Pete Collin

Nope.

Hi. The weather looks cold for Sunday but not much wind. I need to get out at least one more time before winter kicks in. I don't like going out alone. Anybody want to join me? Pete

Aspens fall over soon after dying so you are better off felling them. Beech will stand for decades. I did some mini-patchwork clearcuts for a guy once who was looking to create grouse habitat. For that, you must do your cutting in the winter - that is when the tree's energy is stored up in the roots and the aspen stumps can regenerate.

Hello All, I made a little tutorial about how to directionally fell a tree for my website. Some of you may find this interesting.

I've had dogs for the last 22 years. Only in the last 6 years or so have ticks become a major thing around here. I pick one or 2 off my dog every day, and I only walk him here in town anymore because he's almost 15. This is the first year I find the small deer ticks on him and it makes me very leery. I saw a couple crawling on me and caught them before they attached. But they're so damn little!

This one's got a bit more action than the first one!

Not much to this one. Plan on having more soon! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kys4Q2QpJqk

Boy, that's intriguing. But Lake Erie in a 16 footer is a bit too sporty for me!

Hello All, One of these days I want to make a real effort to learn how to catch perch in the finger lakes. I have a question about how you find them. Do you rely on your sonar? In the past I have seen big schools teeming in the relative shallows. In the Fingers, the water is often pretty clear. Do you drive around until you see some before you start casting? Pete www.pcforestry.com

I went to the new Cabelas in Buffalo looking to buy cowbells for laker trolling. This is a very commonly used piece of tackle for our area - the big kind with blades the size of a cupped palm. The only cowbell rig I could find had teensy blades the size of your thumb. Right next to them I found rigs that you use for trolling kokanee salmon. Really? The wiseguy in me wanted to find somebody in the store to wheedle advice on the best local kokanee spots and trolling tips. This is the problem with big box stores. Every region has its own particular gear and tackle. A big national chain can't take the time to bother with those distinctions. They merely place on shelves stuff that's in their catalog. Go to Cabela's or Gander mountain and ask one of the 20 year old women working there to show you how to put together a Seth Green rig and watch the puzzlement on her face.

floatfisher, I can't remember exactly what I did. My gas tank can't be drained, so i probably put dry gas in and ran the tank way down before refueling.

Do what I did in my twenties. Make friends with boat owners, and fish in their boats. When you are older, you can afford one and you won't have to stick your neck out. Then you can take out people that don't have a boat. If you can't afford the boat now, you definitley won't be able to afford the maintenance/repairs.

That happened to me once when I had water in my gas.

A few weeks ago I was off Braddocks Point. It was calm as I motored out there. I began jigging and didn't even need a drift bag, that's how still it was. When LO is that flat, it looks like a very friendly place. "Why can't I go deep for salmon?" I get tempted to think. In my 16 footer, I keep within a mile of shore. Very suddenly, a stiff breeze came directly from shore. I was annoyed because it made jigging hard and the fish were biting. Then the waves began to build. It became clear that fishing was done for the day and I was going to be occupied for some time getting back in. This being my first time launching out of that location, I realized that the depth I was fishing was twice as far out as I usually am when I fish out of Sandy. The whitecaps slammed my bow. you said something about why you can't canoe in a great lake when there are sea kayakers everywhere. Well salt makes water more dense. The wave action in the ocean tends to be a slow, gentle swell. That day off Braddocks, the distance from wave peak to wave peak was about the length of my boat. This is very hazardous because you can ship water easily, or if you are pointed the wrong way, you can flip entirely. It was white knuckle until I got within a few hundred yards of shore. The biggest waves were eye level and churned right past my ear. I'm never launching out of Braddocks again and when a 30 mph breeze kicks up, I will pick up and scram no matter how the fish are biting. Now, I had a 70 horsepower engine to bring me in. How do you think you would have fared on that day? I respect high adventure endeavors, but think very hard before you attempt this. You must plan as if you were Nik Wallenda tightrope walking over the falls. Bring everything that it would take to survive being blown to Canada.

Just sit back and the the product endorsement deals come rolling in!

Les, I wrote a fly fishing column in the Livingston County News for a couple of years. It was fun seeing my words in print. But I got paid 10$ per column. Took an average of 3 hours to write. Got tough when I had real work to do and a deadline approached. I'd have no idea how to market myself as a writer. We'll stick to timber work and telling you fine people whenever I have a good day!

Ed, I had a very long post deleted. Luckily it was saved on my computer so i could put it back up. Glad it wasn't some administrator objecting to all my foul language:) Pete

Hello All, Was supposed to work today, got an 11th hour reprieve so I launched in the wee hours by myself. No time to find a boatmate (sorry Isaac!) I learned a lesson from my last couple of trips. You are far better off taking the time to search for good concentrations of fish before you start jigging than to go to where you found them before and hope for the best. The early hours are often magic, so you tend to get over-eager to bounce a leadhead somewhere rather than prospecting. This morning was calm enough that I could putt just upwind of a blip and target a single fish that way. Got 2 like that, but realized that it was a lot of work and if I just looked around I would find a carpet of lakers with my name on it. Motor along the contour, check the screen. Motor deep, check the screen. Motor in shallower, check the screen. You can catch suprise lakers on a blank screen, but a good bounty of fish can not hide themselves from your sonar. Friends make fun of me for "watching the TV" too much, but I believe that my graph will show me the way. It was still pretty early when I found the screen that I was looking for. Out go the drift bags, the net handle gets extended, I don the posture of John Henry about to drive a rail spike. I bounced and cranked among the blips......and nothing happened! What happened next would test the faith of any jigger. Two different charter boats passed by. They came close, wanting to chat with me because you see so few jiggers out there. Both boats hooked up just as they drew abreast. The second boat hung a double. "Boy, I bet that's fun when you do catch one!" shouted one of the captains. Fun indeed. No idea why trolling would crush when jigging didn't. I swiTched to a spoon, thinking that would be more like what they were using. I did catch a few, but wasn't really connecting like I thought I should. This is where the doubt sets in. "Should I stow the jigging rod and troll?" This nagged me for a little while until the strike came that refused to budge off the bottom. Pump, crank, pump, crank, big surge for the bottom that gives back everything I gained. Headshakes and thrashes at boatside that confound a one handed net job. Finally get him in - a 34 incher. Lovely! The downriggers can stay where they are. This is what jigging is all about! I had a steady pick for the rest of the morning. It was funny - The wind was perfect for sending me along a contour at just the right speed with 2 bags out. There were times I went an hour without having to pick up and move. But while I thought I would only have to go upwind at the same depth, I'd often find the fish weren't where I just left them. Either the wind shifted ever so subtly, or the whole mass of lakers was roaming around down there and I had to find them. Either way, I had to make sure I didn't begin drifting until I saw a good screen. What became exciting as my head count grew, was that the bite got better the longer I stayed there! I began with changing lures, colors, sizes to try and make those blips show me something. As noon approached, it got way easier. You would get a hard strike anytime you put the jig into a group of fish! All that varying of color, size and presentation. And when it all comes down to it, when they feel like biting, that's what they do. On Keuka Lake, land of the 2-4 pound laker, you can rack up big numbers when all those fish decide to bite. But these Ontario fish - each one is such a tug of war to land. I have had 40 fish days on Keuka. I believe I could have gotten 40 fish to bite this morning. But play and land that many? Not without some training in the gym! 20 fish seemed like a nice arbitrary goal to hit before I quit for the day. I carry a clicker counter, and had 13 fish tallied so was well on my way with oodles of lakers still under my hull. But that 14th fish made me decide to head in despite the bite still being on. Fish 14 wouldn't come off the bottom. Didn't like being pressured upward one bit. Didn't respect my drag. Shook his head like a crocodile. I played him with all the hopes and dreams a jigger can have. I needed to see him. I could never forgive myself if he broke me off. Up he came....slowly. Eventually I saw the knot for the leader. he was still under the hull. I readied the net. Here comes his head, in the hoop he goes, and suddenly it was like I was trying to haul a wet labrador retriever on board. He was so big and old that he was actually greyed up.. like that same labrador retriever after his eyes go cloudy. He was so much bigger than every laker that I have ever caught that is was just stunning. He kicked and wriggled as I brought him to the measuring tape that is decaled to the gunnel. It used up all the numbers. Man oh man. With 10 pound line and a bass rod bought at Wal Mart for 11 dollars, I landed a 40 inch lake trout! What was the point of continuing after that? My arms and back didn't need another go, and I already had the day I had dreamed all winter for. The only thing that would have made it perfect was a picture. Alas, forgot camera on the passenger seat and the cell phone on the night stand. With a 3:00AM wakeup buzzer, I'm lucky I remembered to hitch up the trailer! I'll have to go back with a partner and we can blaze away with flash bulbs. There's plenty of summer left. Pete Collin www.pcforestry.com