Going fishing

Summer is beginning to look like we are getting to the short end of the stick. Last week I had driver's training in Pendleton with MidCo. Yesterday I had First Aid and CPR training with the Milton-Freewater School Dist., and next week I have special needs children training session with MidCo; busy, busy, busy. The following week 8/25 school re-starts in Milton-Freewater for another year.

So today it was time to go fishing. Before going fishing today, I prepped 4 lbs. of blueberries for freezing, got them in the freezer, made a large bowl of potato salad for dinner, and then made a large pot of olive/green pea macaroni salad for quick munchies to take care of us the rest of the week.

My plan for the day was to have my chores done, horses watered and jumping into the river at 4:00 PDT. That is 3 o'clock by-the-sun feeding time for the river's fish.


On my way to the river I filled Rusty's, the mare and gelding herds' water troughs and walked around petting the mares while their two tanks filled.

Now to save allot of chatter on my part, I will let my photos and video of the afternoon's activities tell the story.

As usual when I get into the mare herd there is always Rosey and Summer to greet me, shortly thereafter there is always Raji and Sunny by my side.

There is Moon and Misty

Shaiela

Jasmine

Goldie

Peaches

Goldie and Summer

There are a few girls here to be petted on a daily basis, part of my chores.

Leaving the mare herd, I went through our wildlife habitat recovery area next to the river and enjoy some of the blossoms along the river while looking for any spring Chinook spawning that might be taking place in the river now. Tis the season for salmon spawning.

Climbing down into the middle of the river, making my first cast of the day... Fish On! Appears it might be a good day for catching.

Fishing upriver, using a Copper John fly pattern and continued to catch maybe 30-40 pretty little redband trout, most in the 7"-8" size range. All were beautifully marked; red side bands, camouflaged back colors, with white tipped fins. It appeared to me that maybe no one has been fishing our ranch waters and killing fish this summer, but I didn't catch any of the larger 10" fish that were here a few weeks ago.


I do have the river well posted on our north and south side of the river. It appears that people might now be reading and respecting our private property boundaries.

I only made it up to the second fish weir today. While fishing the pool below the rocks I caught maybe a dozen fish and one hookup was caught on video.

Fish ON!!
(a video link)
~you can view at 480p and full screen~

This was my first time trying to one hand fly fish and one hand operate the video camera. Surprised what I got. You can click this link above and relive the last hookup of today with me.

I fished today for about two hours, then the two-way radio came calling. Kittee was home, and looking for me. I brought in my fly from the last cast and headed for the house. As I walked through our wildlife rehab area I spotted one of our evening fawn visitors.

Usually we have two fawns, sometimes three fawns visiting us as the sun sinks slowly into the western skies. Today I only "spotted" this one.

A day in the life --- Dale

June 2010 recap

As I sit and write this blog update, I look outside and see the wind is blowing - hard. When I flip to TWC for weather conditions in Milton-Freewater it says that our current temp is 79° with a 24 mph wind and gust up to 37 mph with the east and west horizons beginning to brown out of view with blowing dust. I think I shall stay in for the day; it is Monday the 12th of July. This morning at 6:30 I did take Shaiela to the vet in Walla Walla for a hormone shot to push her into a heat cycle with hope that she will be ready to breed this coming weekend.

Well it has been almost a month since I made a blog entry, and since then we have been very busy around the ranch and horseback riding elsewhere. It has been hard to try to find time to sit at the computer and get much work done with the weather outside turning springtime beautiful and school being out of session. With this in mind I am not going to try to recap every detail as I sit here. For this blog entry I am going to refer to my photo album since 13 June with photo journal of the comings and goings of Kittee and myself around our McKuster Ranch life.

On the 13th of June Misty was showing signs of coming into heat, so on the 14th we brought she and Rusty together for a couple of days.

We have tried to breed Misty before without success and again this time we had no success. Our vet Dr. Doug Corey says that Misty has very small ovaries and for that reason maybe barren. We would like a pretty Paint/ Arabian, but if we don't get one, we have Misty, a wonderful trail riding companion.

Wednesday 6/18 was my first fishing outing of the season with co-worker Randy and his brother. That day we spent on the Tucannon River in WA fishing the stocked ponds there. This is one day of all days that I wish I had had my camera, as when we walked up to Deer Lake a Great Blue Heron took flight from the pond, and across the pond from us sit a beautiful Bald Eagle in the top limb of a tree, that was a beautiful sight and I did not have my camera. That evening Kittee and I had fresh trout for dinner.

Friday June 18, Kittee and I stayed home and she had her secretary bring some work out to her from Pendleton. Aurora also brought along her family for some pony riding...


Later that same evening we noticed that Goldie was acting out in front of the geldings, so on the 19th, we put she and Rusty together for a couple of days of close encounters of the first kind.

She has not been pregnant checked, but we are hoping that next May we will have another foal much like our Summer.

With the advent of an early spring in February and March, we spent alot of time riding horses around here with downriver Robert. During that time we discussed alot of bird watching with Robert and that created quite an interest in our local bird population. Since that time and Robert thinks it might be due to the cool wet weather we had in April and May that we had an above average showing of colorful birds around our neighborhood. We had been paying close attention to the nesting Bullock's Orioles we had in our backyard Walnut tree and one morning while doing something on the computer I looked out the office window and there sits a Bullock's Oriole

A couple of day later downriver Robert and I headed in the direction of the Tucannon River partly due to the great fishing trip that Randy and I had at Deer Lake, the previous week. Robert has a new Orvis 4-wt. Clearwater rod/reel that he needed to train to catch fish, and found that day it worked well. We had a great day working on Deer and Big 4 lakes. Our best success was again on Deer Lake with alot of C&R fun...


Upon returning back to the ranch, we celebrated our Summer's birthday - 1 yo on the 23rd.

Oh what a sweet girl she is and it is hard to believe,
how much she has grown in a year.

Again we asked Rusty to go back into action on Friday 6/26 to service Kootenai as she was showing to our gelding herd, signs of going into heat.

The two of them spent that day and Saturday together except for the time that Kevin was here taking care of everyone hooves.

Kevin and Summer 6-26

Tuesday 6/29 Randy and again headed out for an Oregon fishing pond -- Notellum Pond -- for an opportunity to fish for triploid rainbow trout. Oh what a day that was for fly fishing...

In the middle of the afternoon an osprey joined us
for some fishing pleasure and it's mid-day meal.

Our day of fishing turned out very well.

Then on Wednesday 6/30 after a good day's work, I decided to finish off the end of the month with my first fishing excursion in the backyard. I jumped in the river about 5:00 p.m. and fished my way upriver for about 300 yards catching probably 24+ redband trout in less than two hours.

Now one thing that I really enjoy doing when catching wild trout like this guy is to take them into some calm waters and release them and watch they swim away under their own speed...

Do you see the camo colored trout at waters edge, under the blades of grass in the above pic? It also amazes me how well wild trout are camouflaged.
That same evening we had elk burgers for dinner, while the wild trout continue to swim free in our backyard.

As I was putting away my fishing gear, Kittee arrived home and we sit out under the backyard walnut tree with a beer and watched the sunset. Whelp, in a nutshell this is the way the balance of our June 2010 was finished off.

Peace be with you,




Dale

PS. This past week our video of Thank You Goldie and Rusty went over 100,000 hits on YouTube.

Walla² Fly Fishers in action

NOTE: A blog has been created for the Walla² Fly Fishers. Please follow this Walla² Fly Fishers link to follow the development of our local fly fishing club.

Yesterday a small group of the Walla² Fly Fishers went fishing up the So. Fork Walla Walla River. Air temperature in the canyon was about 80°, the water temperature was 58°, and the sky was full of sunshine. To the best of my knowledge everyone was hooking- releasing fish (C&R) and having a most enjoyable afternoon. During this meeting of the Walla² Fly Fishers, no minutes were taken, no motions were made and since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the rest of our story in the order of events...

Alex with the first hang up of the day.

Dan with his out-of-town guest from Baltimore, determining a good fly pattern to use.

I strongly suggested to the group that when fishing the So. Fork you wear jeans, cool & wet for the summertime...

In the many years that I have been fishing and horseback riding the So. Fork I have come up on maybe a half dozen buzz-tailed critters. This day was one of those times. They are heat seekers (for food) and wet jeans helps to take a fisherman's legs out of their - seeking/see ya /got ya- scenario.


This guy pictured above was about 16-18" long -- I didn't get too close for measurement -- with a buzz attachment of about 1' -- it cross my path between Dan's (above) and Lauri's (below) fishing spots. At the end of the ring-tail on the right of pic carried the buzz attachment.

Lauri appeared to be in her own fly fishing world.
Lovely world, don't you think?

Below is Herb working with the finesse of his 2wt. bamboo/fiberglass rod.

After catching up with Alex and several other guys just above the third ford, I let everyone know what to expect by fishing further upriver, and that I was going to head back to the ranch and play with my baby... horse that is

Summer - July '09

Taking an afternoon break on the river with the guys --- Dale