Labor Day Here Already

Horacene and Dick Daugird

This has been an interesting week for weather for my friends in Texas.  Back in March of 2011 I fished in Rockport, Texas with my good  friend Joe Stanfield, where he introduced me to Dick and Horacene Daugird,  a retired couple from the Houston area who decided after retirement to form a charity, The Lighthouse Team, for the sole purpose of helping those who have been affected by natural disasters, such as Hurricane Harvey that has been pounding the Rockport, Houston area this last week.  Joe and I drove the coast, all the way from Rockport to Galveston reviewing the still evident damage from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.  It was quite amazing as there were still empty stilts were houses once stood, areas in Galveston that were yet to be rebuilt, and may never will  We stopped at the Lighthouse Charity's building and Joe introduced me to both Dick and Horacene Daugird, founders of the charity.  Dick turned his love to cook BBQ into a simple cause, to cook food for those helping in the relief efforts as well as the victims of a disaster, they are in full swing Hurricane Harvey and I am sure they will be extremely busy for the next 3 months or so.  A great couple and even though I haven't seen them in a few years I do keep up with their where abouts through my friend Joe.  The events of the last few days have made me keep them close to my thoughts as I know the fabulous work that they do in this terrible situation.  This picture is from a few years ago but still applicable.  Their work reminds me of my good friend Mark Applen and his charity work he does for cancer families.  These are all good charities to support as you can be assured that your money is not being wasted on administrative cost but go directly to help!

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Well, unfortunately because of the current situation at Mille Lacs, Walleye fishing will close at 12:00 AM on Tuesday September 5 and not reopen again until December 1, 2017.  This is a direct result of the mess our DNR has agreed to and is tied to what I feel is a fictitious hooking mortality number that is defined by a quota system which is hard to believe is correct.  No doubt that hooking mortality exists as fishing walleyes on Mille Lacs was closed most of July, into August to cut down on the hooking mortality numbers.  It is too exhausting to go into the arguments however fall was my favorite time to fish walleyes on the reefs, especially after dark.  I guess legally one can fish smallmouth bass with artificial baits like shad raps, I have caught plenty of smallmouths while targeting walleyes in the past, I am not sure how that would work in reverse............I caught plenty of  walleyes while targeting smallmouth.  I suppose I had better check on that premise as catching a walleye on the reef in 5 feet of water, with a crankbait, they tend to release very well.  It just came out this week that the DNR has negotiated with the band for the next 3 years of fishing and it doesn't look good.  I definitely am disappointed with our DNR but like a lot of things, there seems little one can do but complain.  It does bring up a point, that I spend more and more time fishing walleyes in Canada.  So far this year I fished Lac Seul 11 days verses fishing in Minnesota 5 days.  Over all the average number of days is once a week however it is concentrated in fewer trips, as one can tell by my posts.  Unfortunately I have had little time to get out on the Mississippi River this year, maybe I will get caught up this fall!

Ipod Touch

A few years back I upgraded my Sonichub audio server in my boat to the latest and greatest, with bluetooth.  This is a nice function however the new equipment would not play my existing 160 gb Ipod.  The answer was to buy a new Ipod however the largest "new" one available only had a 64gb solid state drive vs the old 160gb, miniature hard drive.  The solid state drive is better but I had to decide which files I wanted to eliminate.  When I was in Canada last month, Mike Worms wanted my music so I sold him my old Ipod as now the newer Ipod's have 128gb of memory.  It's been interesting to try and get the new one set up as years ago I had movies burned to my Ipod so I could watch them on my business trips, especially to China. I am having some luck getting it set up the way I want and my ultimate goal is that my HDS 12 in my boat has a video input, maybe I can play movies on my main depthfinder when fishing get's slow.  We'll see!  Unfortunately I have read that Apple will discontinue the Ipod because there are so many choices with cell phones these days, man is it difficult to keep up with the latest and greatest entertainment technology.  Admittedly I do enjoy my music collection, especially while fishing!

In memory of Bruce Amundson

New hives for 2016

Quite a few years ago my friend Terry Kienitz out a couple hives of honeybees on my property. He was living in Champlin and was interested in having his own honey.  Well, Terry eventually moved and lost interest in having bee's at my place however another guy from Champlin, Bruce Amundson contacted me and asked if I was interested in having bees on my property as I had done this before.  Because of my apple orchard and garden I enthusiastically answered yes as bees are just the ticket for a prosperous garden.   I had a bunch of stuff left over from working with Terry and after seeing Bruce was serious about this I simply gave him everything I had as it was in my best interest to have Bruce be successful and successful he was!  Eventually he got his two daughters involved and Bruce's wife Joni helped.  Along the way they lost their young son to an unfortunate accident when he was at camp and I know that the bee's helped Bruce to keep his mind occupied during those long summers.  The bee's are great.  I always had a great raspberry crop, my pickles were plentiful and my apples and pears got the pollination needed to be extremely fruitful.  I do remember one time my neighbor's wife expressed some concern asking me once......."do you still have bees down below?"  I replied Yes, why?  "Well", she sighed, "it seems I have bees all over my flowers and it is somewhat nerve racking.   I asked if they were the big yellow ones with the black marks on them.  "Why of course, they really make me nervous" she exclaimed.  I smiled telling her that those are not my bees, honeybees are smaller, they look almost like flies and she had bumble bees, probably they lived right in the ground by her flowers.  She wasn't happy but that's ok, never argue with a small town guy who was trained by the likes of my dad, grandpa, Gyle Tollefson and almost every farmer in town.  You see even at Wenaas's Garage where I worked, Vic would give me petunia's every Memorial day to plant and each year I would bet Joanne that mine would be nicer than hers at home.  She stopped betting with me!  It is a sad year but Bruce passed away this March, Bruce's obituary however to my delight his two daughters are keeping the tradition alive and put 2 new hives behind my place.  Not only do I get some honey at the end of the year but my garden and orchard get the benefit and everytime I look in the back and see those white towers, It reminds me of Bruce.  God Bless him for sure as Bruce was a good man.

Ricky Shermer at his finest.

So the beautiful weather has given me the opportunity to get my garden tilled extra early this spring. It has been somewhat dry so last weekend my good friend Ricky Shermer came over with his Kubota and 3 point tiller and really gave the garden a good scrub.  Ricky really reminds me of back home and Jerry O'Kroley as he showed up in the afternoon with the tractor and wearing only his bibs!  Like Jerry, the side buttons were undone as he worked the garden.  I had seen him earlier in the day and we agreed that it would be a couple of days then just like that, he showed up and did mine, what a great deal.  All I had to do was make sure we had enough beer to keep him satisfied.  It's really nice to have this done and does it ever do a great job of grinding everything up.  I don't want plant stuff too early as we have had late frosts in the past however I am waiting for my onions to arrive from Texas and now I am ready to plant those as it's the earlier the better for them.  I am getting to realize that my garden may be too big.  One person's theory of that is simply plant pumpkins and let them utilize the space, maybe that's a good idea as I could give them to the neighborhood kids this fall.  Either way I'll be looking for ways to reduce my overall work load, maybe go fishing more!

This spring is really progressing.  The leaves are starting to come out, the ice is off Leech Lake and the nightcrawlers are out.  I am working on putting Structure Scan 3D in my boat however the transducer doesn't look to fun to install but somehow I will get it figured out.  I have got most of the updates to my fishing electronics done however there is still a nagging problem with my new Ipod and it's going to drive me crazy.  Oh well, luckily I have enough smart people at work that can get me out of this jam!

Boating With Dave, Superdave That Is

We have been blessed with a colder than usual July as seen by the surface temperatures of Mille Lacs Lake. It has basically been one cold front after another so the fishing has been up and down like a yo-yo. Saturday was the official breaking in of my neighbors new outdoor kitchen so I decided that Sunday would probably be the best day to head to the pond. My friend and neighbor Lory Brasel shared my boat as we pointed the truck north once again. We got a fairly late start and in addition to fishing I had promised my good friend Bill to help him with his new Apple Ipod touch. I am an Ipod addict and carry one with almost everywhere. They are especially useful for airline travel as a movie can take you to your destination in an instant. I have a 160 gig Ipod classic with over 13,000 songs and 96 movies loaded into it. One never runs out of things to watch or listen to that's for sure. Paired with my Bose Quiet Plus headphones one can disappear into your own world. A few pointers and some Coca Cola, we decided to launch out of Cove Bay. The gravel has been giving up a number of fish this year and I though I would try a new tactic. With really only a few hours left to fish it was worth a try and who knows what success we would experience. Well, not that great! We trolled around the 4 Mile and 5 Mile Gravel with nothing more than a relaxing boat ride to show for our efforts. The wind had almost died and it was a perfect day to be on the lake. As trolling proved to be fruitless we found a couple of deeper rock humps and tried bobber fishing. My good friend John Bathke had just called of their success on the flats earlier that day. One little bite was all we could muster. Our final effort was spent on Anderson Reef looking for some shallow water smallies. The water level is up nicely this year however the recent heavy rains have clouded the water. Sight fishing was out of the question and with zero hits after a tour of the reef we headed back. A quick stop at the Conoco Station for gas and a 2 scoop ice cream cone we called it a day. No fish but relaxing none the less. This is what fishing is supposed to be all about anyway, right?

Attached is a picture of a cauliflower I picked out of the garden on Saturday. It's a dandy and is the perfect prop to show the neighbors. See in our neighbor hood there is a nickname for almost everyone. There is Tim the Toolman, Botz, Przymus ( pronounced scha-moose), Petey, Limo Joe, Snap On Gary, and mine is SuperDave. Although a derivative of SuperDave Osborne, the crazy stuntman, it has more to do with my overall knowledge of everything good. I have a huge garden and the cauliflower just enhances my reputation in the hood. Besides this, the garden contains such delights as asparagus, potatoes, sweet corn, tons of raspberries, onions, blueberries, cucumbers, squash, peas, peppers (3 kinds), kale, tomatoes ( 3 kinds), dill, cilantro, cantaloupe, carrots, radishes, and if one looked hard a rouge horseradish plant or two. Mixed in with a few flowers, it looks pretty good. Along with this I have a small orchard with 10 mature apple trees of various varieties and 3 pear trees that surprisingly offers up delicious pears come the first of September. I also have an uncanny ability to trap pocket gophers. As a young man in the summer I would often ride my bike 3 - 4 miles in the country to trap these unwanted pests. They make large mounds of dirt from their tunneling activity and if in an alfalfa field, can be real hard on equipment that can hit these mounds while cutting. A good friend Jim Anderson (no relation) would give me $0.50 for each gopher and the county had another $0.50 bounty for each pair of front feet brought in. I used to make a lot of money for a 12 year old back then! All these things add up to the nickname Superdave and I try to live up to the expectation. I have more stories but will save them for the future.

Speaking of neighbors, a good friend of everyone passed away on Friday. Like the rest of us we had a name for Jim Olson, it was Pepsi Jim as he worked for Pepsi Cola. He was a great guy, never in a bad mood, and was often seen driving his restored Allis Chambers utility tractor around the neighborhood. Jim fought a tough fight against his cancer but lost the battle. We will miss him and his positive attitude. It is a reminder that everyday is precious and like fishing Sunday, it really doesn't matter if you catch any fish, what matters is that you are able to enjoy the moment. Jim passed away way too early in life, take advantage of what you have.