March 31, 2008They're strutting and gobbling
I'm getting more reports of gobbling and strutting so it's really building. So, who plans to go out Saturday for the youth day? I'm sure there are other dads who will be out there with 6-year-olds, but mine are nowhere near ready to shoot a shotgun yet. And the other kids I know who would like to hunt have dads, uncles or grandfathers who hunt. But I plan to ask around to see if I can find a kid who wants to go but otherwise wouldn't get to go. March 26, 2008Breaking news: Keck out as NWTF bossI just learned that Rob Keck has stepped down as the CEO of the National Wild Turkey Federation. No one is saying anything official about why this happened, but it's probably not a coincidence that the resignation comes roughly a week after the NWTF board's ouster of chief operating officer Carl Brown and Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Dick Rosenlieb. No official word for the dismissals has been givien, either, but Doug Howlett and Colin Moore of the Southern Sporting Journal report that sources have said the "the board had been investigating certain management practices at the Federation and that the board's actions were in response to their findings." As the former editor of the NWTF's Turkey Call magazine, Howlett obviously has many connections within the organization so I have confidence in his reporting. The whole article is posted on the Southern Sporting Journal's Web site. As I wrote about last year in a main story and sidebar on the challenges facing the Roanoke Valley chapter of the NWTF, the organization as a whole is struggling to evolve now that the mission for which it was founded -- restoration of the wild turkey -- has largely been accomplished. They still do plenty of great stuff, including habitat preservation and contributing to the important Families Afield recruitment and retention effort with the National Shooting Sportsmans Foundation and the U.S. Sportsmans Alliance. A challenge is keeping the sportsmen and women who are the lifeblood of NWTF invigorated now that the mission isn't so easily defined. I'll keep you posted as I learn more. And if you have information or thoughts on the topic, please drop me an e-mail or post a comment. It's about time to talk turkeys, isn't it?
I have been so focused on fish that I hadn't given much thought to Virginia's upcoming spring gobbler season. But it is coming up soon -- less than two weeks till the youth hunt. Freddy is among the hunters whose spring has already started. He shot this longbeard during a recent trip to Florida. You can see more shots from the trip and read Freddy's account on Freddy's Vaturkey.com Web site. Freddy always keeps a hunting journal on the site and does a good job of keeping it updated. This year he's trying something new, with a blog that he will update from the field with his Blackberry. Of course, if I'm up early enough to be reading a live report about a spring hunt, I hope I'm actually out there doing it. So, who's hearing gobbler and seeing strutters out there? March 20, 2008Video: Fishing for smallmouth bass on the New River
March 17, 2008Fish rare but stout on New River float
We floated from Fosters Falls to the Route 100 bridge and I really had high hopes. This was the same section I'd done exactly a month earlier and that day we'd caught a few walleyes and I'd lost a nice smallmouth. But I figured a few days of mild weather and the forecasted cloudy weather could really make for a good day. It was a good day -- when you're on the river, most of them are -- but the fishing wasn't as great as I'd hoped. Casting mostly jerkbaits and spinnerbaits, we couldn't buy a sniff in the morning. If there was any consolation it was that we were sharing the river with guide Forest Pressnell of Greasy Creek Outfitters and his clients Jim Sowder of Fairfax and Chris Rinehart of Blacksburg, and they weren't exactly knocking them dead, either. We had lunch with them and shared our tales of woe. Like me, Forest was surprised. They took off first and before they were out of sight Jim caught a really nice walleye of 23 inches. Alfie and I fished from shore for a bit then headed out. About 10 minutes later I finally hooked a fish on a Rapala X-rap jerkbait. It turned out to be a stout 16-inch smallmouth. Just a few minutes later Alfie hooked this nice one. We moved on down the river and I caught a 13-incher on a spinnerbait. Then it got quiet again until were were almost done, when Alfie caught a 17-inch walleye. We saw Forest and his clients at the take-out and they reported that they had only one more fish, but it was a dandy -- a 20.5-inch smallmouth caught by Chris. I was surprised we didn't do better. Maybe we should have tried jigs. Anyway, that's the thing with fishing in March. You usually don't catch a bunch of fish but they tend to be nice. (I noticed in the Greasy Creek photo log that several clients had stout bass on Friday.) Donnie Eaton knows this. On March 12, 2003, he caught only one bass on a New River trip. But it weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce and remains the state record. March 12, 2008For Backlash: A dedicated belly/pontoon boat threadI'm one of those guys who, when I get onto something, I can become somewhat obsessed. So I can relate to Backlash, who clearly has lost it on belly boats. As you may have seen he's been dropping his belly boat comments on other entries -- Taylor: "Virginia hunters kill record number of whitetails." Backlash comment: "Check out this belly boat livewell design." That's my fault for not giving him the dedicated thread I've been promising for a while. So, finally, here it is. To get it started, my basic thoughts. I have two belly boats, one that I've had for years (and used quite a bit in the little ponds around Virginia Beach when I lived there) and one that my neighbor just gave me. Float tubes have their time and place. But if I had it to do over again, I would get a pontoon boat, or so-called kick boat. I've used them out West on big rivers and they are awesome. Nowhere near as portable as a float tube, obviously, but a MUCH better fishing platform. They also excel in whitewater, which we admittedly don't have much of in this part of the state. One of the downsides of a float tube is that you are right on the water. I don't really like that. I want to be up, at least a bit, and, ideally, standing.. Some of the larger pontoon boats are stable enough that someone with decent balance can stand on the seat. But a standing platform works best. So if I ever do spring for a pontoon boat (and it's on my list), I'm going to get one with a standing platform or one on which I can install one. My current river craft is a canoe and hate it as a fishing platform. Its best use is to get from one spot to the next, at which point you get out and wade fish. The upside is that it can carry two paddlers and a bunch of gear. Two-man pontoon boats are much more of a pain in the butt to haul around. For a single angler float-fishing a bass river, I don't think you could do better than a single-man pontoon with a standing platform. I really don't understand why they haven't become more popular around here.
March 11, 2008Proof that my brother can produce good fish pix
As far as basic fish hero shots go, this one is solid. My only suggestion would be for him to pull off the shades. A primer on how NOT to shoot fish pictures
Some of those bad pictures could have been a lot better had the hero and the photographer followed a couple basic rules. When pointing out mistakes, it's much easier when you have a good (bad, really) example. But I'm not going to publicly ridicule a reader who sends me an awful picture. Unless that fisherman is my brother, Greg. Greg is capable of good fish pix. I'll post a great one later today. He also has a good sense of humor, so he laughed heartily when I told him the picture above may have been one of the best examples of bad redneck fish photography that I've ever seen. I mean, you have a fence in the foreground, a shrub on one side, a house in the background (complete with what appears to be a vacuum cleaner on the porch) and a random 5-gallon pail in the middle of the yard. Then, by raising the fish above the fence, Greg put his face in a shadow. The only way this could have been better (worse) is if Greg had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a can of Hamm's in his right hand. But he doesn't smoke (or drink Hamm's). So, let's dissect the image, which may help some of you achieve better results the next time you're taking a hero shot with a nice fish. 1. The setting. Back yard? Not ideal. Take the picture where you caught the fish, if at all possible. If you have someone with you when you catch a pig, it's simple. You have the other guy take the pictures. (And I mean, PICTURES. Yeah, you want to get back to fishing. But take at least a half-dozen just to make sure you get a couple decent ones.) So, what if you're fishing solo, as Greg was when he caught this 11-pound steelhead? Ideally, you'll be carrying a small point-and-shoot camera with a small tripod. Use the camera's self-timer function and get at it. It might take a few attempts to get a well-framed image. If you are solo and plan to immediately release the fish, that might not be possible. In that case you might just have to shoot the fish next to your rod and then release it. 2. Making the most of a less-than-ideal setting. Greg asked his neighbor to help him out, and the neighbor kindly obliged. Greg didn't want to put the guy out so he just had the neighbor snap a couple quick shots and that was it. Hence, we have the fence in the foreground, the house in the background, etc. If you must shoot the picture at your home, find the "cleanest" background" that you can. If necessary, kneel down and have the standing photographer shoot down so the only thing in the background is the ground. 3. Sun and shadows. You want the sun in the face of the angler and at the back of the photographer. But the photographer must be careful not to cast his shadow on the subject. This isn't always easy. Also, if the sun is high and the hero is wearing a ball cap, there's a good chance his face will be shadowed. In that case it can help to turn on your camera's flash to fill in shadowed areas. 4. Fill the frame. A really common mistake is for photographers to shoot from too far away. The angler and fish turn out to take up just a small part of the frame surrounded by lots of useless space. Yes, you can crop photos with any basic photo-editing computer software. But why not crop when you shoot the picture in the first place? It's simple: get as close to the subject as you can without cutting off key elements, such as any part of the fish or the angler's head. (Admittedly, a pro like Dusan Smetana can get away with interesting cropping in the name of art. But we're talking snapshots here.) Again, we're not talking about a quest for perfection here. Just a quest for good. And it's something well within the reach of every fisherman reading this. Keep those shots coming. Even the bad ones! March 7, 2008Leap day produces some big bass for Burnette
Burnette was using a new deep-diving crankbait that he had just pulled from the package the night before. He didn't tell me the specific brand or color. I wonder why not? In the first 30 minutes he boated six bass, including the 8.3-pounder on the left and the "small" 6.1-pounder on the right. Both bass look to be about the same length but the big one is just incredibly fat. That day they ended up catching about 20 bass total -- half on the crankbait and half on a jigging spoon. If you have hero shots with fish, send them my way and I'll post as many as I can on the blog. I actually spent yesterday on a smallmouth float. Everything was blown out so my friend Sam Dean and I tried the Roanoke River around Glenvar. It was surprisingly low (70 cfs -- I wouldn't do it again at less than 150 cfs) and amazingly clear. We saw a bunch of suckers (they must be on their spawning run) but not many bass. I managed to catch one 12-incher on a jerkbait. It was a great day to be out but I'm not sure that I'd float that section again for fishing. March 4, 2008Hooking a big one at Smith Mountain LakeI got out for a few hours on Smith Mountain Lake on Monday afternoon with Scott Wiley and Charlie Machek, two guys on the Virginia Tech bass fishing team. I'm doing a story on the team for Friday's paper, the day before they host a college bass tournament at the lake. Wiley and Machek have been fishing the past few days and it's been tough. It was slow Monday, too. Then in the middle of the afternoon we saw some bait moving around in the upper end of a creek and went to check it out. I was fishing, too, and about the third cast I felt a tug on my Lucky Craft jerkbait. I set the hook and the bait flew back at the boat and nailed Wiley right in the back. It didn't hook him, but it got pretty well stuck in his VT team jersey. I managed to get it out without damaging the jersey too bad. We ended up catching some of those fish -- big gizzard shad that we were snagging. If there were any bass eating those things they would have been huge. But we fished around just in case, and also in the hopes of maybe finding a big striper. That didn't happen. With temps near 70, it was a pretty great day to get out on the water for a few hours. I expect fishing should really pick up out there in the next couple of weeks. |
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.....
|
...Advertisement...
...Advertisement...
