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.