Category Archives: Wandering

A Walk in the Snow

Last year on February 22nd I was already hitting the creeks. Nothing hot and heavy, but I was seven miles up from the mouth and there were already a few fish around.

This winter I’ve been pretty much a slug. I did a decent job explaining why recently and the more normal weather pattern this year meant more days below freezing. I can’t stand being out in that weather anymore.

I have my own rule that I won’t go out fishing if the temps are below 32 degrees. Dealing with ice in my guides drives me nuts and I simply won’t do it.

This week I had to get out. I had been sitting around all week going stir crazy and since it was a hair above freezing, I had no more excuses.

Last year we had a drought. I did a pretty good job of documenting the effect the drought had on one of my favorite creeks culminating in October with this post. A mile long stretch of the creek had completely dried up.

Where’d the Water Go?

With the rain and the snow we’ve been getting I knew the creeks were getting back to normal. I thought I may as well go check on the stretch that was dry last year. It too had water in it again, like the drought had never happened.

The following shot was taken on July 29, 2012. Hard to imagine, but by mid October it was even lower, or more dried up I guess.

This shot is of the same spot, different angle. I didn’t have the right boots on to go wandering around in the creek.

All back to normal. I normally don’t take vertical pictures. Something seems unnatural about them. I have a very wide field of vision. While looking straight ahead, I can see nearly 90 degrees in both directions horizontally. Vertically, not so much. It’s just the way we’ve evolved as humans. I think if more predators dropped from the sky to eat our ancestors, we’d have less of a brow and a more vertical field of vision.

So I turned the camera 90 degrees and took a picture of the same spot.

To each their own.

The snow we got the other day was wet, heavy and came in riding strong northeast winds. If you faced south, this became evident with the way the snow clung to the trees and branches.

But if you faced north, you either saw nothing on the trees or just a sliver of white.

Only one other person had been here since it snowed a few days earlier, but the animal tracks were everywhere. Squirrel tracks were easy to figure out, they went from one tree to the next in no discernible pattern.

The raccoons and deer seem to be creatures of habit. They follow the same paths on a regular basis, back and forth to the creek for a drink of water. There were a couple of sets of coyote tracks and they seem to not only follow the other tracks, but wander off into the woods, sometimes digging all the snow away from an area. I’m assuming they’re looking for something that buried themselves in the snow and leaves to get away from the coyotes.

I tried to get pictures of all the different animal foot prints, but the snow was a bit too deep and the depth of the snow obscured the details. They looked like holes in snow.

Next week warmer weather is called for, near 50 for a few days. I’ll be back here then. I have no hopes of catching anything. Fish will return quickly to creeks once they feel the water coming from them, but this is nine miles up from the river and it is still winter. I also don’t think the numbers of fish will be back for another year or two. I’ve seen this happen before.

I swear smallies are like salmon that way. I have no proof of this other than observations made over the years. There are the obvious runs of fish up the creeks in the spring for spawning, but there’s another run that happens in the fall, starting at end of August and lasting almost through October. The fall run is made up of hundreds of smaller fish. I have no clue why this is so consistent from year to year.

At least for the next two or three years I get to play with this little mental game of mine. As long as we keep getting rain.

Please Don’t put up Pictures of Fog

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But I like fog.

I like the way it visually cuts me off from my surroundings. This one wasn’t horribly dense, but you could see nothing beyond the trees on the opposite shore of the river barely 100 yards away. Even those were indistinct shades of gray.

In the tree on the left are a couple of bald eagles, no, really.

Fishing in fog like this is one of my favorite things to do. It makes you concentrate and focus on what is readily apparent rather than letting your mind wander on what is down stream and around the next bend. You can’t see the next bend.

This morning I had already been out on my porch listening to the bald eagles talk down on the river. The geese were being unusually noisy this morning too. Maybe because of the eagles. With the air temperatures just above 40 degrees, it was time to go for a walk. We’ve had a long stretch of below freezing temps and this year my bones are paying the price. Today they didn’t feel so bad.

I could tell by the sound that there were a lot of geese along the river. They were thick on the ice and in the shallow water below the dam when I got there. Some were already getting nervous about me walking along the shore and took off.

The geese that hang out around here all year don’t get so nervous. I can always tell how wild the geese are by how close they let you get. The more domestic ones will let you walk right up to them, they get used to people tossing them food. The wilder ones will start honking and moving around, getting agitated.

I decided to make matters worse by walking out on a spit of land that got me even closer to the geese. The honking kept getting louder.

It wasn’t long before they started leaving in small groups.

This kept up for a few minutes.

Till they were all pretty much airborne.

I quickly realized there were now a few hundred pissed off flying crapping machines over my head.

I flipped the hood onto my head and stood on the end of the spit of land to watch what I started. The honking was deafening and there were so many geese low over my head that I could feel the vibrations from displaced air coming off their wings and onto my eardrums. It took them a few minutes to realize I wasn’t leaving and they headed off down stream.

The other benefit of fog is that it deadens the noise of human activity, but I noticed that it had practically no affect on the sound of the birds on the river. I noticed how clearly I could hear the eagles this morning though they were two blocks away. As I walked home in the same direction the geese flew, I could hear them still pissed off and honking, but I couldn’t see them.

I think I’ve always noticed this, but not so distinctly as today. There must be something about the sound waves from their noises that cuts through the fog. I would assume so they can continue to know where each other are even if they couldn’t see each other.

The geese were heading down stream making a ruckus. I could hear them flying around and remembered that there were few places for them to land. The river further down was already filled with birds and I’m sure no further company was wanted. A half hour later I went in the house. The birds were still squawking loudly.

My mother-in-law was sitting in the living room and commented on the sounds of the geese as I walked into the house. She could hear the noise building out on the river two blocks away even in a closed up house.

Yeah, that was me. I decided to have a little fun with the geese.

“They didn’t sound like they were having fun.”

Bald Eagles on the Fox River Update

Bald Eagles on the Fox River

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Apparently I wrote about bald eagles on the Fox River in Yorkville back in January of 2012. Then I did it again at the end of December 2012. But when you see over 20 of them in one day, it’s hard not to bring it up again.

The small lakes and ponds in the surrounding area are all frozen over. Much of the Fox River is ice too, something hard to believe for water that flows. You wouldn’t think that’s possible. The ducks and geese that rely on open water have fewer places to go. The Yorkville dam is about a half mile away from me and the churning water over the dam keeps the river relatively free of ice for a good mile.

Everything that flies seems to congregate in these open areas. Thousands of waterfowl are gathered on the river below my house and many more arrive every day around sunset. The constant honking of the geese can be heard blocks away and it goes on well into the night. Blue herons are flying all over the place looking for spots between the geese to land.

For the last few days the reports of bald eagles on the Fox River have been appearing in earnest. The eagles too are looking for open water. Being primarily fish eaters, they have fewer places to go and I’m sure if all else fails, they’ll pick off a bird or two when hungry enough.

Friend and avid bird watcher, Larry Granat along with his wife Debbie, reported seeing 9 of them on Tuesday in Yorkville. For the birders, Larry runs a Facebook page called The Kendall County Bird Page and it’s worth a visit.

The photo at the top of this post is one of the photo’s Larry took that day as well as the following two. I really need to get me one of those cameras. I have film cameras that have this capability, but what’s film?

As far as I can tell, that’s a gizzard shad that it plucked out of the river for lunch.

On Thursday I went down to the river to see the eagles for myself. At the bottom of the hill and on the other side of the river is the mouth of a creek. Just outside the creek mouth is a small island. In the still water around the island were a few hundred geese and perched in the tree of the island were six eagles. By the time I got in position to take a picture, two of the eagles had flown off.

I know, they’re hard to see, but once you get used to what you’re looking for you can’t miss them.

Then I wandered over to the dam and got to see six more. Around 10 or 11 years ago I had seen my first eagle on the river and continued to see one now and then in the coming years. But the last few years have been bringing many more to the Fox River. I couldn’t believe I had just seen 12.

On Friday I went for a drive along the river from Yorkville to Montgomery, about 10 miles. Before even leaving Yorkville I had already seen nine eagles. I stopped at a number of places along the river only to find the river pretty locked up with ice. The few places that had small patches of open water were acting like magnets for the geese.

When I got to Orchard Road I noticed it was the dividing line between open water up stream and a river made up of almost solid ice. I didn’t expect this. I thought it would be all ice even further up. The mile and a half stretch from Orchard Road to Oswego has practically no access points for a car. You can hike that length, but it can be a challenge.

As I drove north along the river out of Oswego the eagles seemed to be every few hundred yards. Sometimes by themselves and other times three or four in a tree. I gave up counting them when I got to 20 and decided to just enjoy the ride and spotting eagles. I wound up seeing many more than 20 by the end of my ride.

With all this open water along this stretch, the waterfowl have congregated by the thousands. I couldn’t get in a good position to take a picture, so this shot from the same stretch a few years ago will have to do. Picture many more birds, but you get the idea.

On the way home, on the road along the river and below my house, I came across one eagle sitting in a tree about 50 feet away. I knew if I got out of the car it would take off, so with window rolled down and the zoom on my point and shoot camera all the way out, I kept taking pictures till it turned it’s head just enough to give me a profile.

I really do need to get a better camera.

Friends have been telling me that they are spotting eagles even further north. From Elgin to St. Charles and Batavia, but not in the numbers we’re seeing further south. So far anyway.

So get out your map and get to Montgomery right on the Fox River. You want to drive south on Route 25 starting at the dam. At one point you’ll want to take a side street that keeps you along the river and into Oswego. No, I’ve only been driving down that street for over a dozen years and I don’t know the name of it. That’s what maps are for, you’ll find it.

If you make it down to Yorkville, start at the dam. Right at the dam is a great little coffee house called River City Roasters . If you’re lucky you can get a window seat and leisurely gawk at the eagles. At least you’ll have a place where you can go in and warm up.

A lot of people in Illinois travel good distances to view bald eagles. Out to the Mississippi River, the Rock River and one of the most popular spots, Starved Rock State Park on the Illinois River. I will grant that those areas may offer a better scenic view, but I saw well over 20 eagles in a short distance and it’s barely 50 miles from downtown Chicago.

You can’t beat that.

The 10 day weather forecast shows virtually no change in this weather pattern, so the conditions needed to keep the eagles around for at least two more weeks are pretty good.

Bring some binoculars and don’t forget your camera.

Hopefully you have a better one than I do.

What Doesn’t Kill Ya…

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For the past couple of weeks, my back has been twinging. On a pain scale of 1 to 10, it’s always at a number five, something I’ve got used to over the years. This morning, up a bit early to get a few things done around the house in anticipation of nearly 20 people stopping by, in brushing my teeth bent slightly over the sink. Pain level at maybe a 6.

I cough.

Sonofafuckingbitch, as someone sticks a hot knife in the spot where my spine meets my pelvis. The toothbrush rattles around the sink bowl as my hands clutch the vanity and I try hard to not drop to the floor. I can’t feel my legs, the pain has sky rocketed well beyond the 10 mark. Happy fucking Thanksgiving to me…

I know in a couple of minutes I’ll get some feeling back below my hips and be able to put my weight back on my legs, albeit tentatively.

The first time this happened I was 21, 35 years ago. I had bent over to pick up a pair of pants and the next thing I knew, my head was meeting a concrete floor. Doctors visits, x-rays, inconclusive. That was the beginning of the constant 5 on the pain scale.

When I was 31, picking up another pair of pants found me head first in a laundry basket. I somehow hobbled down some stairs, sat down in a chair and blacked out from the pain. For the next 30 days my legs were useless to me and the pain was at a constant 10. At some point three people carried me out to a minivan and laid me in the back of it for a trip to a doctor. Lifting legs, twisting and turning, ow, son of a bitch don’t ever fucking do that again… inconclusive. Take some Advil, it will go away.

On the 30th day, I’d had enough. Over the next 30 days I had to teach myself to walk all over again. After another 30 days I was able to finally walk without a cane. For the next seven years the pain level was always somewhere between 5 and 10. I refused to let it stop me from doing anything I wanted to do and at times, I paid for it.

At 38 I went and saw a chiropractor. There had to be something I could do. A series of x-rays and I get a phone call…

“Did you fall on your back when you were about eight years old?”

Yes I did, it was intentional. I remember knocking the wind out of myself and then going back to play.

“Well, you broke your back and it never healed correctly.”

What……?

At least now I knew what the problem was. To fix it, according to the chiropractor, they would have to go in through the front, put all my intestines on the table next to me, saw off the broken vertebra and… Stop, stop, stop. That’s never going to happen.

“Then I’ll do what I can do to take the pressure off and you should be fine.”

For the most part, that’s worked out pretty well. Minor setbacks now and then, but generally things go back to normal relatively quickly. I could live with that.

“You do realize that someday an incident might paralyze you.”

Hopefully when I’m too old to care anymore.

This morning, I got some feeling back in my legs. I looked at the pain wracked face in the mirror. I tried to stand up straight and from my waist up, I looked like the tower in Pisa. Sonofafuckingbitch, it was going to look like this for a good two weeks and hurt like hell.

I forced myself straight and felt something shift in my pelvis. Suddenly the pain disappeared and I was standing perfectly straight. This had never happened before. I had already resigned myself to a few weeks of pain and leaning. It was gone, only, I had no clue what I did to fix it. I wish I could write down what I did so I could remember it for next time, there will be a next time.

And that is what will kill me some day.

I refuse to let my back limit anything I like to do. In this case, fishing. I like to explore and get to those isolated spots where no one goes. Hiking deep into the woods, along overgrown small creeks. I follow the paths that critters make,

forgetting that at times the critters only range from one to four feet tall. I wind up on hands and knees crawling through the woods,

getting extremely familiar with what grows on the forest floor.

The creeks are so overgrown, with trees arching low over the surface, that even then I have to get my nose within inches of the flowing water to continue down stream.

One of these will some day destroy my back. I’ll wind up face down in the dirt incapable of moving. Or worse, face down in the creek, knocked out by the boulder my head happens to meet.

For this reason I always carry a cell phone with me. My wife always knows where I am. As she says… Great, I’ll know where you’re car is, now you’ll be within a two mile radius of it somewhere…

The price you pay for being stupid.

And no, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger. In my case, it seems to make me dumber. A couple of weeks after recuperating from one of these incidences and I’d be out there again. On hands and knees, sliding down steep embankments, hitting creek bottoms with a thud, tripping and falling over unseen objects that reach up and grab you by the legs and throw you to the ground.

What doesn’t kill ya is just another story to tell on how stupid you can be just so you can go do a bit of fishing, or maybe some hunting.

And if it does kill ya some day, that will be one hell of a story.