Sportsmen's Camp

And reopening employing a new business paradigm.

Yes dear reader the inevitable ibis has come to roost in our proverbial rafters. Janet tipped me off this morning. After an evening of preparing a sumptuous doggie repast of brown rice, chicken, hot dogs, ground meat, green beans, carrots, corn, broccoli, and beef broth and a morning of running the boys on the beach after their morning meal it occurred to Janet that everything we do here revolves around our dogs! Their personal chef (chef Jack – pronounced with a really bad french accent) prepares gourmet meals two sometimes three times a day. Their personal trainer The Evil Janeeto (from the planet Janetron) runs them for about a mile daily. Their personal masseur Pat gives them a daily rub down on the table in the store, their personal chauffeur drives them twice a week to the dump so they may sniff the interesting smells and bark at bears, ravens, seas gulls and the occasional wolf. Their personal activities director Carol keeps them sated on delicious doggie treats and throws sticks and toys for them at the beach. Their personal fishing guide takes them for boat rides and fishing on Firth  and various other far away fishing destinations. Their personal maid and staff picks up after them and grooms them daily. In short the staff here at the camp devotes all their energy catering to the every whim and want of the spoiled pair.  So we are reopening the camp as a doggie spa. It has everything a doggie could want and need. I think we will use the same pricing structure but anyone not bringing a dog will have to charged extra in order to finance our VIPs (very important pups). I have just been informed by Baxter TWD that my bonsai collection will have to be put down on the patio so they have something interesting to pee on and Bart has informed me that all the doors must be removed from the cabins so that they can come and go everywhere they like and these silly rules about jumping up on guests tables and dining from their plates have to be abolished. In addition all guests not bringing a dog must bring a small kitty to be chased and mauled – not harmed just terrorized. I am sure the list of demands will grow as the day goes on.

The lake temperature is 68F and there has been a north west wind blowing at about 10mph for a couple days. We haven’t been fishing for a while so I don’t have first hand info on the fishing but its always great so don’t sweat it. The really cool thing is that I have been working outside for the last few days and have not been bothered by a single blackfly! The dragon flies are out in full force and the north wind has bee concentrating them in camp and they are scouring it clean. The water levels are hovering around typical mid summer levels. That is to say that the Montreal river landing ramp is only about half submerged – I was down at the rapids north of Penassi (caught a lot of fish) and the large rock in the center of the rapid is about a foot out of the water and the second rock (to its left facing down stream) is also above the water. The weeds have had a very good start and weed beds are flourishing.

I have just been informed by Baxter TWD that it is now time for the scheduled dump outing and that I must wrap this meaningless drivel up. So off I go on another perfectly ordinary day.

I don’t want baby steps I want action NOW!!

But then again I have never been accused of being impatient or unreasonable or irascible or a curmudgeon or – ok, ok, quit your fucking snickering you’ll wake the dog!

Progress is being made here at camp. But its slow. With my extremely high quality standards and perfectionist ideals – stop that! Stop your fucking laughing, you bastard – its not funny. But I did get the lettering painted on the naming rights signs yesterday and I am lacquering them on the patio before I waterproof them with the varnish.

I think they look pretty good. Or as my mother would say, “They look just fine if you step back, take off your glasses, squint your eyes and blur – yeah they look just fine”. Hey shut the fuck up! I view my work as an artistic event – I draw my painting style from the post impressionists and tend to shy away from the Norman Rockwellian realism of the pedestrian small minded narrow right! Observe the free flow of the brush strokes (no stroke jokes at my age either you pricks! Its not funny once you get past – oh just never mind) and the liberal use of color and copious amounts of paint as well as the multimedia presentation…. I can just hear the rave reviews from the New York critics (from around Buffalo). But I digress.

Things are moving along here, but to me, at a snails pace. But Hell, am I having fun? Fuck yeah!! As Dave Henderson would say “This is more fun than picking your nose!” Of course he had a pretty big nose – but what with cartilage growth continuing even as we get older my nose is getting bigger too and -  Oh shut up – quit your giggling and do something productive…

What a Long Strange Trip its been!

In the 26 years we’ve owned the camp I’ve never seen a spring like this one! Two weeks of dry weather in the upper 80’s F to lower 90’s and little rain. The lake temp today is 76F and the lake level is at normal summer pool. We have gotten some rain in the last few days but I am sure we’re still behind normal levels. Everything is operating as though its late June. The dragonflies have hatched, blackflies appear to be in early retreat, the bass are nesting early and the weeds are already to the surface several places on the lake. Speaking of first – I went swimming in Firth for the first time in May! It was delightful – a little cold at the bottom but just fine – No Shit! Another first that I’ve noticed is the number of bass nests near our beach. We even have a nice nest about 10 feet out from shore between the docks! I got pictures of them breeding a couple days ago.

They built a really beautiful symmetrical nest that looks just fabulous with all the multicolored granite pebbles. They must feel safe there since there is little boat traffic yet and besides all the pebbles are of the right size. The fishing has been similar to late June early July too! The pike and bass are in the fully formed weed beds. The bass must be really torn between setting up nests and breeding versus hanging out in the weeds and dining on the shoals of minnows.

We went fishing down the Montreal and caught a shit load of small pike and many nice sized walleyes too. As exciting as the fishing was (and it was exciting) it didn’t hold a candle to the hair raising trip back from Penassi! A huge thunder storm kicked up and hit us with high winds and drenched us with torrential rain. This was actually quite refreshing as the day was so fucking hot. But then the lightening started. Wow! We were involved with a few nearby strikes and were headed for shore when Pat said “Gee the only way this could be worse is HAIL.” What a fucking bastard!!!! (At least he didn’t say “It could only be worse if a cyclone came up killing us all”!) It immediately began to beat the shit out of us with walnut sized hailstones! I shit you not! It was like being caught in a frozen meteor shower creating small geysers whenever they hit the lake surface! We had to put our seat cushions over our heads to avoid injury! But our exposed fingers on the top of the cushion took a beating. We also hit a submerged log with the motor on the way back! Jeesh! But we all got back in one piece and had great fishing and an eventful day worthy of many stories for the retelling.

Much is happening here at camp. I am fixing boats and motors, upgrading the showers (Hailstorm-Pat jacked up the southwest corner), putting a new washroom on cabin #9, making stop gap repairs to roofs, completing the underground wiring on the beach front as well as constructing a new building for the used generator we just purchased in Haileybury. The person handling the parts to reconstruct the Lister is no longer working for Maine Diesel and he never ordered the parts sooooooo – the Lister reconstruct will be delayed. Sooooo when we saw the used heavy-duty generator for a good price, we decided to over-stress our  camp budget to bring it on board. I picked up a full sized 10′+ diameter fiberglass TV dish at the dump last year and have decided to use it as the generator building roof. Get this, we’ll have the only camp in the north with a trebuchet AND a generator rotunda dome! I hope the Milner county architectural purity committee doesn’t catch wind of it! Of course this is all in addition to all the normal things we have to do here at camp – fishing, happy hours, painting, cleaning, changing the oil on all the equipment, dock setup, dump runs, fixing boats and motors, cabin repairs and so on. Its really a lot of fun – is this heaven? No its Sportsmen’s Camp

Yes dear reader we’re back at camp. The weather has been absolutely beautiful – in the 70’s low 80’s F for the last week and no apparent end in sight. We’ve been fishing several times with excellent success. I caught the first two fish of the season a small pike and large bass respectively and Janet got the third – another nice big female bass – all these fish went back in but it didn’t take us long to catch enough small males for supper.

We’ve also caught a lot of nice walleye/pickerel. But the best fish I caught was off the dock over in the weed bed bay. Whats that you say? This makes no sense, how could I catch a pike off the dock over in the weed bed? Pat, Baxter and Bart, took me over to retrieve the docks from they’re winter resting place over in the weed bed bay. As I was motoring the dock back to camp I made a short tour of the bay and cast a Mepps around. It was quite comfortable walking along the dock and casting through the new weeds in the bay. I had a very large pike (36 to 40 inches) follow it right next to the dock. He paused next to me looked up and  rolled his eyes in disdain and slowly moved away. He wasn’t impressed. After a few more casts I caught a small pike and then motored over to the beach. Fun stuff – I caught a pike off the dock in the weed bed!

Things are moving along well here – the docks are set, the grass is cut, the water is on, the rest room has been torn off of cabin number 9, and I am laying out the wiring for the underground transmission wires for the waterfront. I’ll get started on that tomorrow. We’ll also get started on the new restroom on cabin 9 soon. Pat is working on jacking up the back corner of the shower house – but thats rough going. I will probably put a coat of varnish on the naming rights signs tomorrow – or at least when I can’t work outside and get them put up. Janet and Carol just about have all the spring cleaning done on the cabins. We haven’t started on the roofs yet but they’re on the docket.

The weather has been substantially warmer here than Toronto or western Pennsylvania and the lake temperature is already up to 62F, 2ft down at the end of the right dock. Janet is expecting an early dragonfly hatch (hope hope). The black flies haven’t been all that bad yet but they are ramping up and there are already a few mosquitoes in evidence. There have been some small hatches of little mayflies, but the water temperature is still too low for the bass to start working them off the lake surface and fishing hasn’t been effected.

Bart and Baxter have been having the greatest time running all over camp worrying the groundhogs, crows, mergansers, squirrels etc as well as chasing each other like wild dogs and jumping into the lake to cool off. Bart still moves like a fighter jet – kicking in the afterburners whenever Baxter catches up with him!

Free at last! Free at last! Thank my imaginary friend I’m free at last!

We will be translating to the great white north on Tuesday the 11th. Janet and I can’t can’t wait to get back to camp! Baxter and Bart are also chaffing at the bit and clawing the turf in anticipation. Harvey was up at Camp a couple weeks earlier and found two very large moose antlers and reports that the camp has weathered the winter reasonably well. There are some roof issues but we knew that this was going to be a summer of new roofs. Pat and Carol will be visiting to so we’ll have a lot of help getting things up and running and have have someone to assess how the vodka has made it through the winter and to see if Labatt is still brewing 50 properly. I purchased some new fishing equipment and am itching to test its limits against spring bass and “pike of note”. I am also planning on getting all the overhead power wires underground on the lake front area and building a couple maybe three new wooden boats. But ambition and plans are always optimistic until faced with reality of so much to do. I still can’t wait to be exhausted drinking a 50 at the end of the day and swatting a snow melt mosquito as I listen to the loons welcome me back home.

Yes dear readers I am back. And Hogfish was right when he said the best comment I would have for all you RUBEpublicans (working class people taken in by all the lies, bullshit, fearmongering, misdirection on wedge hate issues and the constant barrage by the millionaire asshole mouthpieces spewing the above, that don’t realise that the only true republicans are those interested in preserving their moneyed class interests and keeping the peons in economic slavery) is “Go fuck yourself”. Am I disgusted with the democrats and congress – FUCK YEAH! They haven’t fulfilled their mandate – they have by and large caved into the moneyed class interests and watered everything down. If I wanted Rubepulican Lite (bitter taste - less filling) I would have voted rubepublican! That being said I move on to more important things.

The first day of trout season was a delight. It was spitting ice ball snow and the fish were as cranky as an aging curmudgeon atheist socialist secular humanist outdoorsman! So I slowed down my presentation and all hell broke loose as I started catching trout like crazy. I only kept three but caught 8. It was one of those things though, there were no second hits. Once a fish was just slightly tagged it wouldn’t bite again for about a half hour. Another thing is that almost all of the fish I caught were browns. I was working threaded minnows very slowly along the slack break line along the riffles targeting the more active fish. The rainbows were tight to the bottom unhappy (as an old white racist tea-bagger Fox “we distort you abide” watching rubepublican) sulking in quiescent deeper pools. I got two of them on salmon eggs (Mike’s Cheesebait – the only true salmon egg – you can smell the difference, just ask Ted Duda and Jim Palmer) that were allowed to settle to the bottom. They actually daintily picked them off the bottom from in front of their noses and stayed in place, sort of like a nonpolitically astute rubepublican bottomfeeder takes his marching orders from right wing radio spewhounds.

It is now Sunday the second day of trout season and Janet wants me to fix the lawn mower. But I don’t want to get cold to the bone working on the lawn mower and have decided to get cold to the bone fishing. I know what the fish are up to today so the fishing will be fun even if somewhat cold. So once again I bid you all adieu as I get a hot shower and perambulate down the hill to fish the stream of my childhood and to reconnect with all the lares and pennates inhabiting the environs.

Global warming.

Over my many (some would say thousands) of years residing in the family estate here in scenic Screw Castle I have traipsed, traversed, trekked, and otherwise extensively hiked the local woods, parks and environs. I could tell you where to find the relict populations of the giant (6″+) purple millipede, the hellbender, and the rarest of the woodland spring dwelling salamanders as well as rare and extraordinary species of trees. Over my many years I have observed much change in the flora and fauna (“ya wanna” – F. Zappa RIP) of the region, All of the changes previously attributable to completely direct human intervention. Mechanical and physical intervention by way of foreign species introduction and land form interventions have caused the major changes but this year I have seen the future. The future is that climate change is occurring. This year I have seen two species here on sheep hill  that were never here before in my lifetime. They are from the south – that is to say south of here, and they have moved here on their own. What I would call a true northward range expansion. I saw my first mocking bird here on sheep hill this fall! And this bird was flying within a few 10s of feet from two young (less than 3 year old) eastern red cedars!  Neither of these native species have no fucking business here!  Granted, the two are physically linked - the cedars were probably brought here by way of seeds in the digestive tract of the mocking birds so I may infer that the birds have been here for a few years but that is how they expand their range.

The Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times” is being visited on us.  

Happy winter solstice and new year to all.

So sad that it should come to this.

I tried to warn you all but, oh dear.

You may not share my intellect.

Which might explain your disrespect.

For all the natural wonders that grow around you!

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish!

Our world’s about to be destroyed.

There’s no point at getting all annoyed.

Lie back and let the planet dissolve.

Despite those bills of bought-off senators,

I still thought that most of you were sweet dilettante gaia rentors.

Specifically redneck and gun toting bluedog democrats,

 and especially that disgusting ratfuck Lieberman.

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish. 

And so it goes on. The money of the great insurance corporations and wealthy interests out-weighs anything that is good for the country. The bribes (campaign donations) to our representatives have subverted any good that can come from our governmental process. Anthropomorphic climatic change is just an artifact of all our greatest scientists, just ask all the pig ignorant conservative radio talk show hosts feeding talking points to great unwashed imaginary friend deluded gullible masses. Health care for our masses unlike all the other developed countries is just completely undeserved. The working class and poor are most undeserving of the fruits of their meager labor. Only the rich should reap any rewards of the massive TARP and bailout funds. Only wall street types deserve a bailout any other sort of money is a handout for the most completely undeserving sort.

I don’t have the time or energy to bring the socialist movement into port.

So I resolve to vote Green Party from now on.

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish!

Our government has been hijacked by the filthy lucre of corporate “free speech”  conservative activist suckpreme court ruling sanctioned bribery. We have been BETRAYED in BOLD FUCKING LETTERS! It has played out in the bright light of nonrepresentive nonresponsive  partisan power politics, designed by the moneyed powers that be, to fuck the middle class.

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish!

And so I go to the cellar to recalibrate the vaunted AntiSnow Generator and do some common good in my own way. Hal asks what he has missed, I retort that it has gone to shit by a betrayal of all that we had hoped for.

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish!

Dump all your shit in the streets – it can’t stink any worse than the stench in the wind blowing from the Washington creeps.

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish!

Unfortunately I can’t leap from the water skyward to leave all this shit.

Or believe me that would be that and this would be it.

So long, so long and thanks for all the fish!

The planet if not the galaxy is surely just the domain of the conservative corporate Vogons and their butt fucked delusional lackeys.

So long, so long, so long. And thanks for all the fish!

Staying overnight at Camp.

This will be the last blog from camp for 2009. We are pretty well buttoned up here at camp. The boards are on the windows, lower water system winterized, boats in the shop, sign in, etc and so on. Its been in the 40’sF and rainy here since Saturday – the day when Mike and Billy showed up for a couple days of fall fishing. I was hoping that the good weather would hold but noooooooooo – it turned miserable. We went out fishing in the cold downpour on Sunday and caught a few fish nothing much size-wise and they were biting very tentatively. Several times I was fishing, with no weight with a minnow, detected a bite and put just the lightest pressure on it to make sure it wasn’t a snag and the bas(s)tard or pick(y)erel let go! Son of a bitch! Touchy touchy touchy! But we did get a few fish, drank a few beers, and after a few hours got totally soaked! (from the rain too!) And it was with a due Easterly! Its a testament to the fact that Firth just doesn’t seem to totally shut down even in the worst of weather. The weather the next day of Mike and Billy’s stay turned even colder and the wind rotated to come from the north at about 20  – 30 mph with nasty whitecaps and bone chilling cold. They elected to beat it for home after sleeping in. It was too bad they didn’t get any of the nice weather but they did help us finish off a bunch of beer and count the Beer Caps for the Contest.

We had a great time counting as Janet kept adding new rules – “Every beer beginning with a W give some one a drink, every V cap all drink, every Mikes Hard lemonade you drink” and so on. We added a rule every time we dumped more caps on the table and it took a few “dumps” so we drank a few beers! I am still very confident that the count was accurate (+/- 500 or so caps). Really its probably good to about 5 – 10 caps. But is was a good time and we did finish up before dawn and then we opened the box of guesses and determined who the winner is. Ok everybody, to quote the most annoying of people – Melissa Wertz ” Hey what do you want the number to be???? think about it… are you ready I’m gonna turn over the trump suit… are you ready…” Yeah it just goes on and on till someone yells at her to “Turn over the fucking card already!!!” Then we hear – “There’s no reason to yell at me – do you know what trump suit you want…?” OK, the total count was…..4,899 caps! The closest guess was 4,999.

And The Winner is….. dah tah dah dah dah tadah … Debbie Jackson! (she is pictured in the previous posting) No tie breaker necessary! She was only off by only 100 caps. We then called her and informed her of her good fortune – it was only about 1 Am so we delegated the task to Billy.  She was very happy.

Well that about wraps it up for the year. So now I can start railing against the moneyed interests fucking the working class. Hell, I might even post some pictures from the summer that didn’t make it to the blog over winter.

Time of the year!

Closing camp is always my worst time of the year. I enjoy it here so much that its home and I don’t want to leave. Its also exacerbated by that hold over from my school days when I realized that school was starting next week and I had to start getting up at the crack of fucking dawn. But oh well, all good things must come to an end and I warm myself in the thought that the winter won’t last forever and I’ll be back next summer.

Additionally I have had a particularly traumatic and depressing event (that is in addition to my financial insolvency) – the new diesel experienced a catastrophic failure. The diesel as assembled on the steel “pallet” had undersized bolts that were not fully tightened – the diesel thus  vibrated considerably more than normal. Paul noticed the problem and we replaced the bolts with perfectly sized large bolts and the engine smoothed right out. We also tightened every nut and bolt on the machine. But unbeknownance to me the key to the power take off (PTO) pulley had loosened. The PTO pulley threw the key and devolved to the end of the shaft and wobbled on its end – destabilizing the crankshaft. The bolts holding a crank counterweight failed sending the weight through the side of the crank case. Bad bad bad! Depressing to say the least, but the warranty on the engine will provide me with all the parts necessary to rebuild the lower unit. So looking at it from the bright side – this is a minor inconvenience and I will end up knowing the engine much better. C’est la vie! I will do what I must do. But enough about this.

Before Al and Deb left, we (me, Charlie and Paul included) made a run up the grassy to catch a mess of huge perch and some pike. It was a gorgeous day and we caught fish like crazy, drank a few beers and came home and had a great supper.

The perch were huge and with three people filleting we made short work of them with a minimal amount of bloodshed.

Yesterday I put the docks away – another one of those things that I can’t stand doing. I always think – “I just put them into place!” We need to petition our imaginary friends to lengthen summer by at least 10 months!!!! As I was putting the docks away I recalled the yearly questions about how the dock system operates so I took some pictures of the process. First I remove 3 out of 4 lag screws from a pair of the dock pilings and then “pop” the piling with the crowbar and the dock drops into the water. Its quite a ride.

Here’s a shot of the outer two pilings on top of the dock after I dropped the dock into the water. I then carry the pilings to shore and move to the next set.

Two more sets of piling to go. I then nail a motor bracket onto the dock tether the boat to it (for the return) then take the dock over to store in the weed-bed bay inlet.

It always helps to have some able bodied seamen to help out with the perilous lake crossing. Captain Bart was ready to steer the boat. Notice the motor on the end of the dock. I then push the dock out into the lake  start the motor and pilot the dock to its storage location. This year the boys insisted on riding on the dock with me so I pulled the boat over and they hopped onto the dock. On the way over they ran up and down the dock and barked at some unfortunate loons – while the crazy loon steered the dock. They had a great time and it made for a much lighter day for me to see them having so much fun.

We expect to be leaving in about a weeks time and there is still much to do in the way of closing the camp but the weather seems to be holding and I must relish each day remaining here. Is this heaven? No, its Sportsmen’s Camp.