Freaky weather coninues across the globe. Over three feet of rain hit the Philippines with Typhoon Kalmegi. There was flooding in Kashmir, and parts of the main city of Srinagar—population one million—remain submerged in water.
Hurricane Odile hit the Baja of Mexico and California with winds over 140 miles an hour and heavy rains.
Yet in northern California conditions are dry. The King Fire (5,000) acres burned up half a town just last night ( 9/15) and threatens another 500 homes.
Just north of there in Weed, the Boles Fire of only 400 acres threatens 1,500 homes.
Flooding in Tennessee and Kentucky last Friday was caused by four or more inches of rain in a few hours.
So far, we are just enjoying the changing leaves. Tell me we aren’t screwing up our weather, when North Dakota got five inches of snow last Friday—the first time ever in September.
That weather came this way and hit us just as One Square Mile of Hope was forming on the east end of Fourth Lake.
The rains started about 10:45 a.m. Luckily, the winds came from the southeast and did not blow that hard until the event was over and counted.
Some folks had a problem getting back to shore as there was a good foot chop on the water coming right at them from the Inlet beach.
The rains didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm as the circle formed, but several boats had to move to the Inlet side of the pack as winds were blowing everyone right into Dollar Island.
The cloud ceiling was low but the float planes made several passes overhead as the pack of boats got back together just east of Dollar and Cedar Islands.
I don’t have an official count as of yet, but there were over 3,000 kayaks and canoes in the mix out there.
I saw many friends and neighbors, and also got acquainted with folks I didn’t know as the circle formed.
We changed places a few times until we were locked in place with nowhere to go but to float with the pack.
I took about fifty shots with my camera.
My lens fogged up and I got few raindrops on it but managed to get some good shots.
One appeared on NCPR’s website as Photo of the Day on Sunday, September 14th.
That made two days in a row for me, something the station’s web manager Dale Hobson said he has never done before, but he liked the shot and ran it.
If someone lost their 10-foot, 6-inch Hornbeck canoe on the way home, one was found in the ditch by the Seventh Lake Boat Launch on Monday morning, September 15th. Give a call to (315) 357-5150 to claim it, a tad damaged.
I had another great day during the week as I went fishing and bird watching over on Lake Champlain with Ellie George and her husband Cal.
We put in at the Ti Ferry boat launch before eight in the morning and were fishing for Freshwater Drum (sheepshead) fifteen minutes later.
I had never caught a Drum during the summer, but years ago I caught one through the ice. I thought it was a carp.
We were using jigs on the bottom and Ellie was worried that I might not catch one.
I had only jig fished for walleyes once but it didn’t take me long to catch on as I caught a six-pound Drum on about the second cast.
Then I caught three more very quickly as Cal moved the boat with the electric motor back onto the shoal we were fishing on.
I just trolled the jig on the bottom behind the boat and hooked up with another one.
Along with the Drum were many other fish feeding in the area.
We caught white perch, smallmouth bass, sunfish, bluegills and few other fish.
Cal had caught some Drum over twenty pounds (state record is 26.9 pounds caught in Lake Ontario) but the largest we caught that day was around eleven pounds.
They fight very hard and bite hard when they hit the jig so you don’t miss many.
They battle very hard and you would want ten to fifteen pound test line when fishing for them.
We ended up with 24 drums for the day, a new one-day record for them.
I had on a very large smallmouth bass—about four to six pounds—but lost it on about the fourth jump.
Ellie caught a nice three pounder. After taking a few pictures, we threw back all the fish we caught that day.
After fishing for a while, we went up East Creek to look at some birds in the marshes.
We saw bald eagles, turkey vultures, osprey, great blue heron, great egret, little green heron, common gallinule, solitary sandpiper, spotted sandpiper, eastern phoebe, kingfisher, red-tailed hawk, broad-winged hawk, marsh hawk, merlin, mallards, wood ducks, blackbirds, grackles and some warblers flitting around in the trees.
Once there was a kettle of hawks catching a thermal with four or five varieties riding the wind.
It was a great day of fishing and bird watching with many photo ops.
The peak is coming on fast…but that’s another story. See ya.