this time when they do the run for the roses. The ladies wear their finest classy hats. Mary my bartender can even talked into making a mint julip most years. Saturday we will have great snacks, plus meat and seafood raffles. So if anyone wants to join in come to Bear Point Yacht Club hwy 180 Wausaukee for the fun Sat 1:00  till after the races are over.

Here are more events for the weekend..

The merchants in Athelstane had a ribbon cutting ceremony last week commemorating their takeover of Old A Rd going north out of town. Instead of Old A, it is now Northway Drive. The town taking it over permits ATVs and SUTVS to use that road as a trail, and makes access to town businesses  a sure thing. You can now get to the Nimrod, the Brown Jug, and the Country Mart by trail.

At the same time Jabber at the Firelane Bar has been clearing a spot for an ATV park & ride lot next door to the bar. It is good to see the town and businesses embracing ATVs like that. The Athelstane club, the Near North Trail Riders,  now has 56 miles of trails and full access to all town businesses. It would be good to see other towns get on board with this too.

After my workouts this week I was ready for some happy hour last night. I stopped at Firelane, and it was fun. Afterward I was driving home in the bright moon, and I decided to find a remote part of the county forest and see what was stirring.

I parked and remained very quiet. It didn’t take long before the woods came back to life. At first there was a pack of wolves sounding off. They moved along and about a half hour later a big pack of coyotes was making a lot of noise. Eventually they moved along and later more wolves started up. The moon was bright as can be, and there was a lot going on.

Those same wolves have been in the news a lot lately. Marinette, Oconto, Forest and Oneida Counties are either in the process of passing or have passed resolutions to ask the DNR to bring the wolf population in line with management goals. At the same time the DNR is trying to revisit their management program, again to try to bring numbers in line with management goals.

The challenge comes at a federal level. Because the wolf is a federally protected endangered species, they can not use lethal control. The wolf management unit is nationwide, so as long as one state has numbers under goal, they remain untouchable across the country. It is a hot and very emotionally invested issue on all sides. How it ends, nobody knows.

Well I am late yet again getting this posted, so I am going to run along. Have a good weekend, good luck fishing, and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday April 27th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

Last weekend was a fun one. The weather turned out on the cool and cloudy side, and the rain didn’t amount to much, so it wasn’t bad for playing outside in April. It did get pretty windy at times for sure, but we came up a little short on some of the more extreme gust predictions.

Pretty many people went rafting, and they had a fun time. They were pretty fun afterward in the Rapids Resort too. Thanks to all that made it a great night.

The big news this week is that fishing opens Saturday. Since it is May 1st, it is also as early as it can open. Some years that would be a problem with ice still on the lakes, but thanks to El Nino, this isn’t one of them. All lakes are ice free and water temps are above normal for this time of year.

Trout fishermen have been asking about stream conditions. They are low. They are not seeing any surface water and are running strictly on the base flow of always there water from the springs that feed them. Again a warm spring season has streams ice free and the ground firm and free of frost in all but the most secluded creek bottoms.

Seepage lakes are also on the low side, some as much as a foot or two. They will also be ahead of normal for water temperature. My visit to Lake X late last week did not have the lillies coming in quite yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

Long time visitors know that I am a believer in moon phases and the solunar tables. This weekend looks pretty good in that regard. The full moon is Thursday, which should put a positive bias on fishing for the weekend. The solunar majors are fairly well timed this weekend too.

Marinette County ATV trails usually open this weekend, but opened a week early this year. There were a few 4 wheelers around up by Highway 8 Friday and Saturday, and Saturday afternoon I saw more around here.

The rain last weekend spared us and let our outdoor activities go on, but it did not help the drought. Fire danger remains very high, and depending on things like wind, temp, and humidity, we could go red flag under the right conditions. It is really really dry. Burning permits have been canceled across the board. You can still have a camp fire, but use extreme caution.  In the short term it will probably get worse before it gets better. Later in the week both temps and wind are expected to pick up.  From Thursday on we could see some relief as a storm comes our way with a good chance of some rain.

Over the next day or two we will have cool clear days and temps a little under 60. The clear skies will bring cold nights below freezing. About Thursday we should start seeing warm southern winds in advance of a storm system that will influence our weather into next week. Friday should bring a chance of rain and maybe a thunderstorm. There will be a hit and miss chance of rain over the weekend.

The storm system for the weekend is a fairly complex one. It is not being shown as a constant rain, but rather a line of rain here and there. I am not going to pretend to be able to pin down the timing of  weekend rain on Tuesday morning, but it does not look like a washout. Check the GFS and see what I mean. Unsettled and cloudy weather usually bodes well for fishing, and with temps in the 70s expected, it could work out well. The TV guy was even talking bout 80s for Friday in Green Bay.

I mentioned that clear skies will bring temps below freezing overnight. We could see that again tomorrow night. I know that the nice weather has people wanting to garden already, but danger Will Robinson. We can expect frosty nights for a month or so yet under the right conditions.

Yesterday was a nice day and I wanted to do something outside. A little behind on my spring shape up program I decided that it would be a jumbo load of firewood. This time I kept the saw chain out of the dirt and we both pooped out about the same time.Yes I could bring two chains, but I am not in that good of shape yet. I’m working on it..

I made a nice big load of big heavy oak that had the truck grunting a little to pull. The trailer is still loaded. I came home and fell asleep in about 10 minutes. No happy hour, no dinner, just three hours dead out. I woke up feeling 90. It was a great workout, and that is just what I was after. Enough wood to heat my house for a couple of cold weeks next January was a nice fringe benefit, as was an afternoon in the woods.

On the way to my firewood spot I checked out a new place with some big dead oak. It was a real honey hole and easily accessible for the truck & trailer. It also sported a pretty sizable bear den just off to the side of the patch. I couldn’t tell from the drive by if it was active or not, but I do plan on returning to scout it  a little closer. If it is abandoned, fine, if not I will leave the area alone. That might be a good job for that Carl Zeiss 60x optical zoom on the new camcorder.

Last week I picked up a little Sony camcorder to hopefully use for the rafting. It wasn’t the nice HD one that I wanted, but the economy isn’t exactly booming around here right now. It still seems pretty nice, and I made a YouTube video on Saturday of 12 Foot Falls. You can find that and a rafting video on YouTube under RiversportDigital, or click the imbedded movie in Saturday’s Report. Hopefully there will be a lot more like that coming.

That is about it for now. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Saturday April 24th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

I was trying out a digital video camera today and made a little video that you might enjoy..

Friday April 23rd, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

I am at it early today trying to nail down something more concise than a 50/50 chance of rain for the weekend weather. Right now it looks like it might get a little wet here north of the force field.

Both the NAM and GFS have landed on flip this morning, and are showing the storm pushing rain north of Hwy 64 for both Saturday and Sunday. The HPC agrees, as does the NWS and the local TV weather station.

The best that I can tell the collection of forecasts is showing a little pre-dawn and early morning rain Saturday, and then a break in the action until later in the afternoon Saturday.

As far as QPF, the HPC has our rain totals for the storm in the 0.01-0.1″ range and we are close to the 0.1-0.25″ band. That isn’t much.

The chances of rain made me laugh. For Saturday the NWS has us at a 30% chance of rain. Green Bay it is at 70%, and Iron Mountain 40%. Exactly how does that work?

Maybe the NWS knows about the Silver Cliff Split. The SCS is a local phenomenon where we watch the storms rain all of the way across the state, part and go around us, and then reunite and rain 20 miles east, time after time. It is enough to give a guy delusions of persecution. Now it’s even in the forecast. LOL.

The other element in the forecast is the wind. The NWS is predicting an east wind at 10-15 for Saturday and a blustery day on Sunday in our forecast. The Iron Mountain forecast expands on that a little for Sunday, with NE winds 15-20, gusting to 30. Saturday looks less windy with 10-15 gusting to 20.

So..

Saturday- Cloudy, some wind, and rain likely early and late, rain chance here 30% (NWS).  Highs in the low 60s.

Saturday night-Cloudy NE winds 10-15 low around 40, chance of lingering showers.

Sunday- Cloudy, windy, highs in the mid 50s, minor chance of lingering showers.

When the rain comes it looks like several notable waves (currently guessed at early & late Saturday) and mostly light and scattered stuff, thus the expected total rainfall of less than 1/4″ all weekend.

It would be great to lock in the longer term GFS forecast and yell, “Buy!” right now. It is showing something like five significant rain chances (1/2″+) between next week and the second week in May. I am skeptical for sure, but would love to see it happen.

In the meantime if you are not here you probably should be. It looks like one of those warm Fridays in advance of the storm, and at the moment it is very sunny and nice. The NWS says that it could go to 65 or 70, and as of late morning it is off to a fine start on that.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB