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