Maggie's Farm

My post about Mahi and Captain Beardsley's catch the other day brings me around to fishing the fly. This time, we'll concentrate on salt water although some of the techniques and gear I'll mention can also be used for big fresh water game fish. 

However, before I launch into a short treatise, I'd like to spend a paragraph or two on my personal fishing philosophy.

Izzak Walton said Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned. He also said  God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling. While certainly true in some ways, neither statement quite explains the whole attraction to the sport.

Fishing, both bait/reel and on the fly can be as complex or as simple as you wish.  Basic arithmetic is simple, quantum physics is complex - both are mathematics.  A bobber, cane pole with hook and worm are simple - big game reels with three stage gearing, auto-clutch drags and tension monitors on custom carbon fiber rods, ceramic roller guides and high strength butts are complex.  

The Harder They Fall.

It has been a long standing theory of mine, starting back in the late '90s, that the more complex systems become, the easier they are to break. The complexity creates conditions in which a minor glitch in one system can create havoc in other associated systems all without human interaction.  This theory also applies to society as a whole as far as I'm concerned meaning that the more rules, regulations, laws and policies are enacted, the ability to circumvent them becomes easier and easier.

 Some other much smarter folks than I am agree.

As a favor to one of the local guides, I took part of an over flow party out on Lake Murray recently for a quick fishing trip. One of the clients was commenting on how my digital sonar looked a lot different than his.  A discussion began about sonar, how it works and why my depth finder/sonar looked different that his.  Sonar seems to be misunderstood as a fish finding technique even among experienced sports fishing fans so it might be fun to clear a few things up.

 Echo location is a fairly well understood technique – transmit a signal, it reflects back a certain amount of energy to a receiver (or receivers), a quick calculation is made (return time) and the results displayed. Bats, whales and dolphins, certain fish and as unusual as this may sound, a bird species called cave swiftlet all have a means of echo locating objects and prey.

Sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging) uses the mechanical propagation of a sound signal to locate a target's position. There are two main sonar techniques – passive and active. A good example of passive sonar is a relatively simple technique used in the late 15th Century – a simple open at both ends tube stuck into the water with a listener on the dry end to detect approaching ships. Anybody who's ever spent some time underwater on a busy lake with lots of boaters can relate to “listening” to the props move the boats through the water – that buzzing sound you hear is a form of passive sonar.  A sailboat would produce a “whooshing” sound as the hull creates the bow wave.

All it takes is to hook a doohickey to the 12 V battery, and you can ride in style. You can do it with your truck or car, too:

I don't know if you've ever heard of Mark Derr - most people haven't but he's written a couple of books about dogs and one about Davy Crockett - all of which are very good. He's of the opinion that most anthropologists and other social scientists are wrong about the dog/man team and how it formed. He has had this idea about it being a matter of co-evolution rather than co-dependency and has written a new book about it: How did the wolf evolve into man’s best friend?

One could argue that co-evolution/co-dependency is the same thing, but I think he makes some important distinctions in how the wolf became the dog.

I do take issue with the main thrust of most of the dog/man analysis in that I don't believe the wolf ever truly left the dog. Most dogs, if left to their own devices and survival, revert very quickly to a feral state very similar to the classic wolf pack. The difference between feral dog packs and the wolf pack is that the feral dogs have a rather loose organization with more than one top dog and those aren't always breeding pairs as they are in a wolf pack. In fact, the feral dog pack behaves much in the same way Derr describes when he was doing his research on the wolf researchers.

I love his commentary about The Dog Whisperer" - Cesar Millan. The guy is a good trainer no doubt, but he's got some rather outdated ideas about human/dog interactions.

In any case, I've read his other two dog books "A dog's history of America : how our best friend explored, conquered, and settled  a continent" - 2004 and the first "Dog's best friend : annals of the  dog-human relationship" - 1997. Highly recommended if you can find them - I think they are both out of print.

Anyway, the article is very good - enjoyed it. Hope you do.

Yesterday morning I left the marina at first light and headed out to one of the coves across Lake Murray for some largemouth fishing. I'm cruising along when I saw this thing bobbing along off to my left.  At first I thought it was a submersible (hey, that is possible) or an errant catfish trot line (more likely), but it was moving too fast - about 1.5 mph.  As I moved closer, it turned out to be a four point buck just swimming along enjoying a Sunday morning swim across the lake.

Of course, I didn't have my HD Flipcam, the point 'n shoot or my big DSLR - I had my cell phone with its crappy lens and awful telephoto. I moved in as close as I could and shot the video, but when I tried to get really close, he veered off away from land and I didn't want that.  So I got what I could get, backed way off the deer and followed it into landfall. He made it just fine and dandy - got up on the beach, turned around, took a look and headed off into the woods. Job well done.

I knew deer can swim a fair distance, but this one was in for a good mile and a half of exercise given where he was and the direction he was heading.

Interesting morning.

Our editor mentioned not being able to quite grasp the idea of freshwater stripers. Well, here is one I caught yesterday morning on Lake Murray, 26" - 15 lbs. Caught a total of four over a half hour or so - all in this range - 25 to 26", 15/17 lbs.

I was definitely on the wrong side of the bite, so I switched from bait casting to fly rod. Used a Ugly Stick 7' fast action rod (home build), Galvan T-12 large arbor reel, #12 weight forward sinking line, 5 yards of 48 lb lead core line, 6' 20 lb florocarbon tippet and one of my jig "specials" - 1/2 oz, lead core, foam covered jig head/hook with chartreuse/white bucktail with some transparent yellow colored foil for flash. All topped off with a 6" curly tailed grub.

Now I can here you thinking all the way down here - that's not fly fishing - that's bait casting. No it isn't. Its the same technique used to get the lure down to the fish as you would use on a stream, pond or small lake - it's just heavier with more "umph" if you will. The whole idea is to get the lure to present properly to the fish you're targeting. It
works the same if its a nymph, dry fly or foam bass bug.

Lake Murray, South Carolina, last night. In fact, it's a reservoir built for hydro power, and was the largest artificial body of water in the world when built in the 1920s.

Living in my new home state of South Carolina, I’ve come across some really interesting history.  The story of building the Dreher Shoals dam impounding the Saluda River and creating Lake Murray is a real story of trial, error, engineering expertise and perseverance. Built to provide electric power to Columbia and a large section of South Carolina, the lake and it’s watershed is under the control of South Carolina Electric and Gas  (SCE&G).

In addition to the interesting and varied flora and fauna, Lake Murray has a very interesting military history.  Due to its rather unique layout, it was considered by General Jimmy Doolittle to be the perfect place to practice bombing runs prior to the raid on Tokyo. The target was Lunch Island – a small, 10 acre former hilltop located just south of the mid-line of the lake.  Flying out of Owens Field in Columbia, the B-25s would circle North and start their runs from the North West.  The United Stated Navy also used to practice torpedo runs on Lunch Island. Eventually, Lunch Island became Bomb Island and that name has stuck.

Post WWII and up until the mid-60’s, Bomb Island was partially used for recreational purposes – picnics and such.  SCE&G would burn off the island occasionally to keep the brush down.  It was around this time that Mother Nature decided that she would take control of Bomb Island during the summer and give it over to a bird called the Purple Martin.

The Purple Martin is a member of the swallow family and is the largest of the North American Swallows. It is primarily an insect eater and has the ability to maneuver like a fighter plane when munching down on mosquito’s, dragonflies, moths and other morsels it finds edible. Their migration pattern starts in early July to fly overland down through Mexico and into Brazil. They are related to the Swallows of Capistrano.

What is also unique about the Purple Martin at least in the Eastern US is that they seem to have made Bomb Island their summer home. Nobody has a solid reason for why this bird likes Bomb Island –speculation ranges from no predation to a certain kind of bush that they seem to favor for roosting. From late June through early September, the Purple Martins return to Bomb Island in the evening like clockwork right at sunset leaving in the early morning the next day.

I witnessed this entirely by accident on Monday evening. I was out on the lake planning on taking some sunset pictures over Spencer and Bomb Island. I grabbed some images of Spencer Island and zipped out to Bomb Island. When I got there, the viewing fleet was starting to arrive and I remembered the Purple Martins massing at sunset. To tell the truth, I was not quite ready for what I witnessed.

It starts about ten minutes before sunset – you see one or two swallows swooping along the water, zipping up in the air and back down again. Eventually, one or two become ten or twenty, then a couple of hundred.

Eventually, they mass above the island in a cloud of birds – it is simply an amazing sight as they form these huge vortexes of swirling birds. They swoop down onto the island and they back up again doing this a couple of times before it gets dark and they settle down on the island with a few stragglers coming in behind the main group. This image is about 1/8^th of the island and the birds above it. I apologize for the lousy image but I was using a long lens wide open at 1600 ISO to get the shot. I’ll try and get a better one next time I go out there in the evening.

It is estimated that there are anywhere from 750,000 to 1,000,000 birds on the island over night at the peak of the season. There are so many birds that they have shown up on radar images from Columbia International Airport. Radar image credit - Clemson University Meteorology Department.

It’s an amazing show Mother Nature puts on over Bomb Island and it’s a lot of fun to watch not only the birds, but the fleet that shows up to watch the show. This whole spectacle has spawned a mini industry in taking people out to the island to watch the Purple Martins.

Oh, just to put paid to the evening, I got this image – it was quite an evening.

Here come the stripers. Not the strippers.

It's the end of April, the Bluefish are beginning to show up and the Spring Spawn stripers cannot be far behind.

East Coast stripers (called Rockfish on the Left Coast) are an anadromous fish meaning that they spawn in fresh water, but live their adult lives in salt. There are four breeding stocks on the East Coast - Chesapeake Bay, Delaware River, Hudson River and Cape Cod. These four main schools provide most of the striper population along the East coast. 

Recently, there has been some investigation about the Thames River (New London and Norwich, CT) over winter school being an addition feeder school to the Cape Cod stock. It is not unknown for the Thames River school to reach tremendous populations over winter and spawning up the Thames into the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers in the Spring.

Striper fishing is one of my passions - fresh water impounds down south or inshore in New England, stripers provide me with the best and the most honest type of fishing. I say honest because striper fishing isn't a case of chasing down a fierce predator like any of the bill fish or tuna.  Stripers are basically lazy and  thus require patience and knowledge of the bottom structure to obtain the best size.

A few of my favorite spots and techniques are below the fold -

One of the problems facing the United States is deteriorating infrastructure. Everything from highways, byways, airports and freight facilities are in need of some sort of repair, renovation or downright replacement.

Recently at the launch/commissioning ceremony for the USS William McClean (part of the Navy’s Prepositioning Program) Fred Harris President and CEO of General Dynamics NASSCO (NASSCO is a large shipbuilding complex outside of San Diego) spoke of the need for a National Marine Highway System . Mr. Harris made the case that vital part of the national transportation is being neglected – mainly the Maritime Coastal routes and facilities.

America needs a marine highway system.

What Harris is talking about is using what used to be called “coasters” – basically small ships to handle freight movement  along coastal routes. His point addresses a larger issue – that our maritime industry has fallen on some hard times.  As a nation that relies on sea power to extend our military and diplomatic reach across the world, we have basically relegated our Merchant Marine to other nations to build ships and transport goods.  Our Maritime tradition not only extended from the Merchant Marine through the Navy and Coast Guard, but at one time, the world’s second largest Navy was the United States Army!

The problems, of course, are simple – we just aren’t competitive in terms of labor costs and building/maintenance facilities. Our Merchant Marine is highly unionized  with the attendant costs associated with union shops – including feather bedding.  We’ve lost our ability to produce the tons and tons of high quality steel needed for a vibrant ship building industry.  And the same infrastructure problems facing our highway and railway system also affect the Maritime routes that already exist.  Our intracoastal waterways system is seeing less and less dredging needed to keep it open and traffic flowing.  While the Gulf system seems to be fairly stable in terms of maintenance, the Atlantic system is in dire need of dredging and width repair in several places along it’s length. The last time I brought a boat down that route (a  53 foot Viking sport fisher) there where places in the Atlantic system where we were plowing through the sand and silt – not a good thing for raw water cooled engines. Tugs and barges are also restricted in certain parts of the Atlantic system.

There are other  challenges facing a new, bigger and better maritime system.  NIMBY is a huge factor in the placement of facilities to off load or on load goods and raw materials. The recent contretemps in Narragansett Bay over the LNG facility is a good example.  “Honest” Dick Blumenthal when he was Attorney General of Connecticut killed the Long Island Sound LNG/oil platform facility with misinformation and downright lying about the facilities impact on both the LIS ecosystem and it’s financial impact. Last, but certainly not least, access to distribution points are almost not existent due to the sale of port facilities to real estate developers to build hotels, convention centers, sports stadiums and private marinas. Harbor real estate is expensive and the competition is fierce to obtain and develop it.

Mr. Harris has the right idea – a strong national maritime system able to move cargo, goods and materials using our long seacoasts and river systems should be a priority.  I’m certain private investors would welcome the opportunity to be involved in building small ships, tugs, barges and facilities – as long as the government and the Maritime and Port labor unions can be kept at bay.

Just catching up on my email and received this from my friend Captain Wayne Beardsley - a short video from his recent trip to the Burgundy region of France along the Seille River.

These are self- captained barge style boats that are easy to navigate and control having 40 hp engines and bow thrusters to aid in positioning while docking or using the river locks.  They aren't hard to control at all as they have a really slow hull speed at 4-5 knots (about 5 mph +/- 1) and hydraulic steering makes it all a breeze. The other boat in the video is one from the same company heading back up river.

The company who rents these boats is called Le Boat (what else would they call it?). The boat they rented was the Tango model.

One of the interesting comments Captain Beardsley mentioned was the river lock system.  Apparently there are three styles of locks - fully manual/self operated; unattended automatic locks; and the more typical operated by a lock keeper.

I found the description of the automatic locks really interesting. "The way it works is a blue pole is suspended over the water from an overhead cable.   If the lock is closed with a red signal light, the procedure is to approach the pole slowly and for someone on the boat to give the pole a half twist activating a switch causing the lower gate to close, and the lock to start a refill cycle.  Meanwhile the light signal turns to both red and green with a flashing strobe.  After the lock fills, the upper gate opens, the signal light turns green, and all of the boats enter that can fit in.  When everyone has their lines secure, someone activates another blue pole along the side of the lock which closes the upper gate and starts the lowering sequence."

Wayne said that the manual/self-operated locks took a little getting used to.  While they operated all the same way, the instructions written in French were a tad "terse" as he put it.  He went through this type of lock with a couple of more experienced boats to get the procedure down then off they went on their own.

It sounds like a great trip as there were a lot of medieval towns along the route and, as Wayne put it, great food and great wine.

They finished off the trip in Monaco at the Monaco Boat Show which, just from looking at the exhibitors on the show site, must have been something to see. Use the search, select the brokers and charters selection under the activity sector tab and check out some of the boats.

I put this video together to see whether our readers might be interested in this sort of topic. If you are, I'll do more of them.

Ellison's sailboat, without its rigid racing sail. She can go 3X wind speed. That is scary.

Larry Ellison seeks to change the America's Cup rules, so it's not just for billionaires.

You know - I hope he pulls this off. It's his prerogative to change the design rules and site for racing - I hope he does it. When you consider the amount of money these one design hi-tech maxi-racers burn through, it sounds like he's on the right track.

State-of-the-art one design smaller boats with strict rules sounds good to me. Then it is all about wind, weather and tactics and not the biggest and deepest pocket.

Wrong about Everything.

A brief taste of it:

The whole enjoyable thing is here.

My good friend, Captain Wayne Beardsley, with a 35 pound Mahi Mahi caught 50 miles West of Puerto Rico off the stern of his 49� Grand Banks Classic �Long Legged Lady.� He caught it using a classic form artificial squid streamer on a Ugly Stick 8� fly rod and Van Staal C-Vex reel with weight forward #8 line tipped with 20 lb fluorocarbon leader.

The Mahi Mahi, also known as Dolphin or Dolphinfish, is one of the prized sport fish which also happens to be an excellent fish for dinner. Commonly found in temperate, tropical and sub-tropical waters, mahi are voracious eaters and will swallow almost anything from crustaceans to larger bait fish.  Fishing for mahi is somewhat rare up here in New England, but in late summer when the waters are warmer and/or the Gulf Stream wanders in closer to the coast, mahi can be hiding and/or hanging around weedlines, floating objects like trees, loose buoys and/or anchored navigation buoys.

Down south, looking for bird activity around floating structure will usually indicate the presence of mahi � in open ocean, you can bet on it.  In shore, it will be hit or miss � watch water temps for warmer than normal levels and inspect the floating structure for weeds and incrustation.

Rigging for Mahi on either spinning gear or fly is fairly straight forward. 7/8� Medium to Medium Heavy rods with quick (fast) taper, sufficiently heavy large capacity reels like the Penn 460 large spool series or the above mentioned Van Staal and 30/50 lb mono with fluorocarbon leaders for spin and #8/9 forward weight fly line will survive a good fight.  Bait throwers will do well with large spinner baits and fly throwers will always find that Clouser imitations, white or fluorescent, the larger the better, will always work if you can find the fish.  They are an incredible aerobatic show and their colors will dazzle you (but fade rapidly at death).

Cautionary note on Mahi.  They are considered a moderate mercury fish so limiting your intake to once or twice a month is a good idea.  They can be a carrier for ciguatera poisoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera) which has some flat out nasty neurological and physiological effects. Open water fish are generally ok, but those caught in/around reefs should be considered suspect.

Yellowfins hitting a school of baitfish. More photos here.

Keeps a pretty good beat. Drumming is not rocket science. We posted this version of Sweet Georgia Brown in the remote past, but it deserves another listen:

You would think that a farm barn is a farm barn is a farm barn, but it's not true.  There are significant differences between regions and even countries.

In colonial New England, farmers naturally adopted the "English" style barn - basically a square framed box with a moderate pitched roof.  It was not easily adaptable and eventually the "New England" barn evolved which was adaptable and expandable. Sadly, a lot of these barns no longer exist.

The Brunn Barn was one of the early progenitors of the "New England Barn" and has an interesting history in that it - well, no other way to put it - was "lost" for a while. Originally, the barn sat on the Brunn property which changed hands. The barn was moved to a different location on Butts Road near what was then Annhurst College (now the Woodstock Middle School and Hyde School complex) where it sat for most of the better part of hundred and fifty years. It was used as a general purpose storage building and even then, it didn't get much use.  So it effectively was lost as everybody just thought it was an old building left hanging on eventually deemed a "hazard" and subject to razing - the building had fallen into some disrepair and externally was covered with tar paper shingles.

As it happened, Dr. George Looby, a large animal vet was looking for a barn for use as an agricultural exhibit for the antique tractor and farm equipment section of the Fair.  This building was mentioned as a possible candidate and when Dr. Looby investigated, he discovered its history.  It is built using the "scribe rule framing" post and beam construction technique - every mortise and tenon joint is unique to that joint only - they are not interchangeable as they would be in square rule framing. Scribe rule was the hallmark of New England Barns of the time period.

The Brunn Barn was moved to the Fair grounds and restored to its original condition.  It now houses the mechanical and operations agricultural exhibition of the Woodstock Fair presenting the equipment and tools of the time period in which it was built.

In CT last week. A stacked-rail fence, I think - but maybe it's a zigzag fence:

Woodstock, CT has always held a certain pride in the education of its children from colonial days to the present. Higher education beyond the basics of readin', writin' and 'rithmetic wasn't a staple of affluent farming communities during those times and Woodstock was somewhat unique in supplying the opportunity to colonial children.  The "high" professions of religion, medicine and politics required a larger perspective on the world and the citizens of Woodstock provided that opportunity - mostly under the instruction of various religious and university educated leaders of the community.

As the town expanded and became more populous, the need for an organized "high" school became apparent. On January 12th, 1801 the town leadership "granted provision to build an academy on the North side of Town Common" and $100 was collected from 32 leaders of the community to build the facility.

Farmers from around the area supplied the appropriate amount of white oak and the raising was quite the social event.  On Feburary 2nd, 1802, the building was opened for operation under the guidance of Preceptor Thomas Williams of Pomfret, CT.

Over the years, Woodstock Academy has both prospered and fallen on hard times.  In the downturn of 1860, the original building was razed, basic post/beam construction saved and this building was it's replacement. Henry Bowen (remember him - Pink House?) donated $5,000 of the $20,000 raised and the rest is, as they say, history. Yale University had an interest in the operating of Woodstock Academy for many years (up until WWII) and supplied many of its original Preceptors and Instructors.

Woodstock Academy, while considered by the state as a public high school, is actually a private non-profit institution governed by a Board of Directors and operates outside the governance of the Woodstock Board of Education. It is considered a "free academy" - the only other similar institution in the US is also located in Connecticut, the Norwich Free Academy in Norwich, CT.

Woodstock, CT, last week: