This Could Be Nice

As my kickboats and camping gear sit in the bed of the truck in the parking lot I'm excited for what promises to be a long weekend of good fishing, leisurely floating, camp fires and brew. Enjoy this preview of what looks to be a fishing film with some amazing cinematography.

Fly Fishing - Once in a Blue Moon 60sec promo from On the Fly on Vimeo.

Cautiously Optimistic...

That's how I would describe how I feel considering the weather we've had and that the due date for personal income taxes is already upon us. The weather was relatively mild. No prolonged periods of snow cover, no ice storms. The rains have been consistent enough to keep the ground moist and not so much to worry about flash flooding. To borrow a term from a favorite childhood story, "just right." At least so far.

This weekend, Sunday rains meant children were doing the Easter egg hunt a day early. The family chef was grocery shopping for the upcoming feast. I, on the other had, was blessed enough to sleep in and be treated to breakfast. As if that wasn’t enough, I was also allowed to run dogs on the best piece of bird cover I’ve seen east of Russell.

For some added fun I loaded the farm lab, Riley, in the truck with my two setters. We started walking down the edge of a pasture and all Riley wanted to do was chase and play with my setters. She’s still carrying a little holiday weight so that didn’t last long. The pasture produced a wild flushing prairie chicken, and at the bottom we turned to follow a thick draw splitting a wheat stubble field. Ike, as he does sprinted ahead following the edge, and it wasn’t long before I hear the familiar beep of the Astro that told me he was on point far ahead. When we got there Sage honored and Riley, who’s never really been “hunting” before approached Ike and started to lick his face. Then two roosters blew from the thicket just ahead of him. Hilarious. There were a couple more recurrences like this as we found quite a few pheasants and another prairie chicken.

Here's Ike on pheasant find number two, with Riley ready to lick the face again.

On the drive out I saw a Harris hawk messing around on the side of the road. As I approached he flew off and I saw this rooster who was managing to keep the fallen tree limb between himself and the hawk.

On Easter morning we repeated the drill before the April showers came, this time without Riley. The results were nearly the same, except we found two coveys of quail. I was worried after the first day didn’t produce any.

Ike on covey number one. Both coveys were 8 or 10 birds, good shape for breeding.

I feel bad I didn't get any good pictures of Sage. I kept trying to get good video of birds flushing but it just wasn't in the cards. Anyway, we timed it so that we were getting to the truck just as it started to sprinkle. I really like that piece of ground.

Is Fishing Season

I didn't get to fish hardly at all last year, so I was super excited to start off the year right with our first trip. Fished two days with Wes and we had a heck of a time. Our arms and hands were litterally sore from all the fish.

Typical Kansas Weather

On Saturday morning I awoke to find five inches of snow on the ground. I was to bed late and up early, so it must have fallen pretty quickly. Yesterday was into the 60's, and today could hit upper 70's!

The woodcock flight has reached NE Kansas, as the dogs and I managed to put up six in a very short period on Sunday morning. We don't have much experience with woodcock, but they seemed very jumpy in the snow. The dogs as usual were running the edges looking for quail, but the woodcock seemed more dug in and would flush wild as the dogs ran, or I walked, past. I did come across one guy hunting with a yellow lab. We didn't speak, only waved at a distance, but I have to assume he was hunting rabbits. He probably wondered what I was doing walking around with dogs and no gun. As usual we didn't find any quail. Except for one covey we found while bikejoring last week, I haven't seen any wild quail close to home in almost three years.

Other than that I thought I'd share some pictures my father sent to me. He's purchased some fancy pants DSLR and telephoto lenses and has been getting some pretty amazing pictures. This spring I hope to get a blind on a chicken lek to get some pictures of their mating rituals.

If you click on the pictures you can see full-size versions. The look on the pilot's face is enough to give me a chuckle, I wonder what he was thinking.

Fin

Just a few pics from the last two weekends.

Odd looking snow.

Doc originally found a large late-season covey that tried to run out from under his point. Here he is on a single.

Ike backs...

The bird was dug in under some grass and flushed low into the wheat stubble. I had a clean shot and winged the bird. Both dogs raced in to scoop up the cripple and they clobbered eachother pretty well; I couldn't help but laugh.

The following Saturday I finished up the season much like I started it; hunting with Ted. We hit some old haunts and found the quail coveys to be in great shape going into the spring; we'll keep our fingers crossed for a mild February.

Here's Dottie on a single.

Later in the day Wes and Doc met up with us. While I think bird numbers in Kansas were generally down compared to the 5-year average, the more experienced dogs found more, and handled birds better than last year. It was good season.