Memorial Day Weekend

It's Memorial Day and I got a few fish pictures from the Holiday.


The river was totally calm and glassy Sunday early evening.


This is one of the regular size Rock Bass from the river.




Smallmouth Bass from Sunday :)


This one's a 20 inch Northern Pike I caught this evening.

The Northern was the only thing I caught in 2 hours of fishing today (Memorial Day).

I went to the Duluth Memorial Day parade etc but forgot to charge my camera batteries ;) oooooooops! :)

Fishing Today, before the rain came

I got down to the river about 3:15 and it's 4:22 now.. so yes, it started raining, hard enough for me to stop and come home. Caught 4 fish, 2 with pictures below :) All caught from the shore of the St. Louis River.


The first is a 28-30 inch Northern Pike. This was following my spinner bait (see the next picture) to the shore twice so I crabbed my other rod/reel and threw a Rapala Shad Rap. After 5 or so casts (2 of which I saw the Pike follow) I hooked him on the 6th cast.


This other picture is a 15 inch Smallmouth Bass caught on a Strike King Pro Model with Indiana or Colorado blade (they always look the same really.)

While I was removing the lure from the Northern Pike, it decided to start raining so here I am.

WoW! people do read blogs

Just a short post thanking those who might come here every day and read.. I've now had at least 3 (i know that's not huge numbers) people read the entries every day since May 11th. The weather's been cold and rainy so I haven't been out with the camera or the fishing pole in a few days. Wednesday should be stormy so we'll see if I get to go fishing or not :) If the storm is large maybe I'll get some cloud shots

If you look below ANY post entry.. and click 'subscribe' you can make a *LIVE BOOKMARK* that automatically updates when you open your browser and shows you new blog entry titles.

No fishing today ;)

I was going to go fishing today but decided I'd just look around by the river as some storm clouds come in instead.




Trying out a few settings on Microsoft Digital Image Editor 2006 also so I want to see how the pictures look online.

Two additions.. no pictures though.. Duluth got some really large HAIL.. like golf and tennis ball size.. the clouds I took pictures of went AROUND us and hit north of Duluth and into Canal Park.. we got lucky..

The other addition is.. I ended up goin fishing tonight cause the weather here changed.. the wind changed to a lot less gusting so I went and caught 1 Northern Pike and 1 Smallmouth Bass.

Fishing May 13th

After watching the NASCAR race I went fishing.. only for an hour:



Today I only caught one Smallmouth Bass.

The CLOUDS below are why I stopped fishing after only an hour today :)




Hopefully this becomes the first real rain of the spring for us.

Fishing Opener Pics

Last year, I got shut out on fishing opener, but it was pouring rain all day. Today was sunny and about 60 degrees.

I only caught 3 fish BUT it's still a fun day.



I've only caught a Crappie at the St. Louis River one other time, this one hit on a Rapala Shad Rap soon as it hit the water.



The third fish was a small rock bass, not worth of any pictures.

Pictures From Last Fall

I cant' find the original post in my other blog of Random Thoughts so below find some pictures I took last fall before winter came :)






All of the pictures are from Fall 2006





You can as always CLICK on a photo to view it full size.. you can also save them if you realllllllllly want to.

Fishing Season's coming! Garbage dumpers

I took a drive down by the river today just to check out water levels and see how the river looked.. below are a few pictures. The first two are pictures of GARBAGE that assholes dump down the road there, and then there are a few picture of the first GEESE of the season




Why people think they can just drive down the road and throw garbage out is beyond me.





In about a month, the baby geese (gosslings) will be with the big ones, and there will be a LOT more big geese also as in previous blog picture entries like THIS ONE.

As always.. CLICK on the picture to see it full size :)

Yum, Easter Ham

The above are the Easter Ham I baked today (Saturday, the day b4 Easter.)

The first one is after I put my glaze (brown sugar, honey, pinapple juice, and Grey Puopon mustard) and cloves on the ham.

The middle two pictures are bastings, and the final of course is b4 we cut into it.. YUM the slightly charred fat on top kicks ass!

March 29th Ice Storm

It rained just about ALL day here today and the temperature rarely got above 32 degrees all day. Needless to say it's ICY outside.


This is the railing on the back porch.. there's 1/4 inch of ice on it.


This was an attempt at showing the ice on the box elder. Hopefully the ice kills the thousands of box elder bugs that have been showing up.


Yes, the siding on the house needs to be replaced, that's this summer. All of the glare is ice. I don't dare try and open windows either.

Not the greatest bunch of pictures, but they were taken at 11:30 pm in the dark.

NHL Alumni Game, Cloquet

This was an attempt at indoor pictures, they're not the clearest with this camera indoors but anyway they're at the NHL Alumni game in Cloquet March 14th, before the CCM high school all star game.


Group Photo, look in the back, the last green jersey on the right of #44 Chris McAlpine. I won that one in the raffle during the 3rd period of the high school game. Some of the other "old" NHL Alumni in the game were Norm Maciver, Brian Bellows, Ian Kidd, Sean Toomey, Jeff Nielsen, Robb Stauber, and Reed Larson.



The CCM Duluth All Stars logo at center ice.



The post game handshake, the Northern Alumni won 6-4 as you can see on the clock. The goaltender #29 in white, Matt Klein, who never made it to the NHL, but was the 3rd goaltender for the University of Minnesota, Duluth made diving saves and was all over the ice. He of course is a few years younger than the players they played against, but he made the game more fun to watch.

Photos March 13, Springlike weather

As the title says, it's warm and springlike here:


A view FROM the 'Swinging Bridge' in Jay Cooke State Park


Another view FROm the bridge


This view across the swinging bridge really doesn't do it justice, I'll take a video walking across it some day with my camera.


This is a side view of the swinging bridge, the bridge is one of the more popular parts of Jay Cooke State Park, and it's at the beginning of the park.

A cool Agate, a Voyageur, and some food.

As I'm going through some old pictures on my computer (it crashed in Feb 06 so I had to start over) I'll post a few.


One of the cooler looking agates I've found.


This is the Cloquet Voyageur. It is in the park by the river, if you drive up Highway 33 through Cloquet you'll see him to the East from the bridge heading north.


I don't just take OUTDOOR pictures though, I like to cook and occasionally will take a food photograph. Here is Beef Stroganoff.


Here is my first attempt ever at homemade chicken soup. It turned out really good, but the noodles I used were too thick as you can see in the picture ;)


This last picture for today is what I grew up knowing as Pizza Hot Dish. It's sort of a lasagna bake type dish that I like to make and it gets better the day after as most Italian food does.

A few FISH pictures from 2006

Below are a few photographs from the 2006 fishing season. All of my fishing is catch & release, especially from the St. Louis River, which has high mercury levels.


Smallmouth Bass


Another Smallmouth Bass


A decent LENGTH Northern Pike, but man was it skinny for it's length.

Minnesota State Bird?

While the Loon is our state bird, and the Mosquito is joked about as the state bird...



If you've ever been to Duluth, you'll see that THIS could actually be considered as much the "state bird" as any.

My Camera

Just for reference, as mentioned I take all of my pictures with a HP Photosmart 3.2 MegaPixel camera, until I can afford to buy a more expensive 7 MegaPixel or better camera. This is what the camera actually looks like, (picture from an online catalog):



It's a nice little camera, that I use Energizer Lithium batteries in for now, but I will be buying Engergizer Rechargeable AND the charger in the next week or so because 4 batteries costs over $10 with tax and 8 is still over $17.

EDIT: October 2, 2008: Obviously I dont' have that camera anymore, as I've gone through it, and a Kodak Easyshare, to a Canon EOS Rebel now.

A few winter pictures, from this past weekend

Below are a few pictures from this weekend... that I took between the Section 7AA championship game and the UMD men's hockey game.


The first picture is the parking lot in Canal Park by the hotels and Grandma's sports garden AND Little Angie's Cantina. I wanted to get the snowbank height without getting right up to it. Click on the picture to see the actual SIZE of the snowbank. Usually you can see the entire Grandma's restaurant from this vantage point.


The Aerial Lift Bridge in winter, with the sun basically in the same place as the earlier blogged photo, but being early March it's a couple hours earlier.


The lighthouses again, this time in winter from the Lakewalk.