Posted on

Turkey 2017 Day 2

Close but no cigar

Today was a seek and destroy mission.  We setup where all the birds seemed to gather after fly down yesterday.  We got in clean!  We had 5 hens and a Jake roosted with 20 yards behind us!  All but one of these birds pitched down right into the decoy set at 15 yards from us.  The boss hen went about and strutted in and purred and clucked and pecked at my DSD for a good 15 mins before the group decided the statue girls were not a threat to them.  Even with at least 5 gobblers ( couple jakes for sure) were roosted within 100 yards they did not come to investigate the racket these hens were making with my decoys.  Just as we are about to move one of the hens came back and tried to make friends with the DSD.  For over an hour she spent time purring and trying to make friends with the decoys.  We finally had enough and spooked her off.  We made a move to where we saw birds strutting yesterday but the skies unloaded and we headed for the truck.

On the drive around the property we spotted a Strutter following a hen out in the middle of the field.  They were on a mission to get to the timber.  So we made a plan to try and catch up to them.  We made it to 100 yards and got a visual on the tom again.   But he made it farther than we thought.  So we had to circle around to try and get in front of him.  WE DID!  As we popped out of the ravine we spotted him again and he was still strutting and was about 70 yards.  Here is where we screwed up.  I thought we could pop the decoy up over the hill and then make some sweet calls and he’d scurry right in… WRONG.  Apparently, either me popping the decoy up or more likely my come love me yelps were all wrong.  He didn’t answer and he gave us the slip.  I thought maybe he got spooked and just ducked in to some bushes so we tried to rabbit hunt him but he was either held too tight or totally buggered on  us.  We hard another gobble and made a move on it.  Again all the calls I threw at this bird, he made no attempt to answer.  We sat for 30 mins and he never showed.  Back to the truck in the rain.

As we drove around again to head for home we spooked a Tom just to the side of the road.  I thought there was potential to call at this bird as there is a berm from our parking spot where the bird was at that would shield our approach.  Well, once again, got to a good spot to call.  AGAIN, all the calls and the bird never answered.  Now this bird was spooked so I’m not totally shocked he didn’t answer but still… always try to be optimistic.  Good news is that as we were walking back to the truck I found a pretty solid shed antler.   So we didn’t leave the woods completely empty handed.

Posted on

Turkey 2017 Day 1

Frustrating

That is the best way to describe the Opener of Iowa’s 2017 Turkey Season 1.   Was a beautiful morning, however it was super quiet! No wind at all.  You could hear birds jumping from limb to limb.  This kept us a little more cautious than normal as we figured we couldn’t get to where we exactly wanted because it was so quiet.   As the woods awoke we heard LOTS of gobbling!  Jakes and Toms were easily to identify and as soon as fly down occurred the woods were quiet.  At around 7:30 we heard some putts behind us.  Turned out to be two curious Jakes investigating my calling.  They circled around us and ended up coming to about 20 yards of the decoys ( Jake and two hens) when they decided something was wrong.  As I drew my bow dad ran the camera and raised his range finder.  As I asked what the distance was, as they were moving away, all he said was, “shoot the back one”.  Again asking the yardage while the range finder was up he responded, “shoot”.   Well, I took a guess and boy was I wrong… they had moved much farther distance than I thought.  Arrow went completely too low.  Seems like I’ll have to investing in some better Hearing Muffs for dad.  Walkers Game Ear Quads aren’t cutting it.  We at least had an opportunity and one of the Jakes would not have left had dad wanted to shoot one with the gun.

Posted on

2015 Deer Season

It has been a Long time since I last wrote anything on the website. Life gets busy and things like this get bumped to the back burner. Well let me get back into the swing of things by talking about deer season so far.

Bow season…
I can officially say we blew it. All except for Joe, who put his arrow to work and downed a nice Pope & Young buck! I had two opportunities at P&Y class deer and dad had one as well. Probably our best year to date for opportunities. Dad had the best opportunity of everyone and we’ll leave it at that. I almost had a slam dunk on one at 20 yards but unfortunately the wind just swirled and my easy shot with film turned into a non-opportunity. My second opportunity would have been one of my longer shots, but I feel comfortable at the distance. That being said, I pulled a newbie mistake and tried too hard to get film of the shot and bumped the bow on my bow hanger… WHO DOES THAT?! At least we can laugh when we watch the film.
One really good thing that came out of this year was all the trail camera information we obtained! Holy cow do we have pictures! To give you an idea we have 27.4 GB of photos or 3,419 pictures! That’s not counting all the ones we threw away, like blank photos, 98% of the does, coons or bird pics! That blows me away! I had also signed up for a trail camera management software this year and learned a lot about deer movement and wind direction and that a solid 79% of our photos are at night. The night stuff doesn’t surprise me at all… That’s just how it is every year. But I have some solid ideas for future years. We still have the late season starting in just a couple days so there is still a chance we could tag some of our better bucks if they made it thru the shotgun seasons. I am sure some fell but the big ones don’t get big by being dumb! Anyways, this is probably good enough for the first post in a couple of years.

Good luck to everyone with a tag in their pocket still and wish us luck as we try to finish the year off on an awesome note!

Posted on

Race to 1000 inches – 2013

The challenge is back and this year we have a few changes. Last year I broke 2000″ which means one of two things.  The Challenge was too easy or it was just one of those years.

To make sure it isn’t too easy we are changing the rules to the following

Rules of the Challenge
*Every bass Counts (all fishing over 12 inches) *new*
*Following species of bass count: Largemouth, Smallmouth, Spotted, White
*Two of the challengers must be present for fish to count
or
Photo of each fish next to ruler must be taken
*Rules are subject to change at anytime

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”300″ width=”350″ title=”Race to 1000 Inches” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”Inches of Bass” group1values=”1052.75″ group2values=”114″ group3values=”604.25″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”250″ width=”350″ title=”Total Inches of Bass by Month” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”March, April, May, June, July, August, September” group1values=”0,13,0,13,633,208.75,185″ group2values=”0,0,0,28.5,0,0,85.5″ group3values=”0,52.5,0,0,211.5,304.25,36″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”250″ width=”350″ title=”Avg Length of Each Bass ” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”March, April, May, June, July, August, September” group1values=”0,13,0,13,13.19,13.92,13.21″ group2values=”0,0,0,14.25,0,0,14.25″ group3values=”0,17.5,0,0,13.22,14.49,12″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″ watermark=”13.72, 13.52″]

Blue line is the years Overall Avg length of each Bass which is 13.62″

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”300″ width=”350″ title=”Biggest Bass” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”Inches of Bass” group1values=”19.00″ group2values=”17.5″ group3values=”20″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

Posted on

Turkeys and Open Water

Well the only good thing about turkey season versus this long drawn out ice season is that turkey season has a date set in stone when it will start! So, which to concentrate on? Since the end of Feb. I have been dreaming of long casts and running jerkbaits and crankbaits and catching those big egg filled green monsters of Spring but I don’t think it’s in the cards before April 15th. Actually that’s still a long ways out and looking at the extended forecast we are definitely heating up. However, turkey season is quickly approaching too and that’s where my concentration should head. I should be practicing my clucks and purrs, I should be organizing the Wild Thing pack to make sure nothing is broken and everything is stowed away neatly and where it should be. I should also be practicing with the bow. Getting my sight picture converted from the big vitals of a deer to the small baseball sized money spot on a slobbering love sick Thunder Chicken! I should make sure my batteries are primed and charged and ready to go on Robo-Hen and Robo-Tom and make sure the controls still work with a year of sitting around. I should setup the blind and make sure nothing is ripped or got eaten by a mouse. That’s what I should be doing! But I have some time. This weekend is Easter and I will be scouting though. I will be up early (not as early as in season) but out on the highest ground I can find and will be listening and counting. I have found the last couple years my success from Gobble Scouting has definitely improved my success. Well, it has helped on the properties where the birds actually roost on the property I Hunt anyways. I have one piece that the birds have NEVER roosted on but it is a travel corridor and thus it almost always pans out for an opportunity. On these other properties it has helped because I have gotten a fairly good count of the birds and have found roost trees that save me guessing where the birds might be early in the mornings during season when I show up in the pitch black. But what about putting birds to bed the night before you may ask? Well, I have never been any good at it at all! I know lots of people do it and have success doing it but I am not one of them. Maybe I go too early or stay too late but it just doesn’t work for me. That doesn’t stop me from trying but I don’t have the faith in the process. Maybe someday I’ll stumble across the magic formula. But anyways, this weekend will be the start of Gobble Scout 2013. Watch for the tweets and I will do my best to keep everyone updated. This turkey season is hopefully turning into a busy one for me and hopefully a successful one too. As of right now I have the possibility of filming 6 turkey tags with 4 hunters. I’m hopeful to add 2 more to each of those categories but we shall see how things pan out. I suppose I should switch gears and get thru that to do list before April 15th arrives. Hope everyone has a safe turkey season and i will wish for ice to melt where you are!

Mike
<------{{

Posted on

Latest AMO update

It has been awhile since I’ve posted anything new so figured it was time to do so.  So what has AMO been up to?  Well my buck has been officially scored and was officially accepted into Pope & Young at 156 6/8ths.  Just need to make a mount for him and rearrange the wall of fame in the basement.  I have also applied to become a Pope & Young Official measurer and am awaiting sponsor letters of recommendation and will keep you posted on that as well. With all this going on we jumped into ice fishing.  We have had great ice for quite a bit of the winter now and unfortunately we haven’t taken quite as much advantage fishing as we should have.  We have really only hit the pond but boy has the pond really bounced back from the winter kill!  We did however take full advantage of the ice on the pond and have built 2 new docks on the pond and replenished multiple brush piles and drove 9 trees into the water like posts!  If these posts stay standing and the water returns to normal pool then they should make for fantastic crappie structure in the Spring!  We did get a fairly decent gathering for an afternoon at Hickory on the ice and only Mike Olson and Dustin Eighmy caught more than one fish.  We decided to bail and took everyone to the pond were the fish were eager to eat!  That pretty much saved the day for everyone.  That is about it. Next month my 2nd child should be born and then turkey season starts up in April.  I have heard a rumor that the Meimanns will be visiting from Idaho and there maybe a morning turkey hunt and hopefully some fishing in the future with one of the original founders!  Pretty exciting and stay tuned for those outtings!

Posted on

Fishing Season Wrap Up

With the other night being the official end of WNF for the 2012 season it brings an unofficial close to the fishing season too for us.  It’s sad to see this summer end!  It was filled with highs and lows.  We came very close to winning the HGP Spring fishing tournament when Brad landed his biggest bass of the year at 19.25 inches.  She was a pig and we thought we had it in the bag.  But that length wouldn’t hold up. The rest of the spring was lots of fun with quite a few bass caught by everyone.  Unfortunately, that came to a screeching halt as an electrical short in our trolling motor caused the boat to catch on fire and the front end burnt up.  Almost the entire month of June was spent on the shore as we waited on the insurance company and the new boat to arrive.  The biggest surprise was that in July I hit the 1000″ mark!  Not only did we think this would be tough but almost impossible.  What is even crazier is that as I write this, I passed the 2000″ mark on the last WNF of the year!  Never would I have thought that 2000″ was a number that was reachable atleast not in our local waters!  So what does it all mean.  I have no idea yet! I am still sifting thru the 7 months of data I collected.  For instance, I learned that this year our Best chance of catching a fish 14″ or bigger was in May.  We boated 27 total.  May was also the month we caught the most inches with 1170.5″ boated between the 3 of us.  Our worst month for boating a fish 14″ or bigger was June with only 4.  To add an astrisks to the month of June that was the month of the boat loss and we only fished once the entire month so that number maybe not be accruate.  September was the next lowest this year with the number being 5 and probably should be deemed the worst month for us to catch a 14″ or bigger fish.  I imagine as each year comes and goes these figures can and will change based on the weather.  It will be neat to see this and really see if I can continue this kind of dedication to logging information.  Only time will tell.  One big advantage we now have with logging information is the new Lowrance HDS sonar.  With its waypoint and trail mapping its been really neat to see our fishing trails and then to map each and every catch location along said trail.  I believe this will be the greatest way for us to track and log a lot of this data here forward.  I’m hopefully that I will get the boat out yet in Oct and hopefully find some fish.  The only way that will happen is if deer season has a slow start.  So, time to clean the reels and lower the drags and put them away for hopefully what turns into a great Deer season followed by some great ice fishing!

Posted on

Race to 1000″ of Bass

Mike has thrown down the challenge to Bert and Brad.  The challenge is the first one to measure 1000 inches of bass!  First one to 1000″ will win the Golden Crappie Award!

Rules of the Challenge
* Every bass counts ( no size limit )
* Following species of bass counts Largemouth, Smallmouth, Spotted
* Two of the challengers must be present for fish to count
Or
* Photo of each fish next to ruler must be taken
*rules are subject to change at anytime

Keep checking back and watch as the race unfolds.

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”300″ width=”350″ title=”Race to 1000 Inches” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”Inches of Bass” group1values=”2080.75″ group2values=”553.25″ group3values=”1504.25″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

Since it is so easy to make these graphs why not break this down by each month too!

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”250″ width=”350″ title=”Total Inches of Bass by Month” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”March, April, May, June, July, August, September” group1values=”61.5,178.5,539.5,132.5,334.5,467.75,366.5″ group2values=”22,29.25,358,0,113,31,0″ group3values=”82.75,75,273,151,457,355.5,110″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

 Again why not try to chart as much as we can for this challenge

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”250″ width=”350″ title=”Total Number of Bass by Month” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”March, April, May, June, July, August, September” group1values=”4,13,41,11,26,39,31″ group2values=”2,2,30,0,10,2,0″ group3values=”6,6,23,17,40,32,11″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

[easychart type=”vertbar” height=”250″ width=”350″ title=”Avg Length of Each Bass ” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”March, April, May, June, July, August, September” group1values=”15.38,13.73,13.16,12.05,12.87,11.99,11.82″ group2values=”11,14.63,11.93,0,11.3,15.5,0″ group3values=”13.79,12.5,11.87,8.88,11.15,11.11,10″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″ watermark=”11.83, 12.03″]

Blue line is the years Overall Avg length of each Bass which was 11.93″

 [easychart type=”vertbar” height=”300″ width=”350″ title=”Biggest Bass” groupnames=”Mike, Brad, Bert” valuenames=”Inches of Bass” group1values=”22″ group2values=”19.25″ group3values=”19.5″ groupcolors=”009900,ff0000,ff9900″]

Posted on

HG Fall 2012 Tournament

Well another HG tourney has come and gone.  Common in the fall are cold fronts and boy did one blow thru Thursday/Friday.  Along with that front came about an 1″ of cold rain, and then  Friday night the high pressure moved in and cleared up the skies and brought the chilly temps.  We had hoped that the East Side, being quite dirty, would still be one of the warmest spots on the lake and we could pick up one of the 17″+ fish that we had been catching during the last couple weeks.  However, this wasn’t the case.  The rain waters were still running in and had cooled the lake almost 8 degrees in the last couple days.  This gave the fish over there lock-jaw.  We were able to get two fish to blow up at the frog. (both fish missed the frog the first pass and then hit on the 2nd go round.  They were a 13″ and 16″.    With time slowly disappearing and no fish being picked up any other way, we abandoned the east side and headed down lake.  At this point we knew the fish weren’t up on the bank like we had hoped and thus we started working the first and second depths.  I tied on a KVD squarebill crankbait and started casting.  We worked the South Shore and when we came across Blue Heron Point (I think that’s the name)  we ran into a school!  we picked up 9 of our overall 12 fish off this point and, unfortunately, as good as they were eating the KVD we couldn’t get the BIG bite we wanted.  Seeing how all the fish were between 11 and 14″ and needing something over 17.5″ for the win we headed down to the dam to try our luck dragging worms and craws.  This turned out to be the nail in our coffin!  The West end of the Lake was just absolutely dead.  (Very few measurements were even taken from this end of the lake was the rumor).  Looking back at the tourney and how the weather was playing out this made absolutely a lot of sense. Bottom line is the wind.  It played a huge impact on where I feel the fish were positioned and am just realizing that too late. With the wind blowing up the lake like it was, it forced all the bait fish ( which were feeding on a giant trico hatch from the morning) up lake who were followingthe wind blown insect corpse and the bass were right behind bait fish.  Now, what should we have done is stayed up lake.  We should have circled back a couple more times and switch up lures.  I’m sure now that the winning fish was in the school we found we just need to find the lure or the depth that it was at.  So all in all it was good day on the water and hopefully it has paved the way for a lot more fish in the future with what I learned.

Posted on

Hawaii Shark Fishing

I have added over 40 images of Our Shark Fishing adventure!  They are located at this link.

Hawaii Shark Photos

To the Guy form Oregon I hope you remembered my website and find this link.  I think the pictures of you and your shark turned out quite well!  If you want full sized images shoot me your email and I will be happy to send them to you.

Happy Fishing!

Videos for both sharks caught are here.

Hawaii Shark Videos