Artificial Lures

Honestly, I prefer fishing to catching- I could spend the whole day fishing without a single fish and be happy. That said, when I'm betting on a horse race, it sure doesn't hurt to win once in a while. I guess catching a few fish might make a great day fishing even better!

I spent the last week fishing with my kids checking out some local ponds in my area. I tested a spinner that caught my eye this summer http://www.joesflies.com/shop/product.php?productid=82&cat=0&page=1 and had amazing results on pickeral, bass, and sunfish in several ponds. It was a lot of fun and made me look like a mighty fisherman in my kid's eyes. It was definitely worth the couple bucks it cost me. Does anyone else have an especially lucky lure they'd like to recommend?

Time to catch and release those Brookies

Maine state law now states:

"From August 16 - September 30, rivers, brooks, and streams are restricted to the use of artificial lures only and the total daily bag limit for landlocked salmon, trout and togue (lake trout) is 1 fish."

These poor fish are starving due to all the rain we've been having. My kids have been catching a lot of hungry brookies lately using worms. They have even begun to experiment with different lure and worm combinations. This weekend we're switching to lures only. We don't have a problem with the limit since we try to keep it to one fish per person anyway.

What a crazy Summer we've had. There is so much water in our brook that I saw a Beaver submerge and swim upstream. I was so startled I didn't take a picture in time!

Let those brook trout spawn and stick to the lakes- happy fishing!

Sourdough English Muffins

Let me tell you that fresh breads and biscuits on a campout can really be the highlight of the experience for you and your guests. During a recent outing to Chain of Ponds, we woke up to a cold drizzle. Fortunately we had planned ahead, ok I admit it was my wife's idea, to have bacon and egg sandwiches on sourdough english muffins. We could cook them on a griddle or fry pan over the fire- but we cooked them on the propane stove so we didn't need to start the camp fire on a rainy morning.

We prepared the sourdough the night before according to the recipe on page 538 of The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. I've paraphrased this recipe below but highly recommend this book because it has a great section on sourdough. I'll be sharing my views on the best sourdough bread recipe at some point in the future.

In any case, here is the recipe:

1 cup sourdough starter,
1 ½ cups milk,
5 ½ to 6 cups King Arthur Unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbs sugar,
1 Tbs salt,
1 tsp baking soda,
cornmeal to sprinkle on cast iron griddle

Sponge: Mix together the starter, milk and 3 cups of flour. We cover this with a cloth and let it sit overnight.

Dough: When you first wake up, mix together the rest of the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda in another bowl. Combine thoroughly. Set aside for an hour or so until people start waking up to the smell of coffee.

When the dough has risen, knead it on a cutting board for 2-3 minutes, until the dough is smooth. The dough will feel elastic. Roll the dough about ¼ and ½ inch thick (or do it your own way). Cut out 3-4 inches circles, put them on the floured baking tray- we use a pineapple rings can with both ends cut out. Let the raw muffins rest for 15 minutes.

Preheat the cast iron griddle until hot, then cook the muffins with very gently heat until they rise, about 10 minutes. Flip on the other side, then cook again for 10 minutes.

We wrapped them in a towel to cool while we cooked the bacon and eggs. We then split them with a fork, added mayo, egg, cheese, and bacon.

Try it out and let me know what you think- this will surely be a hit with your guests!

Camp Cooking with Kids

I just got back from Natanis Point Campground on Maine Public Reserved Land on Chain of Ponds. OK- let me get a few things out of the way. It was so breezy there were no bugs. The fishing was incredible, and I swear the kids caught fish on bare hooks. The scenery was stunning. The wildlife was abundant. The canoeing was great, etc etc. Great place to camp for a reasonable price. I'd call it remote but I can't call it wilderness since they offer bathroom facilities with hot showers. We stayed for 4 nights and spent less than $100 including lots of worm purchases at the camp store.

In any case, since we were camping with kids, I wanted to involve them with the cooking. Among other things, we had fresh bread every day, english muffins, corn bread, and chocolate cake. Most of the time I used a dutch oven. For bean hole beans, I use a cast iron bean pot with legs very similar to a dutch oven. For the corn bread we used the reflector oven.

I really like the reflector oven with kids since they can actually see the food cooking. I bought mine from Don Merchant at Pole and Paddle. If you have access to sheet aluminum or stainless steel, Gil Gilpatrick's Building Outdoor Gear has a pattern and detailed instructions for making your own reflector oven. I'm sure I'll talk about some other projects in Gil's book, but the book is worth the $13 price just for the reflector oven pattern.

We used a cast iron cornbread mold that made little cornbreads that look like ears of corn. The cast iron pan in the reflector oven made up for the fact that we fed the fire little twigs to keep the flames up. A reflector oven cooks with heat from your fire, but it works best with flames instead of coals. The cast iron pan holds the heat to allow for even cooking. We only had to turn the pan once. I really like the fact that Don's reflector oven design features a flip up top so I didn't have to work over the fire, or move the reflector oven once I placed it in front of the fire.

In any case, we used the same fire to finish up the beans, start coals for a chocolate cake, cook our cornbread, and for the kids to cook hotdogs on. It seems complicated, but it wasn't. The kids and the adults enjoyed the food. I think we all gained weight on this trip.

Walk-On Adventures at LL Bean

Today I headed over to LL Bean to purchase the fly rod outfit I've been saving up for and was distracted by the idea that they had an hour and a half walk-on flyfishing adventure for only $15. I decided that it would probably be worth $15 to try out the fly rod equipment that LL Bean has to offer before making my purchase.

I got there 15 minutes before the noontime adventure began and there were only two folks signed up before me. Another guy signed up when he heard me talking to the guy about all the open slots still available. We hopped onto a little LL Bean bus (with seatbelts) and headed down the road towards the Desert of Maine. We pulled off into a little field. For $15, our fly fishing would be done on a nice green grassy lawn. You get a stocked trout pond in the two day $399 class.

Our instructor was Bill Stevens, and fortunately, he was very patient. There were four students, a father and son from Connecticut, myself, and an older gentleman from Yarmouth. None of us had ever held a fly rod before. We were invited to partake of the provided 50spf sunscreen and deet flavored bug spray which all of us declined. We were then issued a pair of awesome polarized LL Bean sunglasses to protect our eyes. Bill ran us through a safety checklist for liability purposes and then, finally, class was in session!

Bill started by demonstrating and describing the four part fly cast: pickup, backcast, forward cast, and presentation. He even gave us little laminated orange cards to take home that describe the process. We all got a chance to ask questions.

We practiced casting for a little while and I repeatedly demonstrated a gift for tying knots (sometimes two at a time) in the line while casting. I hope Bill wasn't telling the truth when he said he'd never seen anyone do that before. I seemed to be very adept at tying the knots until Bill suggested that I try moving the rod tip out to the right while casting, and that seemed to help me as my casts improved significantly.

Then we practiced false casting, before taking a short break where cold drinking water was provided in case we were feeling dehydrated. Bill demonstrated the roll cast and we practiced that for a few minutes, before, all too soon, the bus returned. Bill finished our class by pointing out the $99 Quest Two fly rod outfit we had been using in the LL Bean Fishing Catalog and inviting us to take more Outdoor Discovery School classes. We were given a $15 off Outdoor Discovery School coupon and a 10% off fishing gear coupon for use in the LL Bean store. Basically, the class pays for itself if you make another purchase.

The bus delivered us back, as promised, in exactly 1.5 hours from the time we left, just like clockwork. I wanted to rush in and buy Bill's recommended rod outfit, the Qwest Two 8' 6" 6wt for $99, but I had to get back to work. Fortunately, I don't work that far from LL Bean and will try to drop in before I go on vacation this year. I'm pretty sure that this $99 rod and a few flies will keep me very busy fishing this Summer. No guarantees about catching, but the fishing will be great! I'm going to try to convince my brother-in-law to meet me there sometime for an hour and a half of shooting sporting clays or a two hour kayak paddle. All in all, a ton of fun for about the cost of a movie ticket these days.

Long winter

It was a log tough winter. I managed to get one trip in through Baxter State Park in January that I will surely blog about. After that we got snowstorm after snowstorm, and I was constantly reminded of how poorly we are set up here on our farm. The barns we use to store hay and house chickens roofs have a pitch that was inadequate for the snow to slide off of. I have pictures of me shoveling five feet of snow from them.

Spring brought thunderstorms and lightening took out the well pump. At 280ft, you can't service your own well. So there went another $1500. Why do we choose to fight nature? I wish we had a shallow well and the nice gravel that go along with it!

So, in any case, Summer is finally here and we're still getting ready for next winter.

This year, we'll be using the wood boiler. No more oil for us at $4 plus per gallon. I'm attempting to reroof the barns with a steeper roof. No sense fighting nature, I'll let nature shovel the roof.

Have you planted your garden yet? We've got tomatoes in. We hope to plant more but time is rushing by!

Trout and Eggs for Breakfast

My youngest woke me up this morning and said let's go fishing- you can have trout and eggs for breakfast. I told him to wait a while and tried to get back to sleep. It was then that I realized that if I didn't go, he'd eventually stop asking. So, we got up and headed to the brook. To make a long story short, the kids had stored the worms in a can with a hole near the bottom so most of the worms had escaped. We used worm pieces (the one's that didn't have the smarts to escape) and he managed to catch one little keeper. He ended up fishing the last of our hour with my fishing rod. We saw a lot of fish and caught quite a few little ones. The brook is still healthy!

We came back to the house and cooked up trout, eggs, and sourdough toast for breakfast. It doesn't get much better than this!