Yep it’s that time of year! Wednesday Nite Fishing is starting! I’m not sure it will be an every Wednesday occurence for a while but we’ll at least get a couple in till Turkey season comes to a close. In preparation of this season I have rewired all the electrical connections in our boat (eliminating a lot of extra splices in the process) and then cleaned the heck out of it with a vacuum and power sprayer. So the boat is definitely ready to rock an roll. For the first inaugural outing the venue will be Hickory Grove. I have not been out to the lake yet this year and am curious about the water temp. Our pond was already at 60 degrees and if Hickory is at that temp too then we should see the fish moving up to the shallows on the North side of the lake. If it’s colder than that I think its going to be a tough outing. My plan will be to drag some tubes along the bottom and maybe even throw the frog to test out the shallows now and then. Tomorrow will tell right?
Deer Season Slowing Coming to an End
With first archery, early muzzleloaders and first shotgun seasons over the deer hunting is coming to a close. There are a couple more days of second shotgun season before the late archery and late muzzleloaders seasons open up for the last 23 days of the season. Let me sum up what has happened for us so far this year. Then I will end with my thoughts for the last and coldest season of the year. Archery was pretty slow to get started. Deer were not moving and the deer that were moving were not big. Numbers definitely seem to be down in the areas we hunt. Whether from the excessive doe harvests or from the extremely rough winter we had last year. Either way numbers are down. Once Nov. hit temps finally started to drop and like always the rut got hot and everyone was still unprepared. Dad was on the money with almost every outing. He found deer and deer found him. However, for whatever reason, he was not one with the target. He was able to harvest a small doe with the bow but it only went down hill from there. Granted he got some fantastic footage this year, but none is of a kill shot. Me on the other hand, I could not find the deer, until the weekend before Thanksgiving, but even then I was still hundreds of yards away. I managed to film some good bucks that weekend with one of them being a giant with an 11″ drop tine. I know it was an 11″ drop tine because that buck is now at the taxidermist. Unfortunately, that buck had broken its left main beam just have the G2 but depending on what was there prior to the break the buck may have gone 200″. Oh well. Shotgun season went pretty well surprisingly. We ended up with 4 deer out of 7 tags. Those 4 deer were 3 small bucks and the 4th was about a 100″ 8-point. So considering the rain all day saturday and then the cold Sunday we did very well. My college buddy and a friend were hunting a monster this year and opening day of first shotgun the friend of my friend shot him with his shotgun. It was a giant 230″ buck! Second season was good to my college buddy as he shot a really nice buck was well. They must have something good going out there! So that is the quick wrap up. With just a few more days before I can hit the woods I am filled with anticipation and excitement. I will get to do a little hunting in Eastern Iowa over the Xmas break and then will have a few days back around Central Iowa before the hunting season will come to a completely close for us. My thoughts on how I’m going to be successful are as follows… COLD! I need the temps to drop big time and the snow to fly. Otherwise, the deer will not yard the way they normally do and I’ll be stuck looking at bare crop fields. So cross your fingers and we’ll see how the year wraps up!
Youth Hunt Video with Garrett Available on Hunting Videos Page
Check out the hunting videos page for the video of Garrett’s successful Iowa Youth Season Deer hunt.
Hickory Grove Fishing Tourney
Well tomorrow is the tourney and if this morning was any indication of how tomorrow will be it is going to be COLD!!!! I dropped Katelyn off at DayCare and the temp at 7am was 38 degrees! That’s right. So, I suppose dressing in ice fishing clothing isn’t really a bad idea. My feeling though with the water temps being in the low 60’s the fish are going to be sluggish. I feel that the Dam or on the West side of the island might be the best places to start and craws and dropshots will be the starting baits and as the water warms up jerkbaits / crankbaits will come into the picture. So I guess we’ll see how things play out.
Last WNF – 9-21-11
WNF tonight will be held at Hickory Grove. There is a four species fishing tournament this Saturday at Hickory (Bass, Bluegills, Crappie, and Catfish. So we’ll use tonights WNF as our practice day for this tourney. As of right now Bert and I will be a team as Brad is unable to attend. We just had a cold front pass thru yesterday/last night but weather is supposed to become stable as the rest of the week progresses. So, I’d imagine, if we find the fish today then they should still be in the same spot on Saturday. However, I do know Hickory and fishing Hickory in the morning is completely different than fishing it in the afternoon/evening. So that being said my predictions for tonight are as follows. I think crankbaits will be a good bait early. Something that runs in the 6-12ft range. Learning from our last WNF at Ada Hayden as the sun dropped and turned to dark the crankbait bite quite completely and the bite moved to a craw/bottom bouncing technique. I definately wont miss this switch if it holds true again on this different body of water. But I’ll be honest I rarely fish this late into fall as my mind quickly shifts to big antlered deer so this tourney and WNF will definately be an eye opener! Here is a quick link to the tourney if anyone is interested.
http://www.storycounty.com/index.aspx?DN=7910,15,6,1,documents
Hunting Season Fast Approaching
Hunting season is approaching really fast like always! This past weekend Dad and I got out and put up a tree stand and did some lane trimming for it. I feel it’s in a really good spot for a NW wind. We also set my trail-cam up close to it on two major trail crossings and there was one much lighter trail that had a big set of tracks that crossed at that location too. I’m hoping its a buck trail as it has all the signs of easy travel and crosses multiple doe trails. We’ll check the trail-cam once before season and hopefully we’ll have something nice and maybe even have a pattern that we can exploit early, but that never happens (to us anyways). We also need to get out to all the other stands and make sure shooting lanes are still there and that the tree stand is still in safe working order. Also, we need to get out and do some shooting as I haven’t touched my bow since turkey season and that was May. Last but not least we need to finish the Hunting DVD from last year to get everyone fired up! Cuts are mostly done just need to reorganize, add transitions, overlays, replays, menus, chapters, cover design, and packaging… Lots to do yet! Hopefully, all gets done by Oct 1 which is the goal. Time to sign off and get to cracking on my list of things to do.
1000 Photos!!!!
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WNF – 8-10-11
Tonight the original plan was to go to Ada Hayden. Brad texted last night that he had to work late and would like to move it to Hickory, so he could get more fishing time in. I just did some searching and found out that Tri-County Bass is having their championship tourney at Hickory tonight. We have fished Hickory while these guys have had previous tourneys and they are very nice but it is a lot of extra boat traffic and the bass get pretty spooky quick. So we’ll see what Brad wants to do but I am leaning towards sticking to the original plan and going to Ada Hayden if Bert doesn’t mind hauling the boat to Ames.
Here are my predictions:
Hickory – fishing will be tough and pitching sunken habitat or drop shotting will be the winning techniques. Ada Hayden – will be either the frog over the weeds or jerk-a-licous thru schooling bass as they crash the surface while chasing shad.
WNF – 8-3-11
Just Bert and I fished at this weeks WNF. We went to Hickory Grove. There were not a lot of boats out which was nice but we did end up fishing the same path as another fisherman and he definately made it tougher for us. We did see him pull out a very nice bass which looked to be pushing the 5lb range. We ended the night with 10 total bass and two of those being 16″. Unfortunately, they were all by me and on my frog. Dad couldn’t buy a bite! Next Weeks WNF will be scheduled for Ada Hayden unless its really windy and if that is the case we’ll move it back to Hickory Grove.
Brushy Creek 7-31-11
Bert, Brad and myself made a Sunday trip up to Brushy Creek in hopes of breaking the Brushy Creek Curse! The Curse is that the lake is so full of standing timber that its overwhelming and we usually only catch a very few number of fish, Hence a curse of no fish. Well, the curse still stands for me! I lost a nice bass on my frog early and struggled to only catch one total and it was only 14″. Bert and Brad however had a much better outting. Brad fished solely with his MoneyCraw and Bert fished a little with everything. Bert caught 3 total keepers and 6 total fish. He caught them on the Gonzo Grubs and a couple on a Frog. Brad caught 4 total with 2 being keepers. This is the first time we fished around the island at the South End and along the Dam. The fish definately were in small schools and when you found one you usally found another if not a third. But those schools were few and far between. The biggest thing is that you feel like every tree and every stump should have a fish and maybe they do but they sure are picky. All in all I would say it was a good outting. I could come up with tons of excuses but the only one I’ll throw out is that I was very tired and just wasn’t on my game. Next time I break the curse for real!