May 30, 2007A great technique for fishing with kids (or anyone)The other afternoon I took my girls fishing to Carvins Cove reservoir, one of our favorite spots. My plan was to use it as a shake-down cruise for my boat. (Yeah, I haven't had it out all spring. Sad, huh?) When I had trouble getting the lights on the trailer to work it didn't look like it was going to happen. The girls said they were wanted to fish from shore if I couldn't get it working. (Yeah, I'm a proud father.) But I did eventually get things working so we headed out there. Our plan was to fish for bluegills. We cruised into a little cove, anchored and I had them pitch out their worm and bobber rigs. Elisabeth had a cane pole so obviously she was fishing close the boat. Madeleine had a spincast rig but insisted on casting herself so she was also fishing close to the boat. The water is clear and I could see there were no bluegills anywhere near their worms. Before I picked up to move I decided to make a few casts with a little Rebel Wee Craw. As I reeled the thing in I could see a couple nice bluegills following it and nipping at it, but they weren't getting hooked. When the lure was next to Madeleine's worm I stopped reeling. The bluegill immediately hammered her worm. Fish on! So that was our method. I lured them in with the crawdad and they hit the bait -- the lure and switch technique, if you will. We didn't crush them, but we caught more than we would have had they just left those sad worms sitting out there next to the boat. May 22, 2007James River fish kill is the real dealI spent the better part of the morning with biologists collecting fish on the James River near Horseshoe Bend in Botetourt County. I hate to say it, but the fish kill they've been investigating is the real deal. We didn't see many dead fish, but saw plenty of sick fish. Of 34 smallmouth bass they collected (through electroshocking), 14 had lesions. That doesn't mean they'll all die, of course, but some looked pretty bad off. Of 33 rock bass, 15 had lesions. The kill is similar to the ones they've seen on the Shenandoah the past three (and now, four) years. Those kills have typically run their course by early June. In some cases, up to an estimated 80 percent of the adults of affected species have been killed. Even if this has only a couple more weeks left I shudder to think of how many smallmouths may be gone in the James, which was making a nice recovering after some poor spawns a few years ago. I'm not going to go into too many details here. I'm working on a story for the news section that should run Thursday. But I have to admit I had a pit in my stomach during the operation. That's my favorite section of the James. I've fished it quite a bit since moving here in 1998. One of my better smallmouths from the river came from the hole right above the boat ramp, which is sometimes also called the Narrow Passage ramp. Some friends will be in town in June and I planned to take them on that section for a float. I don't know about that now. May 16, 2007Like a wary gobbler, turkey season slips quietly awayIt appears another spring turkey season is going to wind down without my punching a tag. This makes two blanks in a row. That's what I get for spending most of my efforts trying to kill one on my own rather than with friends who are clearly better at this than I am. I can't complain too much. I guess I hunted a half-dozen times. Actually, one of those hunts I didn't carry a gun as I was just helping with an NWTW Wheelin' Sportsmen event. What will likely be my final hunt of the season came last week, and it was actually a good one to end on. My friend Carson Quarles invited me to his place in Botetourt County. He was tagged out so he didn't even carry a gun. We got on a bird at first light and waited for him to fly down. Carson does a lot of fall hunting and has deadfall limb blinds set up all around his place. He had one in a good spot to set up on this bird so we got in it and got to work. Actually, he got to work with the call. I just tried to figure out how I was going to shoot a bird as the blind was pretty high and it was going to be tough to get a clear shot unless the bird came into a tiny window. The gobbler was in a hollow below us and pretty boisterous. Then Carson says, "There's a coyote walking down the road." Until that morning I hadn't seen a coyote in the wild. The thing came to within 15 yards, just trotting toward our single hen decoy. It looked huge. I'm pretty sure my load of Hevi-Shot 5s would have planted the thing but Carson didn't want to mess up the chances at the gobbler. The coyote didn't spot us but know something was up and eased off. Next, two jakes came in. They were putting like crazy trying to get the hen decoy to move. The gobbler was also going crazy. We were just going to let the jakes call in the big bird in for us. Sure enough I heard crunching leaves behind us. I figured it was another gobbler. It was just going to be a matter of letting him walk past us so I could get a shot. Well, the jakes craned their necks and flew away. It hadn't been a gobbler, but the coyote. Or maybe another coyote. Of course that shut the gobbler up for good. A note here about coyotes. I hear a lot of poeple talk about how they suspect coyotes are killing a lot of turkeys. Can someone tell me how a turkey that can see a camo-clad hunter barely move at 100 yards is going to let a 50-pound critter sneak up on it? I mean, I'm sure coyotes get a few adult turkeys, but we hunters get a lot more. Now, coyotes probably do some damage on poults. But I see lots of young turkeys every fall on places I know have plenty of coyotes. I was already skeptical of how good coyotes are at killing adult turkeys, and now I'm even more skeptical. We ended up walking a ways and struck another gobbler about 10 a.m. He gobbled a few times but then shut up. I was kind of surprised we didn't get more out of him because usually when you hit a bird at 10 a.m. that's a pretty good thing. I had to get to work so we called it a day. Sure enough we spotted a strutter in a field as we were heading in. It would have been tough, but not impossible to hunt him, but I just couldn't stick around. So, here's my thinking for next season. First, I plan to hunt turkeys a little harder in the fall. In fact, I won't hesitate to kill two if I get the chance. That will leave me only one tag for the spring. Knowing my luck, I will kill a bird on my first hunt next spring and will hardly get to enjoy the season. I guess that would be OK. May 7, 2007One triathlon down, more to comeIt's Monday and I'm still here, which means I survived my return to the world of triathlons. My last one was in 1992. Time flies. As expected, my performance in the Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon on Saturday wasn't pretty. But it could have been worse. My times for the swim, bike and run were actually about what I expected I'd do, which was good considering what I went through the day before the race. About mid-morning Friday I started feeling some rumbling in my gut and I spent the next five hours within 20 feet of the bathroom. And let's just say that while I had been teetering on eligibility for the Masters Clydesdale division (200 pounds, minimum), by the end of the day I was well under weight. In all my years of competitive racing way back when, I had only one case of nerves-induced sickness. And back then I was actually trying to do well. I had no reason to be nervous about this race. So I can only figure I ate something bad. |
About this blog
While growing up in rural Southern Oregon, Mark Taylor developed a passion for the outdoors while he and his younger brother tagged along with their father on fishing, hunting and camping adventures. Graduating from Northwestern University in 1988, Taylor spent four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy based in Norfolk before moving into journalism. After five years writing about the military for a Norfolk-based publishing company, he became the outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times in 1998. He lives in Roanoke with his wife and twin daughters. .....Advertisement.....
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