Yeah, I have been thinking of getting a camera for my grandkids as a education tool and entertainment when the bite is slow.

“Blind your Ponies” by a MN author, but I can’t remember his name.

The abundance of minnows I have seen on the surface of Pepin at the south end of the lake has been tremendous. They range in size of 1″ to 1/2″. I don’t know what they are but they’re everywhere. Can’t help but think it’s great for the future?

Have seen tons of minnows the last month or so near the surface out of Pepin and Stockholm with Whitey’s attacking the groups but the abundance of bait makes the action short lived. The surface temps were in the high 70’s then, not sure how this will change with the cooler temps of September. Have to think all that forage has to point towards some really good fishing in the future.

A friend of mine and I were fishing out of Alma and he said he wanted to keep some sheephead for the “lucky stones” in there heads. His boat and his cooler, so I was game. He did the surgeries and dealt with the smell, recycled the remains and then showed me the stones. I could see the L in the stone that gave them their names and was really impressed with what he and a artist friend of ours did to make them into jewelery. I will enclose some photos of the finished work.

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Thanks for your insights, Len. Getting back into trout fishing and will be checking out a good net soon. When I was younger I would do whatever was needed to get them in and that usually involved getting really wet and a less than quality treatment of the fish for release. One advantage of getting older is looking back at some of the things you don’t want your grand kids to do that you didn’t think about then. More importantly helping them think more about their impact now and for the future!

I too appreciate the stroll down memory lane. I used to help my brother-in-law tap trees 25 or so years ago. It was work with the hand drill and bit at first but he moved to a more modern and efficient method later on. I remember tapping in the beginning then pulling the taps and you had to reach up for them as the snow melted down. It was great to be apart of the changing season live. He would also save a small baby food bottle of each batch he boiled down to see the clarity difference of each batch. Sometimes it would start out darker, get lighter, and then back to darker as the season drew to a close and at other times just start out light and get darker. The variation and difference made you think more about what was really going on in the natural world and it’s affect. As I have aged that and other natural wonders have me looking more at the big picture and even more at my personal impact on it.