At Town Meeting, back on the 6th, I was told Mud Season would begin on the 7th.
A protracted spell of unseasonable warmth made it even deeper and more tenacious than usual and, two and a half weeks later, it’s still not over. Entire dump truck loads of stone continue to disappear in the slop.
While several feet of saturated road bed thawed in the warm spring sun this week, the ice on the lake remained thick, but not to be trusted.
Fish in a Barrel Pond, March 22, 2012, 6:30 p.m.:
Fish in a Barrel Pond, March 23, 2012, 6:30 a.m.:
An early riser:
(At the top of this page is a tab that reads “Contact Quill” which will bring up a form you can use to send old Quill an email. A few readers have actually used it, and I’d like to share with you some of the notes I have received.)
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Dear Quill,
I subscribed to your blog, but this is not at all what I had in mind and now I regret my decision. How do I make the email notifications stop?
Signed, Disgruntled in Denver
Dear Disgruntled,
I am sorry to hear you are no longer gruntled, but how do you think I feel, having to look at it every darn day? Take a look at the bottom of your email notification; there should be a link that says “Unsubscribe”. Click it and follow the directions, and you will never again be notified that impotant pieces like “Careful With That Axe, Eugene“, “A Craft Project With My Friend, Eugene“, or “Eugene and the Dangers of Shatter Proof Glass” have been foisted upon an unsuspecting readership proudly published. ~QG
Otter, Fish in a Barrel Pond 3/10/12
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Dear Quill,
L.L. Bean’s very special Spring Fishing Expo and 100th Anniversary Celebration is this weekend. We’ll give you ten thousand dollars to stay away.
Signed, Freeport Chamber of Commerce
Dear Freeport Chamber of Commerce,
Your offer is tempting but, as much as I wanted to be there for what is sure to be a great weekend (including fly tying demonstrations by Don Bastian, a man with many stories that somehow involve him in his underwear, by the way), I must send my regrets for free. You see, I will be staying away for reasons of love.
My love of anglers.
I try to pretend I am an angler, just like everybody else, but I am not. I am an angler who, when others act on the urge to get away from it all, greets them when they arrive. I clean up after them when they leave, and then, on Sunday afternoon, I try to catch fish in a lake that has been whipped to a froth by them since Friday evening. I also take their reservations, which for the past month have been carefully regulated for fairness (only x number of nights per month, etc.). Starting March 16th, however, those rules are relaxed and anything goes. Someone must be here when they call, and that someone is I.
Freeport is safe this year, as I take one for the team, so everyone who can make it should attend. And be sure to say “Hi” to Don — he’s really starting to get the hang of tying those flies! ~QG Continue reading
Brothers and sisters, another season is nearly upon us!
Here at Fish in a Barrel Pond that means a steady stream of anglers, all running amok, and demanding just a bit more attention than any of us might be able, or willing, to give. Combining my experience around outdoors folk and anglers, with some ingenuity and good old Yankee know-how, provided by my friend Eugene and his pal Purly, I believe we have come up with a system that will benefit you, the working guide, no matter how many clients may be in your charge.
The first part of our System is based on an Australian concept, introduced to us via our research facility in Sweden, and is really quite simple.
Staging areas, boat launches, and parking lots can be hectic places, especially with a bunch of confused, belligerent anglers milling around and getting in the way. Conceived as a way to keep groups in one place so I could have a little peace and quiet once in a while, we have adapted our Original Angler Containment Area™ to your needs, creating a lightweight, portable solution that you can use anywhere. (Complete kit $9.99 does not include curbing, plastic chairs or water. Pretty Floating Rings™ sold separately. Comes with Basic Instructions™)
Notice how those anglers, like so many of their kind, naturally gravitate to water that could not possibly hold fish. What a nice way to keep them out of your hair, yet close by, where you can keep an eye on them! The addition of Pretty Floating Rings™, in bright primary colors, allows you to increase the numbers that gather by exploiting their natural competitive instincts, and for an even greater haul of anglers, promise cookies.
Early prototypes of these Angler Containment Areas™ included tall fences, but anglers had to be coaxed in far enough to not escape through the gate before it slammed shut. In an effort to address issues of aesthetics, as well as reduce the number of serious injuries, the fences and gates were replaced with buried wires and the anglers were required to wear electric shock collars, which they were told were benign and only for identification purposes. When they entered the Angler Containment Area™ to eat cookies and show off, the system was turned on and, once the yelping stopped, they seemed content. For a while, at least.
But there were problems with that system, and it was in overcoming them that we were inspired to create the component that is going to change the control and containment of anglers forever! Continue reading
(A certain angler in Georgia asked yesterday, “How’s the mud crop look this year?”
Ha ha.)
At Town Meeting on Tuesday, our village’s road foreman told me “mud season starts tomorrow,” which was almost amusing, considering the fact that, as I walked to town that morning, it was still just 10 degrees outside.
Tomorrow then is yesterday now, and he was right. Mud season has begun, and it looks like it’s going to be a good one.
One thing I have learned at Town Meeting over the years is that, if one is requesting funds, one should not place a series of question marks where a dollar sign and some numbers should be. I absofreakinglutely guarantee someone will stand up, waving their town report in the air, and shout, “I ain’t votin’ to put no tax dollars to no damn question marks!” It’s all over when that happens.
That might work in the big city, but you’ll get called on it every time at Town Meeting. It also helps if the wording of your request reflects what you describe in your supporting documents. We’re kind of picky that way, wanting to know just what we’re getting into.
We used printed paper ballots for a school district consolidation question, as well as for our Presidential primary votes. Somewhere is a stack of ballots that have been set aside, to be counted later, because they were defaced on Tuesday, vandalized by citizens who just couldn’t follow instructions. I am sure the Secretary of State has dealt with these things before, but his staff must slowly shake their heads after every election as they go through these ballots. I don’t know how many there are, but it’s a pretty sure thing that more than a few of my neighbors saw the section of the ballot marked “DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE” and took the time to write “I WRITE WHERE I PLEASE!”.
Another Town Meeting tip: when you have had your say and the Moderator replies, “That is an opinion, not a motion,” don’t stand there like a deer in the headlights! Look the Moderator square in the eye, say “Damn right it is!” and sit down. That’s what I do, anyway.
One of the final items of the day on Tuesday was our town’s highway budget. Even if our road foreman hadn’t already warned of the impending mud, his proposed budget would have been changed when the villagers got a hold of it. We changed it, alright. We motioned, seconded, and approved a little raise for our road crew because they do a heck of a job with what they have to deal with. Without them, how else would our mail get through?
My recent post, The Cry of the Sapsucker, consisted mainly of photos taken while drinking coffee in my blind, which is cleverly diguised as a house. Mike, who keeps the blog Mike’s Gone Fishin’…Again, commented that he, too, has a blind cleverly disguised as a house. Click that link. You’ll see that Mike does a lot more than take pictures out the window. The link to Mike’s Gone Fishin’…Again is a keeper.
Another friend, who lives in New Hampshire, almost all the way to Maine, sent a series of photos taken from his house of a bobcat he saw the other day.
It’s always a treat to look out the window and see something like that, and it’s great that the internet makes it so easy to share the things we see. I know it is appreciated by others because they leave comments, like the one on my post The Cry of the Sapsucker, calling it some “lazy-ass nature reporting”.
That comment came from Marc Fauvet, who keeps the blog the limp cobra (because fly lines are like wild snakes that need to be tamed …). Marc lives in Sweden, but that’s okay. His blog is beautiful, and a lot of fun. His “lazy-ass” nature reporting comment got me to thinking and, you know, Marc might be right. Maybe my pictures of a bluejay being disemboweled on the lawn were kind of lazy-ass.
Well, “kind of” ain’t good enough. We’re taking lazy-ass nature reporting to the next level by bringing you the first set of photos from our brand new concept, “Pictures Taken While I Slept”.
If any bird has a made-up sounding name, it has to be the yellow-bellied sapsucker. They are woodpeckers, named because of their habit of drilling holes through the bark of trees in late winter, and feeding on the oozing sap. The rings of holes they leave become an important food source for other animals, including early hummingbirds and butterflies that arrive before the first flowers appear. The call of the sapsucker has been compared to that of a hawk but the sapsuckers are active before the hawks return and I’ve learned to look to the trunk of the crab apple instead of high in the sky when I hear it this time of year.
But sooner or later, the hawks return, and I am not the only one who should remember to look up.
Many nature photographers sit in a blind, for hours and hours, hiding and waiting for something to happen, and I am no exception. My blind has been cleverly disguised as a house. Continue reading
Before color photography (and the ability to print it cheaply), outdoor catalog and magazine covers featured the work of illustrators. Never receiving the same attention as their contemporaries who did “fine” art, and certainly never able to command the same prices for their works, those illustrators created lasting images of our sport, using paint, crayons and pastels.
Their age alone evokes nostalgia, but there is a rich quality to the illustrator’s art — like the cover above, by Lynn Bogue Hunt — that other media just can’t match. Of course, if a similar image were to appear today, not only would it be a photo instead of a painting, but someone would probably be wearing a bikini.
Any image imaginable is possible today, with modern digital photography and editing software. Advertisements have become more absurd than ever, with talking reptiles and flying trucks; pixel by pixel manipulation of photos has become the norm. Where photography once provided an interpretation of what the artist saw, it is now used to create what the artist wishes us to see and, to me, much of what passes for “photography” these days should more properly be called “digital art”. By the time some of these “photos” are published, not much of the original image remains, and we seem to take for granted the inclusion or complete fabrication of elements that may not have existed before. It takes skill and a keen eye to produce such false images that look so nearly real, but what happens when a modern, 21st Century photographer uses his chosen medium to reproduce one of those iconic images from the past?
Photographer Randal Ford took on just such a task when he signed on with L.L. Bean to recreate the cover of their Spring 1933 catalog as part of L.L. Bean’s 100th anniversary celebration. Continue reading
(Important Disclaimer: There are places where ice forms many feet thick and travel on frozen lakes is perfectly safe for a good part of the season. In other places, especially during a winter like this one, ice conditions can change from day to day, even hour to hour.
The strengthening sun creates soft spots as melt water collects in the dips between expansion cracks, and a route that was safe in the morning merits a second look after lunch. Faint tracks mark yesterday’s trail, which puddled up and froze over last night, leaving a thin veneer over a foot of nothing but slush and at least a bracing dunk.
If asked, Quill Gordon will tell you no ice is safe, but if you do find yourself crossing a frozen lake, check ice thickness often and be aware of changing conditions.)
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An overnight skiff of snow on the ice is like a clean slate. Any tracks or other signs of activity I see are recent, laid down only hours before my morning rounds. Otters, mink and squirrels are common, and I saw the tracks of a fisher cat last week but, far and away, the most common tracks I come across are those of coyotes.
It’s the time for pairing off and denning up, asserting dominance and proving worth, and the coyotes have been plenty active. Most are travelling in pairs, but a big, lone male has also been out and about.
Chef Gordon Ramsay evidently knows what is good for him and stayed away from here during his recent visit to Vermont. All things considered, it’s probably a good thing, but we were still a little disappointed he didn’t show, especially after taunting mentioning him in a post. It was actually a crass and cynical move on my part, to take advantage of an internet search trend like that, but it worked. The post I link to above, and the post I link to from it (Eugene, Purly and Chef Gordon Ramsay), diverted quite a bit of search traffic (gordon ramsay in vermont) my way and the hits just keep coming —two of them today alone!
I know some people are a bit taken aback when their innocent searches direct them to these pages but, unlike some practitioners of tenkara, at least a few foodies displayed a sense of humor upon their arrival. Some of them even became new subscribers to this blog. One in particular stands out, for a couple of reasons, and that is John-Bryan Hopkins, who has created the blog Foodimentary — A Food Lover’s Notebook.
Because of Mr. Hopkins, I know that yesterday was National P B and J Day. I celebrated National Peppermint Patties Day the day before, and National Have a Brownie Day the day before that, thanks to him. As long as he stays away from organ meats, lima beans and beet juice, I think me and John-Bryan Hopkins can have a groovy thing going on. But it is more than his pimping of sweet treats that makes me happy to make his acquaintance; John-Bryan Hopkins not only has a hyphenated first name, he also sports an ascot, making him the third person I know to do so. Before my outdoorsy-type friends chime in with their feelings regarding neckwear, and before my new foodie friends figure out what really goes on around here, I thought it would be nice to spend a little time standing together on common ground, celebrating both food and the great outdoors.
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 
