Jul 4 - hot and cold

It's that time of year again. It's summer. It's cold. Huh ? Need I refer again to "An Inconvenient Truth"? Hello Al ? Al Gore ? Why are we having all this cold weather ? The hottest weather that I can remember up here occurred the year that we built the place. It was so hot and dry that the bugs were nonexistent -- not so this year.

It's that time of year again ... Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Bob Roll and some other guy whose name I forget ... yes, it's the Tour de France. I'm sitting here blogging because it's commercial time on OLN. I'm getting a head start on today's edition.

I puttered around a little earlier, cleaning up some in the basement, taking some stuff up to the garage, unhooking the temporary electric heaters so that I can take those up, putting the boat battery and the 3-wheeler battery on charge, unhooking the now-useless old battery out of the Whaler (I had two batteries hooked up in parallel because I was too lazy to disconnect last year).

I decided to leave biking until tomorrow, since I'm only going to get in one more ride before the LOL 1000 and I'd have to leave early to be back in time to get to Mass at 4:30.

----

My major activity of the day was week whacking. That doesn't sound like a major activity, does it, but it is exhausting working that hill with this device. Anyway, done for another few days.

Sandy found a major carpenter ant hive/nest/whatever up by the garden so I got out my bait and put some stuff there as well as in a few other places around the house where I saw ants milling around.

After I got back from Mass we had dinner -- crappie (delicious), potatoes on the barbie and stir-fried cherry tomatoes & olives & zucchini.

... and off I went in search of more crappie. I got down to what has become my usual spot, by a stump across from Smiths Bay landing and no sooner did I drop my line and I had another "in the bag". They continued to bite and I continued to catch. Meanwhile, Bob Simms and Daphne; Dennis Scott and Sandy (guy next door to Bob); two other boats were trolling up and down. I was catching fish more consistently so eventually Bob and Dennis were anchored within about 50 feet of me and since the wind had died down, we were able to spend the next hour catching fish and making conversation. Well, I should say that they were able to catch fish -- seems that I wasn't catching as many at that point, or maybe it was because I was surrounded ? It didn't matter, I brought home as many as I wanted to clean anyway.

I caught a catfish and it caught me. Up and into the boat it sailed and one of its barbs stuck my hand and the tip broke off. Ouch. I managed to squeeze the spot and pull the barb out and then the hole bled like a stuck pig. Actually that's a good thing, because hopefully it cleaned out any dirt. Eventually it stopped bleeding but my hand looked awful because I didn't want to rinse with lake water which of course is teeming with bacteria. It doesn't feel any worse for wear this morning so perhaps it won't get infected ... I can only hope.

A little later Bob and Daphne both hooked catfish at the same time. Just prior to leaving Bob cleaned them and then pulled up beside me and cleaned mine, showing me his technique. Basically you partly cut the head off and then pull and it skins itself, taking the guts with the head. You can probably cook the result as is, but when I got home I cut the fillets off them -- yes, them -- Bob gave me his two as well. He and Daphne had a whole basket full of fish so were not going to go hungry.

At one point Bob hooked a large pickerel that broke his line. Sandy hooked a catfish that dropped the hook just before being netted; Sandy was fishing with a bobber for a while, with about 18" of line below. He would cast the bobber & minnow and wait a few seconds and get another strike. It seemed to be an effective method of catching crappie too.

Dennis mentioned that he and Jim Matthews were guiding together for Whippoorwill lodge last week, catching a hundred or so bass per day but of course releasing them. I'd like to find out where they fish and what tackle they are using.

Dennis & Raylene and Bob and family are leaving today. Oh -- I finally met Daphne's friend Margo -- I had gone over to chat with Bob and everyone was outside. Bob's wife was up too, mostly recovered from her stroke last year. Bob says that you wouldn't be able to tell that she had a stroke other than the fact that her writing is not very good anymore -- heck, no-one can read mine - not even me.

Another day above ground; another day with a full belly; life is good.

Today has dawned, sunny and cool -- 11C. It's supposed to get up to 21C -- around 70F, so it will be a good biking day and I will partake. I'll probably go fishing again ... might as well continue to stock up since they are so good eating. It does make for a long day though, since it's after 9:30 when I get home and after 10:30 by the time I've cleaned the fish.

That's it. Onward.