Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Sun Jul 22, 2018 4:59 am

Making my umpteenth pass through last year's log looking for things I should and can be working on before the coming season, and found myself getting pretty homesick:
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:13 am

Nice picture. I'm getting anxious as well.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:28 am

Was a rare west wind drawing the little ducks to our end of the marsh. So many that we had stopped shooting jacks and had the spinner those are bumping over running for teal.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Sun Jul 22, 2018 6:58 pm

It's a Panasonic ZS50 "point & shoot". Doesn't take the sharpest pics or best videos, but has serious zoom and fits in a small belt holder, so it's handy without being an encumbrance.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Darren » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:39 am

Rick wrote:It's a Panasonic ZS50 "point & shoot". Doesn't take the sharpest pics or best videos, but has serious zoom and fits in a small belt holder, so it's handy without being an encumbrance.



Ol mudhole just producing ringers these days, all its mallards stayed in MO :lol:

Where's those greenheads from January of this year?
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:48 am

Darren wrote:
Rick wrote:It's a Panasonic ZS50 "point & shoot". Doesn't take the sharpest pics or best videos, but has serious zoom and fits in a small belt holder, so it's handy without being an encumbrance.



Ol mudhole just producing ringers these days, all its mallards stayed in MO :lol:

Where's those greenheads from January of this year?



Yeah, those that are released when they stop running pumps and drain their bait ponds cause their season has closed.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:31 am

Reply with quote
Re: 2017-2018 Season Log
Postby Rick » Thu Jan 04, 2018 11:47 am


Birds By Species: 3 gw teal, 6 mallards and 2 specks (one banded)


Did you ever get the info on that speck?
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby SpinnerMan » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:50 am

DComeaux wrote:Yeah, those that are released when they stop running pumps and drain their bait ponds cause their season has closed.

These "bait ponds" below never close. We built a lot of power in the 60's - 80's The vast majority of them have a warm water discharge that maintains open water throughout the winter. You really need a lot of cold and a lot of snow to move the mallards. We often don't see large numbers until December at the end of our season and there are no signs of them going further south than that. Mallards are a hardy duck. And there is an obvious advantage to not going south while the season is still open in Arkansas and Lousiana. Staying up north where relatively few hunters can really take advantage has to have some impact on the behavior.

Remember these guys from middle school biology? I'd be very surprised if that same effect is not playing out with the sub-populations of mallards.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1194281/Darwins-evolution-moth-changes-black-white-thanks-soot-free-skies.html
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Mon Jul 23, 2018 9:20 am

DComeaux wrote:
Reply with quote
Re: 2017-2018 Season Log
Postby Rick » Thu Jan 04, 2018 11:47 am


Birds By Species: 3 gw teal, 6 mallards and 2 specks (one banded)


Did you ever get the info on that speck?


Nope, never did. Just have the memory of them dropping right in from my end, tame as if the season were closed. Didn't shoot many last year, but we sure shot them pretty.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Mon Jul 23, 2018 12:27 pm

Me, too. Which is why I'm plotting to see more of it this fall.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:16 pm

Anyone else teased by the cool, dry northerly breeze this morning. Know August is coming, but it sure was nice to be working outdoors early this morning.

In other news, we were back on the west side of the Bell City ditch cleaning up some nests the airboat couldn't get near around Henning's marsh, and it's appreciably lower than a week or so back. Open water's pretty much down to puddles in the big brown patches around their blinds.

See Refuge's river gage (Corps says that's how it's spelled) is down to 2.93
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Darren » Tue Jul 24, 2018 6:59 pm

Rick wrote:Anyone else teased by the cool, dry northerly breeze this morning. Know August is coming, but it sure was nice to be working outdoors early this morning.

In other news, we were back on the west side of the Bell City ditch cleaning up some nests the airboat couldn't get near around Henning's marsh, and it's appreciably lower than a week or so back. Open water's pretty much down to puddles in the big brown patches around their blinds.

See Refuge's river gage (Corps says that's how it's spelled) is down to 2.93


Was low 60's in Omaha this morning for my outdoor work, which certainly was far less "work" than tracking down gator nests in the marsh. Felt like October back home and got my itchin' for teal and other fally things
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Tue Jul 24, 2018 8:58 pm

Duck Engr wrote:
Rick wrote:Anyone else teased by the cool, dry northerly breeze this morning. Know August is coming, but it sure was nice to be working outdoors early this morning.



Ours was spoiled by the remaining humidity from thunderstorm activity late last night but yesterday morning was cool and breezy here and it definitely fanned the flames a little bit!



I was thinking that while mowing my yard this evening and was going to post about it here. Think it's a September preview?
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:46 am

I gather on the Mermentau by the LNWR Headquarters. I "read" it at this link: http://rivergages.mvr.usace.army.mil/WaterControl/stationinfo2.cfm?sid=70600&fid=&dt=S

Being as how our water is largely controlled by what's within the Intracoastal lock system and it's our nearest, I've bookmarked it for quick discouragement.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Darren » Wed Jul 25, 2018 12:55 pm

Duck Engr wrote:
DComeaux wrote:Think it's a September preview?


I hope so for my sanity but not so for teal season success. Seems I’ve had the best success when it’s stifling hot during teal season with minimal front activity beforehand.


We saw last year that an early big front can blow them through the south. Log says the days with particularly nice conditions, cool north breeze. etc weren't particularly productive. That said a small front passage over night has on at least a few occasions changed the game for the better the next day, but can also blow them out on you too.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Ducaholic » Wed Jul 25, 2018 1:51 pm

Only time we have any consistent shooting for teal other than opening day is when the north wind blows.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Fri Jul 27, 2018 6:09 am

Seems like when we have teal folks fear fronts and when we don't they pray for them. I've pretty much come to accept that teal's gonna do what teal does, regardless of my own best guess.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Mon Jul 30, 2018 4:59 pm

"Interesting," in the Chinese curse sense of the word, "last" day of picking stuff that can't be accessed otherwise afoot. Began with a half mile hike through the worst deer fly barrage I've suffered in years and didn't improve when this met me at the first nest:
alligator stuff mostly 043a.jpg


She'd not read the part of the book about her nose being a sensitive spot, and we debated that point as long as with any other this season before she let me be disappointed by her nest of eggshells she'd squashed and others hollowed out by the fire ants the broken ones drew. Much ado over nothing:
alligator stuff mostly 057a.jpg


Turned out what could be her slightly younger sister lived a quarter mile of deer flies down the way. Little smaller, maybe, but same winning disposition:
alligator stuff mostly 088a.jpg


But this time the fuss paid off with 41 pretty eggs:
alligator stuff mostly 103a.jpg


She and I went round and round, too, and by her forth appearance it occurred to me that I've never recorded the fine art of momma wrangling, so I did:


And so went the good part of my day. When our own Dave Comeaux called me later in the morning, I was studying the possibility of traversing 400 or so yards of what ought to be the Bud Light king's "pit of misery" (dilly,dilly) topped with cutgrass. Either step where you really don't want to, or get mired in bottomless gut-sucking muck. The levee system around this bit of fun blocked a badly needed airboat's entry, and we'd already decided to write this nest, and another just like it a half mile away in the same mess, off. But as bad as I talk about Doug's leasing decisions, he's still essentially family to me and holds all surface rights on the place. Including what could be several hundred dollars in landowner egg money - if I could get to them.

I eventually did pick both excellent nests, making him close to a grand, but came as close as I've been in years to heat exhaustion doing it. Way, way too far from my little wagon and water. So I had myself a little ordeal and had to repeat a chunk of it going back for my cargo of eggs after getting cooled down and re-hydrated. Nice way to cap off the afoot portion of the season.

I hope. Still some airboat work in marsh bad enough to put me on foot where I really don't want to be if I get too cocky...
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:12 pm

Wasn't working for him at the time, so he was just a friend that go-round. Would have done it for most anyone I care about.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:25 pm

And speaking of friends, I took this photo of the future if he and his pards only get the flooding of agricultural grains outlawed. Indeed it's what the new rich guys have replaced Knight Oil's corn patch with:
alligator stuff mostly 119a.jpg


Acres and acres of indigo and new levee to help turn that readily and legally manipulable perennial into waterfowl paradise...
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby Rick » Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm

Duck Engr wrote:You’re a braver man than I for messing with those toothy rascals Rick. Is the picking of alligator nests regulated like alligator Season is?


Absolutely. Everything alligator actually falls under the same CITES Treaty that tries to manage endangered species around the world, and the wild eggs (that provide alligator farms with their stock) can only be taken by permit and must be mitigated for with more 3' to 5' two-year old "farm returns" than would have survived in the wild. Which, along with a drop in demand for bigger ones, is one of the reasons we're up to our ears in them here. Driving home today I saw a plenty big enough one in another of the places it was safe to swim my dogs until it was sold a couple years ago.
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Re: Looking Ahead to 2018-2019...

Postby DComeaux » Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:09 pm

Would love a large farm of indigo.
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