New Wheels more Big Browns

I was heading back up the hill on Monday afternoon and whammmm, my good old hunting and work truck gave up the ghost. It ended with a plume of steam rising out of the exhaust pipe. To make a long story short, Tuesday and Wednesday was reserved for truck research and believe it or not it was the easiest purchase I have ever made. I got a great deal on a new set of wheels and even had time last night to break it in, launching the boat at the dam. Michele and I launched at 7:00pm and boated three good Browns before dark. They measured 22", 20" and 19". Not a bad catch for the maiden voyage of our new truck. Take a good look at the pretty truck because Michele said it will never look the same after deer season.

Too busy for Hobbies?

I just looked at my last post and shame on me for not updating sooner.  I have been busy working out in the shop building Christmas presents, Ryder's bunkbeds and a AV Credenza.  I decided to lean towards high end furniture and my first project is just speculative at this point.  With  everybody and his brother buying big screen TVs and none of them fitting the old style entertainment centers I thought it might be profitable to build a Credenza to stash all the AV equipment.  Check out my drawing.

I finished assembing the carcass today and will be working on the partitions and fitting the doors tomorrow.  I'll update with some actual photos tomorrow(maybe).   It looks like a regular cabinet but it has all the old school building techniques that take twice if not three times as long to build.  The cabinet sits on caster so you can wheel it away from the wall and get behind the cabinet to setup all the wires and gizmos.  The back of the cabinet is finished with a faceframe and panel doors.  No nails or screws in this cabinet except for the hinges an the screws that attach the solid wood top.  Most all of the joinery is mortise and tenon and the front and back is attached to the sides with a locking miter joint.  The frame is dadoed together and glued.  After final sanding I will do a hand rubbed finish that you should be able to see yourself smile in.  Simular units will sell from $4k to $6k in the right market. (not red bluff)  This is my first attempt to do high end work and beleive me, it is a lot of fun.  

OH, by the way, I did go fishing on the Trinity a while back with Steve and Dan Coffman.   We had a good time even though we should have been there yesterday.  Just a few photos to remember what steelhead fishing is all about.

The Big One

Everyone probably has heard that the DFG has closed our section of the Sacramento River to Salmon fishing this year.  So with that said, check out this story that ran in the Red Bluff Daily News today:

Big one didn t get away

By JULIE ZEEB -DN Staff Writer

Article Last Updated: 11/06/2008 07:20:29 AM PST

BATTLE CREEK Last Thursday was anything but a normal work day for Doug Killam, an associate fisheries biologist for the Department of Fish and Games Red Bluff office.

I was doing a walking survey in Battle Creek to estimate the fall run, Killam said.

What Killam and the rest of his crew didn’t know was that an extremely large and very dead fish awaited them in the creek, located along the border of Shasta and Tehama counties leading to Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

This one was just big, Killam said. It caught everyone s attention.

Largest Chinook I’ve seen.

Killam and his crew used the length and girth of the fish, about 51 inches or a little more than 4 feet long, to estimate the size at 85 pounds, he said.

It s a shame we didn’t see it while it was alive, Killam said.

If it was caught in the ocean, it would have been a state record, maybe even a world record.

The state record was set by O.H. Lindberg on Nov. 21, 1979, when he landed an 88-pound Chinook in the Shasta area, according to the California Department of Fish and Game.

The world record 97 pounds, but Killam isn’t certain about the exact size of the fish prior to its death.

When we find them as carcasses, typically, they’ve stopped eating months ago, Killam said.

Killam estimated the fish had stopped eating about June or July, made the trip from the ocean to the creek, spawned sometime in October and died about a week before it was found, he said.

The fish was not put on a scale due to its size and the formula for measuring by girth and length is not exact because sometimes those formulas aren’t designed for extreme fish like this one, Killam said.

The average Chinook salmon returning to spawn is about 25 pounds, said Scott Hamelberg, project leader for Coleman National Fish Hatchery.

It was a big fish, Hamelberg said. I’ve never seen an 80-pound Chinook come through Coleman Fish Hatchery in my years here, but we get the whole range.

The biggest to swim through Coleman this year at fall run was a 53- pounder, he said.

There s any variety of size, Hamelberg said.

It s largely due to the genetics of the fish. It s just like any other animal, part driven by genetics, part driven by age and part driven by ability to find food to eat.

Fall run has been exceptionally low this year, Hamelberg said.

The bottom line is the ocean sport and fisheries all were closed this year because numbers were expected to decline, he said.

This year s fall run was expected to be around 60,000 salmon, about a third lower than 2007 s 90,000 salmon, he said.

Coleman had 22,000 salmon in Battle Creek in 2007 and was expected to have between 14,000- 15,000 this year, he said.

To date, they’ve had more than 13,000 return.

Knot of the day

While getting ready for a steelhead fishing trip on the Trinity River I did a little research on knots to join fluorocarbon leader material to P-lines new Hydrofloat braided line and I came up with this neat website that allows anyone to download a widget called "fishing knots of the day".  I just added it to my blog and I suggest that you click on this link and check out the animated instructions to tying that forgotten fishing knot.  Cool website.  

Steve Coffman and I spent two days chasing steelhead on the Trinity River and just like our trip to Colorado hunting, the most common statement was:  " Man, you should have been here last year".  Steve landed a nice 6 lber and I hooked five and landed only two, the largest being about four lbs.

I left early to take Herb and Bert deer hunting on the river so I forgot to ask Steve to send me photos of the catch.  I will post them if Steve sends me copies in the near future.

On Friday Herb, Bert and I spent the day chasing deer and trout on the river where Tadd and I got our bucks in the first rifle season.  Herb did see one buck but couldn't put forks on it while it ran for cover.  The fishing was a little slow and the only trout to mention was the one Herb caught while pealing his boiled egg during lunch break.  Sorry to say, Bert had a tough day on the water. One Sacramento River pike (squawfish) was all he could harass.  

The last three months has been very busy in the hobby department.  It's time to spend more time at home and regroup for the winter and catch up on my domestic duties.  It is raining cats and dogs outside right now so it is a little easier to concentrate on my to do list.  Sam has been complaining about all the quail he wants to chase so I may sneak out next week to help council Sam and his quail problem.  

Check out the knot of the day widget on the sidebar.  

Back from Meeker

The hunting was so bad in Meeker I couldn't even hunt down a shrink to deal with my depression so we had to rely on Jack to ease the pain of scouting and hunting a total of five days before we even spotted the first doe.  We did have a nice bull elk trot by us on opening morning which was the only emotional high we had for the first three days of hunting.  I guess the problem started last winter when the deep snows caused a 40% die off of the deer herd.  With deep snow and a lack of food source the other 60% migrated to private ranches and survived by sharing the rancher's feed with the local cattle population.   It appeared that the deer stayed on private ranches and why wouldn't they, the food and water was abundant.  We covered every inch of the two zones we were licensed to hunt and only found a hand full of deer spread out over hundreds of miles of public land.  We did find a few deer in the Crosss Mountain area which was over a 100 mile round trip from our bunkhouse in Meeker.  One day while traveling back to Meeker from Cross Mountain we passed by a private ranch about 3:00 in the afternoon  and we counted over 80 deer feeding in one field.  A truck with two hunters entered the field and drove directly towards the herd and they parted just like the Red Sea and Moses and then gathered back together after the truck left the  field.  

There were a few deer killed in our zones, but all were on private ranches.  After 7 days of hunting we threw in the towel and headed home to go steelhead fishing on the Trinity River.  The buck below was Kyle's first buck and boy what a dandy.  Larry, the super guy that rented us the bunkhouse guided Kyle on his first hunt on a private ranch.  The other photo is a cool 4x3 that was killed by a lady from Wisconsin on the Louisiana Purchase Outfitters ranch.  This buck only cost her $3900.  At that price you can feed the herd a lot of hay through the winter.  The bailing twine tangled in his horns is proof that this buck prefers bales of hay instead of sage brush.  

Sorry I didn't post to the blog from Meeker, but when you have nothing to write about and Mr. Daniels is treating your depression keying up the computer is pretty low on my list of fun things.  Maybe I'll have more to write about when we get back from the Trinity River.  

Switching Gears

With a freezer full of venison I took the opportunity today to chase a trout down the Sacramento River.  Two days working around the house is all a retired guy can take, so Terry and I launched the boat and headed up river looking for a trout dinner.  Since the limit is only one hatchery trout it needed to be a big one.  The plans were to get an early start but the damn dog started barking about 1:30am and after investigating the perimeter of the compound in my skivvies with a spot light looking for the infamous local mountain lion and her kittens, I was wide awake until 4:00am.  At 4:30 Michele's alarm blasted be out of sound sleep (can't wait til she retires) and then again when she kissed me goodbye at 5:40am and needless to say I didn't get up to early.  At 8:00am I was about to head out the door and the phone rang,  and low and behold it was the Game Biologist from the fish and game returning my call from yesterday.  After 45 minutes of discussing the rights of mother mountain lion and her kitties eating our local goat, sheep and deer population I finally got out the door.  By 9:15 we were hot on the tracks ( do trout even make tracks, I must still be in hunting mode) of the trophy trout and steelhead of the Sacramento River.  It started off really slow, Terry caught the first squawfish ( I mean Sacramento Pike) and then I hooked a small 14" rainbow.  All that excitement called for lunch about 11:00am and we escaped into the shade of Inks Creek for a sandwich and coke.   The first drift after lunch produced dinner for a week when Terry set the hook and a beautiful 9 lb 1 oz. Steelhead.  I didn't realize how big the fish was and because I thought my line was way past Terry's I didn't reel in and the fish decided to launch for the stars making a jump that cleared the water by four feet and quickly crossed over my line.  Well, now we have tangled lines and the fish decides to head south for a while, racing towards the boat with lines going all directions.  I reeled up close and bit my line off, donating my lure to the cause.  Now the toad is right behind the boat rolling like a gator with a pig in his mouth and all the time I am thinking any second that flatfish is going to just pop out of his mouth and Terry will blame it all on me because I can see both lures hanging out of his mouth.  I reached for the net and the ol' net boy got him on the first pass.  Looking back it was quite the circus but that is what memories are make of.  Terry has fished the river for many years and he claims this steelhead is his largest ever. 

What a year, Tadd's buck of a lifetime, Terry's Steelhead of a lifetime and Pop's memories of a lifetime.