Pre Season Prep

[Rick]

Good times. Funny how much better marsh work is than work work.

[Darren]

Tomorrow - Saturday May 12 is 18 weeks until Teal season - almost here

Next weekend a few members (me included) are going to the camp to check things out. We will go into the marsh and fertilize the area around all the blinds. We also need to do some repairs to our boat launch.

When we are done may have a few adult beverages, grill a steak and tell lies about past hunting experiences.

Sounds like a winner to me! You may see some teal still hanging around; still some on CenLa ag land last Sunday

[Deltaman]

"We will go into the marsh and fertilize the area around all the blinds."

Have never heard any mention of fertilizing around blinds, and I am assuming for more/better cover, but a novel idea Darren, especially since you are on a private lease

[SpinnerMan]

"We will go into the marsh and fertilize the area around all the blinds."

Have never heard any mention of fertilizing around blinds, and I am assuming for more/better cover, but a novel idea Darren, especially since you are on a private lease

We have to do the exact opposite. We go in and level the place around most of our blinds in the late spring/early summer. Otherwise, you have to level the place in the fall just to be able to see your decoys, let alone the birds circling behind you. It still takes a lot of trimming to get them huntable after this, but it doesn't look like you just leveled the place.

Before we started doing this. It was one of those contentious issues. At a club, not everybody agrees on the right way to trim and dress a blind. And some people are just fucking lazy. Me and my buddies drew the most popular blind in the club. It had gotten terrible overgrown. We debated what to do and finally decided that the area needed to be nuked, so we went chainsaw crazy on the place. It looked like it had just been leveled despite our best efforts to keep it from looking that way. We figured we were either going to be heroes or dead men depending how the season turned out. The blind outdid the previous couple years, so we survived. It was either the next year or year after we started leveling all the popular blinds each spring and most of the rest every few years.

If you can't see the birds swinging around, it's pretty tough to call them. Plus then you start poking your head out of the blind to try and find them because you have no idea if they bugged out or what they are doing. So you start poking your head out just about the time they come back over the top.

I wish we had to fertilize. I've put hundreds of hours into clearing brush. A lot of work for a few little birds

[aunt betty]

It's illegal to even cut one little branch at Big Lake.
If you accidentally knock a rotten tree down with your boat...that's different.

[aunt betty]

Really don't know you had best check all federal, state, and local regs concerning water rights etc.
Personally I say do it and if you get caught tell em aunt betty said it's ok.

[aunt betty]

What kind of rice do y'all grow up there around your blinds and pits spinner?
What type of cane is the best to hide behind in your area?

[SpinnerMan]

What kind of rice do y'all grow up there around your blinds and pits spinner?

Lots and lots and lots of cottonwood, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and every other worthless trees and brush you can imagine that surround our water that is overgrown with millfoil and covered with duck meal.

[aunt betty]

That type of cane is having some issues with bugs. Global economy...ain't it great?
There is a quarantine. That'll stop them bugs.. It's a law...bugs CAN read and follow laws right?
Maybe better check the law before you cut and transport any rouseau cane this spring.

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/07/59979040 ... illing-bug

[Rick]

Didn't read the link, but the real fear seems to be that the scale, or whatever, might also like rice.

[aunt betty]

This is possibly the craziest Yankee idea ever but the blind/pit thing...if I had 100% control:
I think I'd build planters on the blind exterior and cart in some good compost and grow my own "cover crop".
Probably make one hell of a mess or you never know it might work.
Pit ag/camo must be tricky I'm not sure I could manage that.

Someone said they cut open gizzards for seeds to plant because that's what they're eating.

Around here you'd end up with a nice gmo corn patch and get sued by Monsanto for stealing their technology.

[Ericdc]

We use 100% Johnson grass to brush our pit. It grows naturally all over the farm along the field edges. It also blends in real well with rice stubble.


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[aunt betty]

Season starts in ten days. You'll get your water and then some.

[DComeaux]

We made our trip to the marsh.
The water level is the lowest we have seen this time of year in 2 - 3 years. The high water has taken its toll however and a lot of the marsh is just mud flats - no vegetation. You can see some grasses starting to come back but it will take a few months of continued low water for the grass to fill in.
We do have a lot of wigeon grass growing, but if the water rises too high this too will go away.
Most of our blinds have have decent grass around them, but a few need lots of grass - the high water killed everything around them.
We did see about 10 blue wing teal, and some mottled ducks
We are going back in 2 weeks to plant grass around the grassless blinds.

Our marsh and those surrounding us are really low, and some are dry. If we don't have a major storm this year it'll be a good year for vegetation growth. I pray we miss the storms this year, and not just for the duck hunting.

We probably will not venture into the marsh until it's time to prep for teal, so we'll not know how things have turned out until then.

[aunt betty]

Is it a too much, not enough thing on water?
It is for me nearly everywhere I go.
Either pushing the boat or making the decoy strings 12 feet long. One extreme to the other.
Once I switched to an anchor, jerk rig with three spreaders it got a whole lot simpler to adjust depth. Twelve decoys is plenty when they are moving and splashing.

Seem to excel in the "too much water" scenario.

Hope you guys get what you want this year.

[DComeaux]

Is it a too much, not enough thing on water?
It is for me nearly everywhere I go.
Either pushing the boat or making the decoy strings 12 feet long. One extreme to the other.
Once I switched to an anchor, jerk rig with three spreaders it got a whole lot simpler to adjust depth. Twelve decoys is plenty when they are moving and splashing.

Seem to excel in the "too much water" scenario.

Hope you guys get what you want this year.

Yes, and it's rare to get just the right combo when dealing with mother nature. Though, it does happen every now and again. It's all part of the game.

[aunt betty]

Last year I sort of shut down on hunting and only went a handful of times. Kept coming up with excuses.
Lake was low as hell plus we really never had good duck weather.
This year I'm going to just say fuck it and travel all over the place like usual.
Driving a 11-year old truck that only has 85k miles on it. Just lightly used by betty standards.
Can hardly tell it's running when standing next to it.
Original plugs...New tires so lets go.

[Rick]

I pray we miss the storms this year, and not just for the duck hunting.

Don't know about your marsh, but in the wake of the salt surge that was so hard on human development down there came another surge the ducks and their hunters loved: Walter's millet (aka: "wild rice" to many who don't know that real deal) like no one could remember. Lot of folks were claiming mallards "like the old days" in the deep marsh following the storms. Pretty much right across the road from where you now hunt, anyway.

Meanwhile, we saw none, zip, zero millet. Not even barnyard grass. Maybe didn't get salted hard enough here, though it sure whacked a lot of our vegetation...

[DComeaux]

I pray we miss the storms this year, and not just for the duck hunting.

Don't know about your marsh, but in the wake of the salt surge that was so hard on human development down there came another surge the ducks and their hunters loved: Walter's millet (aka: "wild rice" to many who don't know that real deal) like no one could remember. Lot of folks were claiming mallards "like the old days" in the deep marsh following the storms. Pretty much right across the road from where you now hunt, anyway.

Meanwhile, we saw none, zip, zero millet. Not even barnyard grass. Maybe didn't get salted hard enough here, though it sure whacked a lot of our vegetation...

I didn't see much in the way of food this past year, but the teal must have found something. Those we hunt with said, you should've seen it two years ago, the story of my life. Thick wigeon grass and they did well, with more variety. The salinity should be right this year for wigeon grass, so I'm hoping for low water. Some of my camp neighbors blinds border little pecan. They are having problems with water hyacinth clogging the ponds and boat runs.

You've been chasing gators?

[Rick]

I pray we miss the storms this year, and not just for the duck hunting.

Don't know about your marsh, but in the wake of the salt surge that was so hard on human development down there came another surge the ducks and their hunters loved: Walter's millet (aka: "wild rice" to many who don't know that real deal) like no one could remember. Lot of folks were claiming mallards "like the old days" in the deep marsh following the storms. Pretty much right across the road from where you now hunt, anyway.

Meanwhile, we saw none, zip, zero millet. Not even barnyard grass. Maybe didn't get salted hard enough here, though it sure whacked a lot of our vegetation...

I didn't see much in the way of food this past year, but the teal must have found something. Those we hunt with said, you should've seen it two years ago, the story of my life. Thick wigeon grass and they did well, with more variety. The salinity should be right this year for wigeon grass, so I'm hoping for low water. Some of my camp neighbors blinds border little pecan. They are having problems with water hyacinth clogging the ponds and boat runs.

You've been chasing gators?

The nearest we come to you in the summers is Tiger Island school section just north of the road, and wasn't too many summers ago the wigeon grass was matted thick enough for an airboat to a very good thing. Haven't seen it like that there before or since, so the moon and stars must have aligned just so, and I suppose that could have been your informants' banner year. But I've little faith in human memory of any "good old days" beyond, maybe, yesterday's. Including my own.

Pretty much finished with releases (I didn't do Tiger Island's this year) and not yet looking for nests, so I'm mostly putzing around to no particularly good end and watching lots of grandkids' baseball. (Almost wrote, "too much".)

[Deltaman]

watching lots of grandkids' baseball. (Almost wrote, "too much".)
Know our Southern sun and heat sure don't make it easy to watch from the stands, and I wouldn't give two shits if anybody said anything derogatory about the "parasol" I'd probably have over my head to stay cool .