At the Range with the Wife

If you haven’t guessed by now, two of my favorite past times involve fishing rods and fire arms. On one particular occasion, my wife agreed to come to the range and see what all the fuss was about. This was her first time firing an AR style rifle like this (Sig556). She was a bit nervous, but she did quite well I must say.

Here is her first target at 100 yards, and a short video clip of her in the act. I love you Markell!

Summer Fishing

Here in Texas, most of the fishing comes to a halt due to the heat, mostly it's too hot to be out on the water past 10:00 AM. However I have discovered several ways to keep the fish biting. In the summer the fish go deep because of two things, 1) The water temperature 2) Supportive O2 levels. One way I continue to catch fish is by going out early, sometimes as early as 3 AM! Going out early is great, but I think the fish prefer to sleep during 2 AM - 6 AM so if you can get out on the water by 6 AM I think you will have better performance and you undoubtedly get more sleep!

In late spring I went on a fishing trip to Minnesota and was also in search of lures that go deep. My local sporting goods stores and bait shops did not carry what I was looking for, the Deep Tail Dancer. The Deep Tail Dancers are made by RAPALA, they come in three flavors, but I prefer the 20' and 30' dive models because that is where the fish hang when it's hot. Shown here are four of my favorites: Flash Yellow Pearch, Bleeding Copper Flash, Flash Perch, and Purpledescent; since the surface temperatures have gone above 80 degrees, these are the ticket. On these lures shown I have caught plenty of bass

and several white bass at all hours of the day while trolling. Trolling is my new found love in Texas. As a boy we always trolled in MN, that's the best way to catch Northern Pike. I bought the lures as a means of catching striper in the summer, so far no luck, I even purchased salt water RAPALAs since they also have the X-RAP Magnum 30' seems like overkill for the lake, but check out this picture of Anders with a small largemouth.
On this particular trip we learned a lot about deep water high speed trolling!

Lucky Striper Hat!!

I would like to send out a special "Thank You" to my good friends at LEO ARMORY http://www.leoarmory.com/ for the great hat they sent me. I purchased a SigSauer 556 HOLO and a Trijicon ACOG 4x scope last November, I got the package at a terrific price and they threw in a hat as a bonus! Well, when I began searching for stripers this fall I had no luck wearing a free hat that I received from OPSGEAR http://www.opsgear.com/, as soon as I began wearing the LEO ARMORY headgear, I have managed to catch one on every outing. I have made the LEO ARMOY headgear my standard when seeking stripers (if you belive in stuff like that). Thanks again for the geat products and the "lucky" hat.

http://www.leoarmory.com/

Winter Striper Fishing

This past year I decided to pick up fishing again and use my boat (for the first time) in the fall and winter. After several months of fishing at varying times of day, trying to understand the relationship between water temperatures, feeding habits, and the solar and lunar effects, I can honestly say that I have made some progress in the arena of Striper fishing on Lake Travis. I began attempting Stripers January. I had been fishing in a little cut that never produced anything but a few Largemouths, some White Bass, and a couple of Crappie and almost always a Channel or Blue Catfish. It always seemed like a nice "protected" place to fish and hoped it would turn up a few lunkers, but it never did.

I decided to go to deeper water and deploy a new Humminbird 343c. The fish finder is so awesome! It takes the guess work out of where the fish are, or where they aren't. Being able to definitively see where they are hanging out and what depth is such a great asset; now all you have to do is plug in bait type and presentation, and a little patience.

At the end of January, the day that I caught my first Striper, this photo shows what the environment looked like. What you are looking at is a 200KHz narrow band (right under the boat). While a finder cannot tell you what type of fish it is pinging, it can reveal some interesting if not notable details. For instance, these fish are most likely at that depth due to temperature or supporting oxygen levels. In this photo, I had the depth finder "sensitivity" set to the lowest level. What that does is remove a lot of the clutter that can appear from the surface all the way down to the bottom. What you are left with is just fish and the disturbance they are making; you can also tell if (a) fish is making an ascent or has made a decent. According to the fishing reports, Striped Bass have pretty much been slow all winter, but have been biting somewhere between 25-40 feet. According to this photo, there are no big fish above 68 feet, this means the fish have to be persuaded up. I have tried to fish at their level, but I never get bites - it seems you just have to wait for one or two to get hungry. Eventually one did, a 22" male.

More Hunting on Rancho Gurra

After one whole year without seeing one single deer on iAnders' land, I was beginning to think only scorpions and a few lizards were all that lived on Rancho Gurra. After we killed a Feral Pig a month back, the hunting has definitely improved. On the first morning of the hunt, I managed to spook some wild turkeys (hens and a tom), took a few shots but didn't manage to bring any back to base camp. After I got back to camp and put away the Benelli, within a few minutes I saw some movement to the South; thinking maybe it was a cow, I instinctively went for the Ruger M77 .270. Well, as the story goes, it wasn't a cow but in fact a pretty good sized Texas White Tail.

My pal iAnders got his the morning we were to break camp; a nice buck with eight points.

While I had the most difficult shot, the "frontal" shot, iAnders was faced with the most undesirable shot, the "anal" shot, however he was patient enough to wait for the buck to turn sideways and that's when he dropped him. The meat is being processed in Rocksprings, having steaks and sausage made...uh mm, uh mm! We'll try and make one more trip in January for the late season, but we'll just have to see.

Hunting at Rancho Gurra, Texas

Here is my pal "iAnders" with the Feral Pig he took down with his Bushmaster 5.56 right at sunset on his spraling ranch.
For a year now, my compadre`Anders and I have been traveling to his "paradise" away from home for a bit of hunting, R&R, and land improvements. On his massive land expanse, there are White Tailed Deer, Wild Turkeys, Feral Pigs, and other varmints to hunt. While all of the other 5 trips turned up nothing but a great time in the out-of-doors, this trip finally paid off. (I was recently given some "manure" about how Anders never gets exclusive billing on my blog and how he has to share the limelight; well, this post is going to be all Anders, or better yet.... "iAnders" from now on)

This particular trip we also "prepped" the land for the General Hunting Season (begins Nov. 7) by setting up several game cameras, repaired and set up several deer feeders, finalized the hunting positions and began setting up some overhead cover in case of rain. We also managed to do some ritualistic firearms training, zeroing the weapons, checking the trajectories, and selecting the best ammo.


iAnders again showing me the not so proper way of getting "kissed" by the scope when firing the Winchester.
















We will be heading back out to Rancho Guerra this Veteran's day for 4 days of hunting, hopefully we'll bag a few more pigs and maybe some turkeys or even maybe a trophy deer!

Where did the Summer go?!

I guess I need to come to the realization that Fall arrived last week and that means Summer is over. Right now it's still a great time to be outdoors. Dove season started on September 1st and I was able to go several times and save a few doves a long hard trip South. The lake temperatures are also beginning to cool and the fish are beginning to bite. Last weekend I managed to land a pretty descent Largemouth Bass and a bunch of Catfish, those I just release because... I ain't cleaning them. I shouldn't be too sad that Summer has come to an end, we were able to stay at several lakehouses around Lake Travis, spent a lot of time on the water and drank a lot of adult beverages. I threw together a short wipeout video just to prove I wasn't always driving the boat. Enjoy.