"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."-Henry David Thoreau

I don't measure a successful day on the river by how many fish caught, but by what I learned or observed. The above quote by Thoreau sums up my ideas on fishing, particularly fly fishing. By walking the river and observing its surroundings a good day "fishing" may not produce a single fish.

Some people may not quite understand that logic. Far too often a good day is measured in bag limits, whether fishing or hunting. I don't believe that many people can say that a good day fishing produced absolutely nothing.

This time of year it seems that steelhead are lacking in big numbers and stretched throughout the river. All the better to move "commando" style; throw some line here, walk upstream into enemy steelhead territory, break through some ice crossing the bank, panic, realize water is only a foot deep, repeat.

Maybe Thoreau came up with his philosophy after a day (or a few days) spent on a river with no fish coming to hand, read: a crappy day fishing. Either way it's a great quote to justify spending a fishless day in a frozen landscape.

Last saturday I spent much of the day on the Vermilon River, which happened to be nearly frozen over. No fish came to hand, not even as much as a bump. Some would rate this as a pretty lousy day to be on the water. However, fox, squirrles, mink, deer, and geese were on the move across along the frozen waters as were made evident not by their physical presence, but by their individual signs. I truly enjoy days like that. Analyzing fresh tracks in the snow is a love of mine. I think the fly fishing is just a great excuse to get out and do some observing.

A shot of coffe in the morning to get things moving:

It may not be Washington or British Columbia, but the Vermilion is a pretty sight.

Dressed up for the weather; fly fishing commando ninja.

Get out there and don't catch anything.

Slower Than Molasses In.................November

     As I woke up this morning from a 12 hour coma, feeling like I was moving slower than the molasses that Aaron had poured on a log yesterday. I asked myself, "is it worth it?" When I stepped outside and the moisture in my nose instantly froze to my nose hair I wondered again, "is it worth it?" And, when I tried to put my hands into supposedly waterproof gloves that had frozen solid in the truck overnight, I asked myself once more "is it really worth it?" Fighting the urge to return to my warm blanket filled den, I convinced my self to go meet Aaron, reluctantly of course.

     During the drive to the Brown residence, I began to change my mood. The sun was shining, there was a nice coating of frost on everything; just a very nice winter morning. After meeting Aaron, we headed over to Farmer Frank's place to check our muskrat traps and a few raccoon traps. We managed to get one muskrat in Frank's pond. A respectably sized one, in a 110 conibear placed in front of a den entrance. We pulled all of the other 'rat traps (on account of us both leaving for the week) and made our way down to Frank's section of the creek. Guess what was down there...nothing!  We then checked our other four raccoon traps and found...nothing. But hey, I guess that's why they call it trapping and not catching. So, our total catch for the day was one lonely muskrat. A very slow day in any trapper's book, but if you ask me it was a great morning, and I am willing to bet that Aaron would feel the same way. We might not be the best trappers and bring home critters by the hundreds, but we always bring SOMETHING home.

                                          The catch of the day

     Days like today are a great time to repair your equipment, or build some new supplies such as snares, stakes, drowner rigs, and other things of that nature. A few days ago we spent some time in Aaron's shop welding stakes out of rebar, and constructing some snares. It might be much less a hassle to buy items such as these, but that just isn't our style. I think these snares will work quite well, and they only cost about $6 per dozen to make. The stakes ring in at about $13 per dozen. Which is significantly less than buying them pre made. Most of the materials from the snares can be re-used. 

                                          A dozen snares, shiny and new. We need to do something about that. 

     Sure the snares look good to us, but they stand out like a sore thumb in the woods. Now what I could do is buy some trap dye, and treat them properly, but where is the fun in that? Instead I took a dozen or so rotten disgusting black walnuts, a few handfulls of grass, and a scoop of good old fashioned dirt and gave the snares a nice hot bath in them for about an hour. And, they came out looking great. The cable is supposed to be stainless steel, but they look pretty stained to me.

                                          They are brown, ugly, and they smell like dirt. Just how we like them.

November Pheasants

Berlin Lake wildlife area is pretty impressive. The wildlife management guys there do a great job. There's plenty of warm season grasses, and standing corn to support a good number of pheasants.

I'm lucky enough, as is Pat, to live only a stone's throw from Charlemont metropark, and Wellington Wildlife area. Both of which have pheasants, but not that great of habitat. However, there are birds there if you work for them.

Here's a pictoral of some of the pheasants from this November. Hopefully I can get back out there soon. We need something to do while we wait for steelhead to move!

Muskrats, coons, and unlikely conservationists

This is the very first blog of Upland and Downstream. I suppose that if you read about who we are you kind of have an understanding of what we do and who we are. So, with that let's just jump right into this blogging thing.

Pat and I have been setting a few traps over the past few days. It's a good time to get out in the woods, and sort of take inventory of the woods in late fall/early winter. The stark contrast of spring warmth and rejuvenation and winter's bleak sort of "nothingness" is an interest of ours.

Most folks, I suspect, don't exactly appreciate the coldness of a wintry evening. Rightly so. It's cold. It's windy. It's rainy. It's cold and windy. It's cold, rainy, and windy all at once. This means that wildlife is on the move searching for shelter and food.

However, it's a great time to be in the woods. Yesterday's temperatures were in the 50s, today it's in the upper 20s. Pat and I saw tree sparrows migrating, dark-eyed juncos, various woodpeckers, song sparrows, and a few other species while in the swamp yesterday looking for life in the dry swamp (we had a really dry summer here in Ohio this year). We saw signs of life everywhere. The animals all seem to know that the cold is near. Deer have been moving a lot recently as well.

We have been setting traps the past few days as I mentioned earlier. We're not "meat hunters" if you will, hoping to subsidize our lives by the sale of pelts, nor do we get a sick thrill out of killing mass amounts of furbearers. Sure, we do make some money from muskrats, minks, and coons. And I must admit, it is exciting to see a trap set work out to our advantage, though that means the life of an animal. We respect the animals we trap. In fact, some of the reasons we trap is to maintain the population of raccoons, for example. These coons prey on the eggs and young ducks in the dozen or so wood duck boxes we built and maintain. Not all coons will be trapped, nor do we want to trap all of them. If we were to trap all coons, what would we have to trap next season?
Hunters, trappers, and fishermen are often unlikely conservationists in the eyes of some. I guess this is sort of the type of stark contrast that we've come to have an affinity for.

p.s.
A thanks to farmer Frank (another unlikely conservationist) for letting us trap on his property.

 Pat pounding a stake.

 Constructing a pocket set.

 The creek rose due to the 2" rainfall, all but one trap was flooded. This large coon was waiting.

A muskrat caught only a few hours after setting a duke 110