It’s Christmas Eve… and we have way too much snow!

John out plowing snow again.  It’s the third time already this year that he’s had to clear the driveway. We have over three months to go yet!

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Above left – Shawano Lake in the background; also snow covered with about12 inches of ice and 4 inches of slush for the fishermen that are driving out there.

John & Mona’s 40th Anniversary

Tracy, Corey and Miranda took us out for our 40th Wedding Anniversary. We went to the Washington Inn in Cecil. Miranda likes those Cheeseburgers.

Cory Durben

CHRISTMAS AT ARLINGTON CEMETERY

Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well.
Others have taken up where you fell, the line has held.
Peace, peace, and farewell...

Readers may be interested to know that these wreaths -- some 5,000 -- are donated by the Worcester Wreath Co. of Harrington, Maine. The owner, Merrill Worcester, not only provides the wreaths, but covers the trucking expense as well. He's done this since 1992. A wonderful guy. Also, most years, groups of Maine school kids combine an educational trip to DC with this event to help out. Making this even more remarkable is the fact that Harrington is in one the poorest parts of the state.

There’s One Born Every Minute… (Swan Acre Boat Landing)

Two days after Thanksgiving and there were two groups of guys out on Shawano Lake on the ice fishing already. By the landing down from our house we saw two guys walking out on the ice with a piece of galvanized pipe which one of them used to punch a hole in the ice.  It took about two or three blows and he had his hole ready to start fishing. As he scooped the ice out of the hole with his bare hand, you could see it was only an inch to an inch and a half thick. The guy wasn’t very small and he moved about rather gingerly as not to go through the ice the way it appeared. Mona said they didn’t stay out there long so I assume he could have fallen through? (only three to four feet of water by the dock) or they got sick of it real quick. I know they didn’t catch their limit of fish there that soon.

A second vehicle parked down there later on in the afternoon into the evening.  I couldn’t see where he was fishing but I think these guys are really pushing it too soon.

Note: The photo was taken about a half an hour ago from our activity room. There were also three Bald Eagles out on the ice yesterday.

HERE'S A TIP FROM A FRIEND ----

Much of our clothing, sheets, towels, etc. now comes from companies outside of America. Even the most expensive stores sell clothing from China, Indonesia, etc. The bed bugs are coming in on the clothing from these and other foreign countries.

Professionals recommend that if you buy any new clothing, even underwear and socks, sheets, towels, etc., that you put them in your clothes dryer for at least 20 minutes. The heat will kill the bugs and their eggs. DO NOT PURCHASE CLOTHES AND HANG THEM IN THE CLOSET without first washing, or at least putting in the dryer.

It doesn't matter what the price range is of the clothes, or if the outfit comes from the most expensive store in your town. They still get shipments from foreign countries and the bugs can come in any new clothes.

(P.S. We didn't have that problem when clothes were made in America.)

Last Day Fishing in 2010–Shawano Lake

 

We went fishing on Shawano Lake one last time this year on Sunday, November 7. The fish didn’t cooperate but we had fun anyway. (Plus we didn’t have any boat problems this trip for a change.) Mona decided to take it a little easy this day so she brought along a book to keep her busy. Weather was in the 50’s and wasn’t to bad unless we were running the boat at 45 to 50 mph.

 

John takes a break from casting just to enjoy the last outing of the year. It’s going to be a long cold winter until we can get the boat out again. Monday night the boat went in to get winterized and we picked it up and put it back in the garage for storage on Tuesday night. Note the BP Station in Cecil over John’s left shoulder. That’s the corner of Highway 117 and 22.

 

 

Photo of the boat landing and Camp Grounds in Cecil. All of the seasonal campers have been pulled out and put in storage as well. There’s a few seagulls sitting in the calm lake in the foreground. The Washington Inn can be seen on the right side of the photo.

 

 

With a sad feeling within us, we decided to hang ‘er up around 3:00 pm or so. We didn’t even see one sign of a fish that day. No strikes at all, and normally you can see the little ones swimming around the boat, especially on a nice sunny day like today. This photo was taken by John as we started pulling up to the Swan Acre Boat Landing. You can make out our house in the background just over the cars and trailers in the center.

Mona's Sandhill Crane Photo

Last Saturday I had a Fishing Club Meeting at the Walleyes For Tomorrow Office in Fond Du Lac, WI. (About 85 miles from Cecil.) There was some pretty good stretches of fog every once in a while so it was a little tuff to see where we were from time to time. Below is one of the photos that Mona snapped in once area where the fog lifted some. It was taken about midway between Navarino and Black Creek.

Mona caught this photo last Saturday morning.

Sauerkraut 2010 Update

The white kraut on the left is half fermented. It needs a total of 6 weeks. The kraut on the right was made just over a week ago with two heads of white and one head of red cabbage. We've got 36 quarts of kraut fermenting compared to 17 last year. We just cleaned up the last jar from last year yesterday.

One Way Trip on Shawano Lake on 10/10/2010

Sunday morning we got up and made our breakfast as usual. Hooked up the boat to the van and took off to Cecil to fill the boat with gas before heading out to Shawano Lake.  We didn't want to run out of gas like we did a few outings ago while we were out by the Island. We got on the lake shortly after 8:30 or so. (Click on photos to enlarge)



Mona caught and released this 5 inch Largemouth while fishing for Bluegills.

While heading down the outlet toward the river we spotted a pair of Eagles.

A short time later we came upon another pair of Eagles. One of them flew away before we could get a picture of them.

We fished for about 3 hours for Bass and Northern with little success. Being somewhat bored and needing to put a couple meals of fish in our freezer we decided to fish for Bluegills. Between the two of us, we caught about 20 of them but nothing with any size worth putting in the livewell.

The decision was made to head over to The Lighthouse Bar near the Airport to hit the rest rooms and get a couple cans of soda since the weather was beginning to warm up a little bit. Once returning to the boat we decided that we would head down the outlet towards downtown Shawano. While motoring towards downtown at a no wake speed, John kept on snapping photos of the fall scenery that surrounded us. By the end of the day he had over 150 photos.

After going as far as we wanted we turned around and ran wide open up to the no wake area a few hundred yards from the bridge we go under to go back towards the lake. All of a sudden the alarm on the motor went off indicating the the motor had over heated on us. John shut the motor of right away so that we wouldn't cause any damage to the motor. We had been traveling through a lot of weeds in the water and the motor probably wasn't getting enough water to cool it properly.

We used the trolling motor again to get us over to the marina right by the bridge and tied up to one of their docks and waited for the motor to cool down so that we could head back home and watch the rest of the Packer Game. The motor wouldn't start after several attempts over a period of time. Here we are nearly 8 miles from our van and boat trailer and we can't get the boat started.

Mona had her cell phone so she called one of our neighbors who was kind enough to pick John up and run him back to our vehicle. The marina had a boat launch, however it is not in the best condition. We got the boat on the trailer after a lot of effort but when we tried to pull the trailer out of the water the front wheels of the van only spun and wouldn't move. We had to push the boat back into the water and move the trailer out of the water a little more. The landing has a drastic 6 inch straight down drop that the trailer tires got stuck on.  Now there were no trailer rollers in the water so it was going to be a job getting the boat out.  We were lucky that there was a women who stopped to check out the area for fishing and a guy with a jet ski who wanted to launch showed up. After a good amount of effort from the four of us we got the boat on the trailer and this time the van had no problem pulling it out. (The motor started the next day after changing the spark plugs.)

More Rain

The "Old Weather Man" is telling us we're going to get 2 to 5 inches of rain before this storm front blows over some time tomorrow. Whoopee!

Sure glad it's not snow...

Starting to Look like Fall on Shawano Lake 2010

We're only three weeks into September and the change in tempuratures and the change of the colors outside is making me think that fall has one foot in the door already. We should have a few days yet before it's official. Below are a couple of photos I took today around the Lake.

Time to Make Some More Sauerkraut

It's that time of the year again. Time to make some more Sauerkraut. We made 17 quarts last year and we only have one quart left.

Mona pictured here today cleaning and

chuncking the cabbage so that I can grate it on our

 mini Cabbage Cutter. It's a little small -

 but beats cutting it up with a chef's knife.

We use a big plastic tub to put the kraut in over night.

Here is some of the kraut as we dumped it into the big tub with salt. Yesterday we went to Black Creek (through all the road construction) to get some cabbage. We came home with 9 pretty good sized heads. We wanted to make sure we had enough because we wanted to make more this year than last year. We only grated 5 of the 9 heads and had 43 pounds of kraut. The recipe claims they use a pound per quart so we know we have more than last year.

Tomorrow night (Monday) we will place it in jars and put the lids on tight and let it sit for six weeks. After it has fermented, we dump it all together in the tub again and then pack it back into the cleaned jars with new lids. Throw it in the pressure cooker for the desired amount of time and then we have Sauerkraut.

Another Shawano Lake Large-Mouth

Of course I'm referring to the fish. Mona caught this nice Large-Mouth Bass last weekend on my favoirte spinner bait by Northland. Note: In case you were wondering - we only do C.P.R. on Bass and other large trophy game fish. This one should still be swimming around in the Lake until it grabs another lure.

The Schwoerer Family 2010

Mat, Ervin, Lisa and Carl. The Schwoerer's were elected to host the reunion this year and I have to add they did a great job. They picked a great park with a shelter that hid us from the hot sun, and perhaps the rain after we left because we hit rain on the way home. You couldn't ask for better weather while we were there. Although I didn't take a head-count, I heard someone say there were about 50 people there.

Peter Michael Durben Family 2010

Third and forth from the left are Eunice and Adam, I'm going to need some help with some of the rest of the family and friends.

Agnes Schwoerer Family 2010

Agnes (third from the right). I'm going to need some help with this one.

A Couple of the Diedrich Girls

Lynn, Dexter, Jeanette and Don caught here after I missed them with the formal pose set up by Toni earlier.

Michael Paul Durben Family 2010

Mike, Carol, Denise and Dustin made the trip from Texas again this year.

Servatius Durben Family 2010

Toni and Cindi with their family attending this year.

Joy Rose (Durben) Nienow Family

David and Joy on the left with their family.

Durben Family Reunion - (Last group but not least)

From left: (The John M. Durben Family) John, Julie, Cody, Mona, Dorothy.
Note: Next year's reunion will be hosted by Toni Durben and Family.

Photo from Algoma Webcam

Cousin Denise caught this photo of us while we were facing the Webcam in Algoma. She downloaded it from the Internet on her iphone and emailed it to me. It was taken while they were up here for the 2010 Family Reunion.

Photo includes: Dustin, Mona, Denise, Carol, Mike and myself.

Chippewa Flowage 2010

Mona keeps her eyes glued to the bobber in anticipation of it going down.

John/Mona and Brewster

John brings the boat to the landing so we can load it up in preparation of leaving the next morning.

Mona with more fish on the "Big Chip"!

Got a little Northern in the basket.

Another little Northern

Time to clean some crappies

Wildlife on the chippewa Flowage was Fantastic...

Above Left this photo was taken directly into the sun of a young Eagle. The Right photo was taken just after this Blue Huron swallowed a fish (looked like a small bluegill). Note the lump in it's throat.

Left - This Blue Huron is stalking some of the little bait fish that hung out around the shore line while in the other photo a mature Eagle sits on a fallen tree waiting for lunch.

 

Above left: This guy just moved over to a different spot as we were fishing bluegills. The right photo was taken from inside the cabin. You can see the side of the window on the left. It appears he got him self a little snack there. Again, into the sun. I wonder if this is the same guy that checked out my boat last year?

This is the same bird from above right and now he has to get a  little

drink to wash it down.

This Grouse was on the side of the road one day when went for a

ride around the Flowage.

Again we went to Hayward one day and this Turtle was on the

side of the road on Hwy CC. I had to grab the camera quick

and snap this picture.  I know that if my Father had been along

with us he would have stopped and picked him up and we would

have had Turtle Soup.

As we were cruising along heading out to one of our fishing spots

John noticed this deer in the bushes keeping an eye on us. A

little while later we saw another deer in the water crossing the lake

coming to the side where this one was.

This little guy was running around when we were up checking our

e-mail up at the Lodge. He had a mouth full of oak leaves and he

was bound and determined that he was going to go around us.

Later he ran right under the table past John's feet to get where he

wanted to go. You can see, there is a lot of wildlife around if that's

what you're into. We are.

John Caught Some Fish As Well

First of 3 small northen caught in Scott Lake

Number 2 of 3 in the same place.

This guy has some scuffs on his skin from something larger

than him.