Grouse Hollow Journal for February 9, 2017 by Greg Koelker

Grouse Hollow Journal for February 9, 2017 by Greg Koelker

I spent Sunday morning ice sitting.  That is a new winter sport I have invented this last week.  It is where one sits on the ice by a small hole and does NOT catch fish.  Vince and I spent a lot of time scouting the usual spots and deciding on a new one by a friend’s Black River- side home, named appropriately Kickin’ Back.  Anyway, we drilled holes in the 18-inch Black River ice and commenced to looking at them and our electronics.  He has a Marcum and I have a Vexillar flasher.  The bottom and denizens of the deep show up on the scope as red, green, yellow flashing blips that shows their depth.  Vince did catch a few fish, in fact he schooled me as I only managed to get one small bluegill on the ice.  He caught maybe 14: bluegills, crappies, and perch that unfortunately were all size-challenged like mine.  Anyway, we got in a little sunshine and fresh air.  There were no fish to clean so we headed over to Nutbush for breakfast.  For those of you who say you enjoy hearing about what grub I had this week, I had the special: eggs over easy, whole wheat toast, sausage links, and hashbrowns.  Vinny had biscuits and gravy with an over easy egg on top.  We topped off breakfast with a stop at Menards.  

When I pulled in at the ranch, my girls were just heading out on snowshoes.  Okay, El was on snowshoes, not Scout.  Scout did run over to the top of the retaining wall so I could rub her ears from above me before they went up the hill.  El also shared the details of a call from her brother, Brian of River Falls who was going north to find fish with his son, nephew Cory.  He told Ellen he was fixing wings for Superbowl supper over at Cory and Juliets and Ellory’s.  After they left, instead of cleaning fish, I went for a short walk myself before heading in to watch the Badgers and Hoosiers.  Go Badgers!    

This last week, I used one of our trusty Fiskars limbing tools to trim up our red and yellow raspberries in the garden and along the sunny side of the tobacco shed.  I couldn’t really tell which canes should get topped instead of cut off completely so they all got chopped down.  In September there will be red raspberries anyway - I hope.  We are planning on moving our black raspberries into a more sunny spot and putting them in wired up rows to train them and keep them thinned out.  Right now the black raspberries have gotten away from us and are growing in a 10-foot wide and thirty-foot long prickly jungle.  While I was working on the canes, it was nice enough except for a cutting breeze that made the upper 20’s raw.  Okay, it wasn’t all that nice.  Anyway, while doing the trimming, I was transported to summer days when the berries will be filling out and the bees will be buzzing around.  I was imagining evenings on the porch and boat rides at sunset over the bluffs and, well hopefully - these canes will be hanging heavy with those tart, juicy, thumb sized red berries that go so well with ice cream and bake up in crisps to go with ice cream and red raspberry pie.  Of course, the piece de resistance - for our berries at least - is Ellen’s famous Three-Berry Jam.  Yellow, red, and black raspberry jam.  It don’t get no better.  Oh yeah, with the tame berries at least started on their way to the kitchen, their wild cousins can use a little love too.  We have a large, unruly wild blackberry patch up on the ridge.  I need to start working on next summer by digging down deep for ambition enough to get up the ridge with pruning tools to trim some more of the canes up there (I pruned a few one nice day back in November) so there may be more wild berries to pick too.  We shall see.

Until next time, get out - I was at the 14th Stoddard Bay Jiggin’ Jamboree on Saturday.  The proceeds from the fisheree go to benefit Stoddard parks.  They had lots of door prizes and some awesome pulled pork sandwiches.  While the fishing was cold, things were heated up in the jamboree headquarters as fishermen came in to register their catches.  Paul Larson won the bluegill division with a 9.5-inch gill that weighed in at .85 pounds.  Tom Welch registered a 12.5 inch crappie and that weighed in at 1.27 pounds to win that division, while Dino Penkalski had a 31-inch northern pike that registered 7.87 pounds.  Oddly enough, as productive a bass fishing spot as Stoddard Bay can be, there were no bass registered this day, still Peggy Miller won first place in the bass division - after her name was pulled from a bucket.  Anyway, it was fun to see so many of my former students and talk fishing.  Ellen is making a Nacho Pie for super bowl supper.  Enjoy.