When winter ends
When the ice leaves the lake, winter is over. And here on Birch Lake, winter ended on April 15. This year the ice on our lake reached 26 to 28 inches thick, and the mostly cold weather through the end of March and the first weeks of April made me think ice-out would be much …
Are you a Lake Steward?
The Lake Steward program established in Minnesota is coming to Wisconsin! I gave a presentation about it with Lily Carr of Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates during the Wisconsin Lakes and Rivers Convention in Steven Point on March 27. Lake Steward uses positive recognition and neighbor-to-neighbor interaction to encourage lake property owners to install or…
Meet me at the Lakes and Rivers Convention
The Wisconsin Lakes and Rivers Convention is a great place to learn about our state’s waters, network with other lake lovers, and get a dose of springtime. I’ll be at the convention all three days (Wednesday through Friday, March 26-28). On Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. I will be part of an author Meet and…
The eagle in winter
As I sit on a red cooler working a waxworm on a jig sixteen feet below the Birch Lake ice, I hear a piercing scream from somewhere high in a tree along my shoreline. Of course it’s a bald eagle, and I wonder what he or she is doing still here in the middle of winter,…
The wonder of ice
Please feel free to share this post with your personal networks and to subscribe to this blog. I see skies of blue, clouds of white The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night And I think to myself: What a wonderful world Robert Thiele The recent warm weather has set the lake ice on…
Mature winter
It’s a Saturday mild enough for ice fishing, but first I have to shovel eight inches of snow off the stairs down to the lake—57 of them. The work is easy; the shovel neatly sweeps the light powder off each step. Later, suitably bundled up, I lug my equipment down. When I reach the ice I…
It doesn’t take a building
It doesn’t take a building You are invited to share this post with your personal and professional networks and to subscribe to this blog! I hope you’ll forgive me if I have loons in mind during these waning days of February, when the ice leaving the lakes and the loons returning is no longer a…
Words About Ice
At various times here I’ve written about my favorite website that deals with lake ice (http://lakeice.squarespace.com/properties/), from which I bowrrowed the accompanying photo. I looked it up again recently as I observed the Birch Lake ice steadily thickening. It was fully one foot thick two Saturdays ago when neighbor Charles and I caught seven species…
Coming soon: A book of stories from an angling life
Please feel free share this post with your friends and personal netwrks It’s been said that the best time to go fishing is when you can. If you’re like me, you’ve fished for more years than you’ve done almost anything else except breathing, sleeping and eating. I was on a fishing outing with my father…