A True Fish Story (It happened to me)

 

 I wondered if I was losing it. Not a fish.....my mind. I was fishing with dad and had just pulled up bluegill number 25. It was a dandy and as I took it into my left hand and reached with my right to grab the lure and unhook it, my eyes went to my ice fishing hole where the white foam float of my depth finder was supposed to be floating. It wasn't! It was going down the hole below the surface of the water. My mind said my fish had twisted my line around the cable and was swimming down with it. But, my left hand said otherwise since it still held that bluegill. My right hand reached for the transducer cable which I pulled. I felt a fish pulling back for about 2 seconds. My mind said that cannot be true. I still am not sure it can be true. But, I found a story on the internet (gotta be true) of a guy who caught a 50 inch muskie on his transducer. It is one of my strangest experiences ever while ice fishing.

Fish Scales

This, my friends, is a fish scale. I believe this one is from a northern pike. It is the largest I have seen so far and I found it in my basement on the carpet by the wood stove. I have had a plague of scales here lately and have quietly declared war against them. I have not said a word about it to my wife because I don't want her to notice them too. Recently, after cleaning fish in the garage for the umpteenth time this last 6 weeks, I literally vacuumed my garage, including the floor where we park cars. I saw lots of scales by my fish cleaning table and apparently I track them indoors because I find them all over the house. I hate getting a scale in my mouth when eating fish, so I wash my fillets very well. But, I have seen a scale or scales stuck to the side of the garage/house entry door, in my bedroom, in the living room, in the basement rec room, etc. After vacuuming the garage I vacuumed the entry rug. I vacuumed the basement rec room and swept the garage and swept the kitchen and dining area. Still, not a word to my wife about scales. So far so good. She hasn't mentioned them. I used to enjoy seeing a stray scale around to remind me of the fun I had catching and eating fish. Sometimes one will stick like a suction cup to my hand and not be noticed for days, even after cleaning them multiple times. Now, I see a couple of scales and go for the dust pan; whisking them in with the hand sweeper. Shhhhh. Don't tell....

PS. See below for a partial source of all those scales I am cleaning up. The fillets are so delicious. 

Who's tracks these are, I think I know.........

 I enjoy seeing tracks in the snow and trying to figure out what made them, how big of an animal (or human), which direction it was traveling and how fast, etc.

The shovel handle has underlined a squirrel track. This animal was moving left to right. It's hind feet make the larger, print. Front feet land first, then hind feet come to land in front of the front feet so it can spring forward on its powerful back legs.

The two pics above are rabbit tracks. Just like the squirrel, the hind feet are ahead of the front feet. So, the rabbit is traveling in the direction my foot is "traveling". The more stretched out the tracks, the faster the rabbit is running.

In the above picture, I see three sets of rabbit tracks (left, middle and right) with fox tracks going down the middle.

In the pics with gloves, I see cat tracks. Cats usually place their hind feet in or very nearly in the print made by their front feet. Look for toe marks to indicate direction of travel.

This doesn't look good. Another form of "wild life" activity? These are vehicle tracks indicating someone had a rough time in the snow. Be careful out there.

My stick is "underlining" turkey tracks. This bird was walking from left to right.

Here we have cat tracks on the left, mouse tracks on the right and deer tracks underneath. Busy night for the animals.

The toe of my boot is pointing at a mouse track. This mouse was traveling away from my boot.

I am pretty sure this final picture has fox tracks, but I believe there are some cat prints, too. Plus I see a couple of deer prints and mouse tracks. There is much wildlife activity while we sleep.