Going to the camp this weekend. We are replacing a blind that was destroyed by Hurricane Laura that we did not get a chance to do last year. Also need to replace a part of the boat dock that we did not do last year - that was one battle we could put off to this year. We will fertilize around all the blinds - something we should have done earlier in the year, but did not get to until now. It will be our first trip to the marsh this year.
Rick - no millet - our water is brackish, am hoping for some wigeon grass, but from reports we got the water in the marsh has been very high, so not much chance of wigeon grass either. We can't control the water or much anything else - so it is what it is.
We went to the marsh this past weekend to replace a blind that was blown out by Hurricane Laura. The water was at a good depth for this time of year, but you could tell it has just recently gone down. Vegetation in the marsh is terrible, many of the islands are mud flats, and we only have 2 blinds that have some grass around them. It will be hard to find grass in the marsh to brush the blinds. We put out fertilizer around all the blinds hoping what little grass is there will grow. We normally fertilize in May but the water was so high we thought it would be a waste of time and money. I can't find shotgun shells yet, but the way it looks I may not need them.
Go out in a corn field and cut the stalks at the base as you would roseau. Haul them to your pond and "plant" them in the mud leaving the ears above water and attached. VOILA! flooded corn and blind camo.
On a serious note, I hate to read that. I honestly don't know what we'll find when we're finally able to venture out in our marsh. The guy I lease from and the one other remaining long time blind holders are not hunting in our marsh this year. We are the only ones remaining besides the landowners son who hunts north of me and possibly one of his buddies that's supposed to pick up one of the dropped spots. We have the only blind physically remaining out there because we put in the ground.
MARSH BEAR wrote:Yep - no problems here. 6 weeks until teal season, Starting to get a little excited. "Cold" front coming next week - the first of many
Glad to hear you're doing OK, front could move some birds actually. Usually by Aug 10-20 timeframe there are reports trickling in per log entries.
One of our club members lives in Sulphur, LA - went to a convenience store there today and they had received a shipment of shotgun shells from Kent. He expects another shipment from Rio in a week or two. Things are looking up.
Wasn't long ago that I'd read on the net that the Texas plant making Rios was still shut down. Would very much like your source to be more accurate - even though they no longer list 20ga 5s (Grrr...).
Leaving for the camp - it appears Hurricane Ida will leave us alone - today is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Laura hitting southwest Louisiana. Still plenty of "blue roofs" in the Lake Charles, Sulphur area. Good luck to all in the path of Hurricane Ida - Darren does not look very good for you.
Going to pass over my house at current track, oh boy! We are about as prepared as we could be I guess, just hoping to not lose trees or a roof, or combine the two.
4AM Monday morning currently looks ugly. Should also be the anniversary of Katrina, which was also on a Monday oddly enough.
We went to the camp Friday afternoon - we worked on decoys . Saturday we got up and went to the marsh to plant grass around the blinds and pump out blinds - that was going good until about 11:00 am when a storm came up from the gulf - not associated with Hurricane Ida - and it poured for over an hour. Four of our club members are from Baton Rouge and they decided they needed to head home to prepare for Ida. The four that were left decided to go also - so we still have work to get ready for the teal opener. I only saw 5 teal - thought we would have seen more. This morning on a Baton Rouge TV station the meteorologist showed a little disturbance in the same area Hurricane Ida came from - here we go again
Leaving for the camp after work today, we need to do some work on the blinds tomorrow, as usual only a few of the members can make it. Maybe this little cool front will bring a few teal down. They will probably take one look at our marsh and keep on going. Good luck to all this weekend, be safe.
Went out Friday morning to pump blinds and put some camo material around some of the blinds that don't have much vegetation. One blind in particular #3 is in the middle of our largest pond, was hit the hardest by Hurricane Laura and does not have much grass around it and it looked pretty pitiful with only that camo material.
Sounds like you killed teal out of blind #3 this weekend; what's the plan for re-vegetating it? That going to be do-able or will it just be a more concerted brushing effort for November?
It sure isn’t, but dry dakotas should hopefully help. Joe Bastardi, a weather man out of somewhere in Pennsylvania, works on long range forecasts. He looks back for patterns 50,60, 70 years. He has said since June or so that we’ll have a hot October followed by abrupt start to winter in December. Says typically if May is cold, December is cold.
As Rick says, the only guarantee is there will be weather. We shall see.
As far as the weather channel goes, I’m becoming less and less impressed with them each year. this was their 1 month look ahead posted on January 21 of this year. We all know how that turned out.
Great point, it was a stupid cold February complete with valentine's day ice storm like I've never seen my whole life in S. La. Plants are still recovering to this day.
Early migrators will come regardless of weather, and the flyway wide drought will hasten that trek. I've found that trying to analyze the minutia of each region's weather being a little warmer or cooler than average not as impactful to the migration as water/habitat availability. Just my 2 cents