TROY
JACKSON

Meandering

Beyond The Lures - The Scale

Thu, May 17, 2012

Okay, with an assist from the Boga Grip you’ve gotten a handle on the bass thrashing at the surface with a mouthful of crankbait.  After breaking out the tape measure you find that your catch comes in at 17” and after years of chasing bass on this particular strip pit you’re pretty familiar with its kind and figure the weight to be right around two pounds.  But even with all of that bass catching experience, how can you be sure?

Enter my Normark 50 pound digital scale to eliminate the guesswork. 

I’ve come a long way since the good, old days of the DeLiar as once the digital scales became more prevalent on the fishing aisle shelves I just had to have one.  I believe it all started with a 15 pound model before shelling out a few more bucks for the 50 pound job.  Call it optimism to make the jump in weighing capacity but beyond bass this scale has also weighed coons, beaver, buckets of bluegill, tackleboxes and each of my kids at one time or another.  And maybe, just maybe, I’ll someday get to find out how much some monster Lake Storey muskie weighs.

When collecting my data I always weigh the good ones twice just to make sure there are no glitches.  I can’t recall a time when there was a discrepancy of more than an ounce or two which I don’t feel particularly disturbing on a three, four or five pound bass.  In fact, I suppose that’s right around the accepted margin of error for the model I own. 

September 2002 The bass descibed in the intro, 2-0 Club Lake - Little John

While there are also formulas for weight calculation and after years of experience we’re pretty close on our guesstimates, I still need the numbers.  It’s all a matter of personal preference and this weight debate has made a few appearances here on HO.com this year and will certainly rage on without a final resolution.  But in putting this posting together I felt it would behoove me to do a little testing at home and work in order to reinforce my position that a scale is the only way to go.  The results were as follows:

Marshmallows (mini) in bag (16 ounces) = 16 ounces
Enfamil formula in bag (17.5 ounces) = 18 ounces
Bag of blueberry muffin mix (5 pounds) = 5 pounds 6 ounces
Bag of brownie mix (5 pounds) = 5 pounds 7 ounces
Anchor (20 pounds) = 20 pounds 3 ounces

Note: times are tight at work so I was unable to use the blueberry muffin mix or brownies to see what the bags weigh as these days such treats are only for special occasions, my blog not being one of them.

Enfamil baby formula test

Overall, I’d have to say that my scale is pretty right on, maybe an ounce or two heavy but that’s how it’s supposed to work out for us fishermen, right?

All things considered, the scale has long enhanced the fishing experience and more than paid for itself over these many years.  At most I simply pop in a new battery once in a blue moon as it has an automatic shutoff to prolong battery life and I’m good to go.  I also remove the battery over the winter to prevent any damage when the scale sits idle.  Come to think of it, perhaps I should take it out after every trip these days as they are often few and far between.  Talk to you later.  Troy

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Decade - May 16, 2002

Wed, May 16, 2012

Here is the first installment (beyond the April 30 intro) of my “Decade” series.  This excerpt comes from something I entitled “Illinois Muskie News” and was originally submitted on May 16, 2002.  The following is just how it was written although I have included pictures which were not a part of the original, primitive e-mails.  In addition, I have added a postscript in an effort to provide a bit of an update.

4/20/02 Matt Carmean state record muskie

There’s a new pure muskie record for Illinois and it hails from Lake Shelbyville.  Weighing in at 38 lbs 8 oz and measuring 50 3/4 ” it eclipsed the old record of 37 lbs 13 oz.  The old record was established in 1997 and came from Lake Shabbona in DeKalb County, a four-time record holding body of water.  The new record was caught on the east side of the Lake Shelbyville spillway.  Interesting, as many of our members are accomplished spillway fisherman having engaged in epic battles with the legendary carp that call the Lake Bracken spillway home.  The new record was caught on a jig and twister tail.  The funny thing is, the guy who caught the record had to borrow this lure from his buddy, having lost all of his jigs on snags.  Remember this next time someone wants to borrow one of your lures. 

Not long after the new record hit the books, a larger muskie surfaced not too far from home.  58-acre Johnson-Sauk Trail Lake, located just north of Kewanee in Henry County produced a 42-pound muskie.  Believe it or not, this muskie was returned to the lake.  Now for the rest of the story.  This fish was netted during an electrofishing survey by the Illinois Department of Resources.  The fish is believed to be a survivor from an “accidental stocking” in the 1980’s.  I’m still trying to find out what the “accidental stocking” means. 


Johnson Sauk Trail Lake muskie

Upon hearing of this monster, I decided to give Johnson-Sauk Trail Lake a try.  I had previously fished the lake a couple years ago from the bank and had no luck while bass fishing.  My excuse for the lack of fish was excessive vegetation making it difficult to put a lure in front of a fish, particularly from the bank.  Several of us had a camping trip planned for last weekend (5/10-5/12) and Dad left me the boat and truck while he went on vacation.  I aired up the trailer tires, hooked up the batteries and packed up my muskie and bass tackle.  All set to give it a try on Monday the 6th.  Oddly enough it rained and the boat simply sat in front of my house and got drenched. 

My next bright idea was to take the boat on our camping trip for the weekend.  Fortunately, I came to my senses, realizing that this might be in conflict with beer drinking with the guys.  Good decision as it turned out.  Four plus inches of rain later there was some concern that this fish might end up in my tent with me during the resulting flood.  Didn’t bring home a single can of beer though.  Hopefully this fish did not wash over the spillway during the monsoon.  I’m not sure what sort of barrier the lake’s spillway has but this is often a problem in many lakes.  While a fish like this can survive in Shelbyville’s spillway, other lakes’ spillways and their streams are not large enough to accommodate such a fish.

Postscript

Matt Carmean’s muskie from April 20, 2002 still reigns as the state record although several bodies of water certainly have fish that would give it a run for the money should such a fish make a mistake.

I believe the locals nicknamed the Johnson Sauk muskie but I can’t recall the name.  I want to say “Ethel” or something.  Any help?

In October of 2002 a quartet of anglers took a shot at the Johnson Sauk record fish but came up empty during some unfriendly weather conditions.  This fearsome foursome consisted of renowned muskie fisherman, Jim Saric, and a trio whom you may know from Heartland Outdoors all of these years later: Jeff Lampe, Chef Todd and Dale Bowman.

While I’d never be mistaken for a muskie expert, I would rate the status of the muskie fishery here in my home state as excellent in light of what I have seen, heard and read over the years.  Thanks to the work of the IDNR and a number of muskie clubs and organizations, that old “fish of 10,000 casts” is treating anglers with much more frequent appearances.  Talk to you later.  Troy

 

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Perspectives

Tue, May 15, 2012

On rare occasions, generally for a brief time period, life slows down a little.  Such was the case several weeks ago when I spent about thirty hours alone.  During those hours I told a convenience store clerk “Thank you” for beef jerky and a soda, “No thank you” when asked “Do you want cash back”, checked in briefly via phone with my host, Mike Rave, and fielded a pair of short phone call travel updates from my wife.  Beyond that grand total of probably ten minutes there was no human contact.  And here’s where my mind took me while driving, fishing, classic rocking and feeling completely off balance.

The Parenthood Quandary -  I’ve heard it all before countless times from other parents and while I know that they are right, sometimes it’s still hard to fully appreciate, “That’s just the best age…”, “They grow up so fast…” or “Enjoy these days because before you know it…”  Sometime it’s just tough when the boys (essentially ages three and one) are into everything and the girls (close to eight and six) while rather self sufficient still clamor for another round of food or drink as soon as Julie or I take a seat at the table.  Can I have this?  Can you reach that?  What do we have to eat?  Where’s my shoes?  Not to mention reorganizing my CDs and field guides, a habit taken up by each successive child going on seven years (mind you I was once somewhat organized).  I keep trying to remind myself of a comment from one of the girls’ teachers with four teens/early 20’s; “At least you know they are home and safe” (and up in the middle of the night and at our bedside and leaving our fridge open and messing up the laundry and cracking us up and giving us hugs and …ours).

Beer – I took fifteen beers for me (three nights) and Julie (two nights) and brought one home.  I don’t miss “the good old days” (miss the next mornings even less) and beer just makes me sleepy anyway.  Actually, I guess that should be “sleepier.” 

Fishing – The first day it was 73 degrees with a stiff wind from the northwest as I finished my day on Prairie Lake.  Just after a lunchtime launch on Drake Lake the following day it was 46 degrees with strong winds out of the northeast.  Had I been home I may have found something else to do besides fish thus saving on babysitting in the process. Instead, I was two hours away with no other plans (I’d already slept in) so the decision was easier.  And guess what? I wound up with 30 bass in about four hours. Although I can’t say that I always live by the motto, this instance reinforced that “the best time to go fishing is anytime you can.”

Fishing Part II – The quality of those thirty bass on Drake Lake left much to be desired but all things considered, I didn’t mind a bit.  Now I love to catch fish but some days in the past I may have expressed some frustration while hoping that something bigger would come along.  However, when you are freezing your (insert appropriate body part) off, the more bites the better in my book.  It at least keeps you moving and gives you a charge as you never know what might be on the other end of the line.

Lodging – I don’t know that I’ve ever been what one would truly define as “tough” but my idea of camping has long been a tent, a cooler and my good old transistor radio.  Obviously, with a few kids things get a bit more complicated.  Therefore, it was a welcome change of pace to be offered use of a cabin with all the amenities, perhaps none more appreciated than heat on a couple cool nights.  While there are plenty of us to generate body heat, that’s sort of how there got to be plenty of us in the first place.

Oldies – I paused briefly while launching the boat on Drake Lake caught by the unmistakable vocal stylings of the great Joe Walsh on the local classic rock station.  The always entertaining Walsh was crooning about all of the things he’d done and seen in a tune I’d never heard before.  That in itself was quite a treat as there isn’t much left out there for me to discover among tunes that receive regular radio airplay.  Through the wonder of the internet I later found the humorous tune to be something called “Fairbanks, Alaska” from 1992 leading me to initially question, “What is that doing on the classic rock/oldies station?”  Well, you know what, somehow that’s twenty years ago.  Imagine that, Joe Walsh and the like are now the Perry Como, Andy Williams or Elvis Presley of my childhood.

Hope to be back soon with a couple more no less important but more outdoor related things.  Talk to you later.  Troy

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