Nevada Fishing in September 2008

Nevada Fishing

Here's Dad and Lad enjoying fishing together in sunny northern Nevada. As you can see we don't exert ourselves too much. I learned everything about fishing from my Dad. It took years of training to become the expert that I am.

This is the catch of the day. We tried to weigh it but the scales didn't work right. It said only 2 pounds, but then the smallest fish of the day only weighed 2 pounds as well. We took a guess at about 4 or 5 pounds. It's still the biggest lake trout I've ever caught.





This is the most interesting catch of the day. I was just sitting minding my own fishing pole like in the first picture. Wouldn't you know right in the middle of a good fishing story this bird come swooping down and hit my fishing line, tumbled into the water and started flopping around. My pole headed down the bank toward the water. With cat like reflexes, I scrambled down the bank to intercept the pole just before losing it in the water. The now frantic bird is trying to fly away so the fight is on between fisherman or would it be birdman and bird. The bird is up in the air but can't maintain altitude because of one wing being tangled in fishing line so comes falling down into the water. Flapping the wing doesn't get the line loose but does make for an interesting time at the fishing pole end of the line. After a minute or two of intense fighting the situation, the bird kind of gave up and considered himself dead and allowed himself to be reeled in to shore. With the help of my Dad and Brother-in-law, we managed to cut the creature loose and set him free. I don't think the bird even hit the ground. As soon as he was set free, he took off at maximum warp speed and was clear out of sight in a matter of seconds.

After the excitement was over my Brother-in-law turned to me and said, "I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before." We all had a good laugh and will most likely be talking about that catch for a long time.

You just never know what will happen when old Dave goes fishin'

Louisiana September 2008 Part 1

I'm still nursing an aching muscle or two from the chainsaw crew that I was a part of last week. We went to a small town called Denham Springs, LA. There we hooked up with a man called Link who had a beastly old boom truck. With the help of this truck we lifted 40 foot tree trunks off of houses that the trees had fallen on top of. I found my niche with a 460 Stihl chainsaw that had a 36 inch bar. With this saw we cut the tree trunks in 8 or 9 foot chunks to come within the weight limit of the scat trac. We usually piled these trees up either by the road for pickup or in the woods to rot away in peace.

We slept in a house owned by the hosting church and ate food prepared by the hosting church. All in all it was a terrific trip with lots of hard work.

The biggest tree we worked on came on the last day. It was a 60 inch across the stump, 100 year old, oak tree. Lightning had struck the tree and bored a 3 inch hole right down the middle of the tree all the way down into the roots. We hooked a 100 foot rope about half way up the tree and tied it to the boom truck. When the tree gave a crack Ron, the cutter, ran and the truck driver gave it the juice. The tree fell right where we had planned to fall. That's always a good thing.

Earlier in the week on a much smaller tree that wasn't quite the case. They left me in charge of cutting down a much smaller tree. Well, the rope came off the tree and the tree strayed off course. The tree christened a home made flower pot. The tree fell smack in the middle of the cut in half water heater. How ever the good news was that it missed the cable TV wires. The cable man had just left, so it wouldn't have been a good thing to cut off the cable right after just getting it fixed. I can just see this Cajun lady chasing me around the property because I had cut off her just fixed cable TV. If you get chased by a Cajun you can be assured it isn't with a broom. Guns abound in Louisiana. So I for one was glad to see the wires remain intact.

I was seriously thinking about hooking up with another team that was coming to the same area and staying another week, but maybe it's a good thing for me that never happened.

There is so much left to do there and news coverage has subsided due to elections.

Louisiana Chain Saw David