The Little Tunny Have Arrived

My friend Al White who is a captain/fishing guide in Florida near where I live invited me to go fishing the other day and how could I dare say no?  I've been anxious to get out for ages and now that my hand is mostly healed (well, almost), I wanted to go so that's just what we did.

We launched the boat out of Charlotte Harbor near Boca Grande and set out in search of big balls of bait being crashed by hungry fish.  The first pod was full of mackerel crashing bait near the surface.  Every time a fish would come thrashing through, the bait would jump clear out of the water trying to get away from the jaws about to encompass them.  It was a sight to behold...I've seen this in Baja when we were fishing the Sea of Cortez and it's always an exciting sight to see.

We were soon into fish and both of us hooked and released several mack's until I had a fish on that was for certain, no mackerel!  It peeled off line like a marlin and I knew instantly I was hooked into a false albacore, affectionately referred to as little tunny.  They are a member of the tuna family and are solid muscle and built like torpedo's hence they are super strong and will give you a real run for your money.  Super fun on a fly rod!  My first little tunny of the day, I had Capt. Al hold it so I could get a proper photo using my good 35mm SLR which I didn't want his fishy, salty hands on...so, he is holding my fish.  I guess that's just the way it is when you are the photographer and either can't trust anyone to take a decent photo or don't want anyone touching your expensive camera so C'est la vie.

I shot a short video of the albies crashing bait and this was what we were surrounded by all morning!  What a hoot!

The flies we were using were immitating what are called Cuban anchovies and they are only an inch and a half long.  It's amazing out of that huge ball of bait that a fish could spot our fly and eat it but that's just what they did.  One of the fish we caught regurgitated a bunch of bait fish so I was able to get a photo of the bait next to our fly showing the similarities.

I was using an 8 weight rod with an intermediate sinking tip fly line but I should have been using a 9 or 10 weight for these fish as I was very under equipped for the strength of the false albacore.  I use an 11 weight when fishing them in Loreto.  Next time I'll bring a heavier rod!
All in all a very fun day and we both landed lots of fish.  We were back off the water by around 1:30 or 2:00 pm and back at the house having a cold beer.  Great day on the water.  I'm already ready for another trip.  Maybe this Friday?

Road Tripping for Mushrooms

Maggie the Wonder Dog and I needed a break from the Florida heat and humidity and feeling very mushroom deprived, we decided to head out on a road trip up north where Autumn is in full swing and the mushrooms are popping all over.  This year is producing a bumper crop of mushrooms thanks to Hurricane Irene and tropical storm Lee.  Pennsylvania and the Northeast are in the zone for some of the best mushrooming to be seen in decades.

We were heading to Southcentral Pennsylvania and our route took us through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia before reaching our destination.  While stopped for a "potty" break for Maggie, we took a stroll through the woods at the Virginia welcome center and found a bunch of gorgeous Amanitas. Since most of my mushroom hunting and species knowledge is based on mushrooms west of the Mississippi, I am new to eastern species so bear with me while I mutter my way through this.

Driving through the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia, we crossed over The New River Gorge Bridge, the longest single span arch bridge in the US.  We stopped so I could take a photo of it since you can't see anything when you are actually ON the bridge.  It's quite a beauty!

The first day in Pennsylvania was rainy all day.  That makes for wet mushrooms, wet people, wet dogs and wet camera equipment, so suffice to say, I did not take too many photos that day.  I did manage a few with my iPhone though!  The weather did improve as the week progressed so I did manage to get some photos of the vast variety of mushroom species out there in the woods.  I am not accustomed to walking in deciduous, hardwood forests and these mushrooms are foreign to me by comparison to west coast mushrooms, Pacific Northwest mushrooms and those I found in SW Montana so the variety available to me was astounding!

Here are some photos to give you an idea of what a mushroom fairyland I was visiting:

The last day I really wanted to go searching for paw paws and had heard there was to be a paw paw festival in Paw Paw, West Virginia, so my friend and I took off for a day trip to Paw Paw to the festival.  Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told the festival does not take place anymore and hasn't for a few years (don't believe what you read online!!!) so we were out of luck.  So, not to be a total loss, we drove around town, marvelling at all the paw paw trees (Asimina triloba) and found some paw paws growing on a tree outside the front door of the post office.  We picked all we could reach and ate some right away!  Mmmm tasty!

The Butterflies Are Here At Last

Every morning I am greeted in my garden by something new and wonderful and today it was the emergence of Black Swallowtail butterflies from my butterfly garden!  I have been watching the caterpillars on the bronze fennel for weeks now in their various stages of development.  Then a few weeks or so ago I noticed a chrysalis on the ceramic pot where my powder puff tree is planted and then today, it was empty and sitting on the side of the pot next to it, drying its wings was this beautiful butterfly. 

The caterpillars are veracious feeders and have completely descimated the bronze fennel but since I planted it there just for them, I don't mind.  It is loaded with cats and soon I will be loaded with butterflies!  

Hopefully I will be able to witness the metomorphosis of the next batch.  I think some are ready to enter the pre pupa stage so stay tuned for more photos.

The butterfly garden idea was conceived last fall when the Master Gardeners had their annual plant sale up the street from me.  They had an entire section devoted to just plants that attract butterflies.  I had just the spot for such a garden so began to plan. 

Before I bought this house there were a few ficus trees in the back yard but after a hard winter and heavy freezes, the ficus trees died and once I owned the house, I cut the dead trees down.  Above is the yard the way it was before I bought the house. Below is the progression of the garden to date.

We Have Eggs!

I always thought my girls were precocious but even this was a surprise to me.  On June 27th, Inez and Betty both laid their first eggs.  They are the two Barred Rock hens I have and it was quite amazing to me they both laid their first egg on the same day.  These gals were only 4-1/2 months old which is a little young to start laying.  The minimum is usually around 20 weeks but I guess they were anxious to get the egg rolling.

I awoke that morning a little after 7am to the sound of a very excited and loud chicken making very loud noises to the point I was worried something may be trying to get into their coop.  I sprang out of bed and looked over to the chicken yard but all seemed to be in order and there were no unwanted guests trying to get in.  Then it hit me...I remembered this very frenzied, loud, raucous, clucking/screaming noise from when I had chooks in Montana.  It was the very sound of egg laying!  Yes, these girls can make quite a fuss when they lay an egg and I guess the first one must really be something else because it woke me out of a sound sleep!

Anyway, now a few of the other girls are in on the fun and I'm now getting three to four eggs a day.  Out of 6 hens I should be getting six a day pretty soon.  I'm very happy to be finally getting fresh eggs because there is just nothing like a farm fresh egg!

Hiatus from the blogosphere

I realize it's been a while since my last blog post and there is a good reason for that.  First I apologize for the long silence and now the explanation.  I underwent hand surgery on May 11th (Right CMC Joint Arthroplasty with FCR Tendon transfer) to fix the basal thumb joint in my right hand and since I'm right handed, I have been unable to use my hand, hence no writing, shooting photos, cooking, fishing etc.  That makes me and my life pretty darn dull!  But, things are finally looking up and now that I am two months post op and I am starting to be allowed to use my thumb little bits at a time, I am starting to shoot photos again and now I am able to type.

Typing is quite difficult with a big hard plastic splint on your hand from your thumb to your mid arm.

So, I am back and hopefully with time allowed, I will have some new posts for you soon.  I'm afraid the fishing posts will still have to wait for a while since I still am not allowed to cast my fly rod just yet.  They say six months for recovery and a full year for full recovery.  It's all a little too slow for me but hopefully it will all be worth it.

I have now graduated to a small, neoprene flexible splint and this should be the last one I have until I am freed from splints altogether. I have another appointment with my surgeon on July 21st and we will see what he has to say.  The worst thing is I am still unable to use my thumb for pinching.

In short, they removed the trapezium bone in my thumb joint and at the same time, harvested a piece of tendon from my forearm that was not being used for anything in particular.  That tendon was wrapped into a neat coil and inserted into the hole where the trapezium bone was removed, so as to not leave a negative space.  The rest of the tendons were all re-attached and then I was placed in a huge bandage and splint to immobilize the thumb.

The tendons are the slowest things to heal and it takes a minimum of 10 weeks for them to heal over where they were reattached.  This is one of the longest things I've had to heal from...seems longer than my total knee replacement, but if it means I will once again be able to cast my fly rod with no pain, then it will have all been worth it.

Spring has Arrived and so have Morels and Ramps

I may have grown up on the east coast in Wilmington, DE but I was not savvy to wild mushrooms or foraging for food back in those days.  In fact, I honestly don't even remember seeing wild mushrooms as a child except for what may have been referred to as toadstools and hence were kicked over by ones big, fat boot!

After I moved clear across country to CA to finish college, I joined the Mycological Society of San Francisco, one of the largest mushroom clubs in the country and that was my first introduction to wild mushrooms in the US.  I found my first chanterelles while steelhead fishing the Gualala River in Northern CA on the coast and then began to learn about Boletus edulis growing along the coast in the fall and then of course came morels.

My very first foray for morels was in the early 1980's outside Yosemite with David Arora and a group from MSSF.  It was one of the most memorable mushroom hunts of my life.  I had heard about the plethora of morels that would come up the first spring after a forest fire, but I'd never experienced it for myself.  We forayed as a group all day and were not having a whole lot of luck.  We were walking back to the campsite as a group when I decided to "foray" into the woods on my own to relieve myself and right next to where I squatted, I suddenly saw morels for as far as I could see.  It was like the forest had been carpeted with them and here I was peeing right next to them!  Well, first a gasp and squeal with delight and then the serious picking began and I returned to the campsite with a big, fat bag of morels.  Needless to say, the cat was out of the bag and everyone scored and we had lots to talk about around the campfire that night.

David Arora is one of the most interesting people and if you ever have the opportunity to attend a foray he conducts, by all means, do it!  He is fun, entertaining, full of stories and you will not be disappointed.  It is well worth the cost to attend. He is one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to mushrooms so you will come home loaded with valuable information.

Well, back to the spring at hand, we leap forward a good thirty years and here I am in SE PA where I grew up and searching for morels in areas I knew nothing about when I lived here many years ago.  This is all rather new to me. I don't actually know my east coast deciduous, hardwood trees and hence don't know the best habitat for morels although I am learning.  I've been told ash is good, tulip poplar, and dying elm trees and of course old apple orchards are good producers although you have to be careful with arsenic in the soil left behind from the heavy chemicals used to fertilize the old commercial orchards years ago on the east coast.

Nonetheless, I do know they grow in the woods on our property as I found them here totally by accident about ten years ago.  But, for some reason things seem behind this year as far as the weather has been concerned and they are not up yet.  In fact there are few signs of the predictors that indicate morels are on the way, such as mayapples.  There were no mayapples in the woods at all a few days ago when I went down there but I did find tons and tons of ramps (a wild leek) and stinging nettles. I  also found a bunch of ferns just unraveling but they don't appear to be the right kind to eat as fiddleheads.  So I will have to settle for ramps and nettles for now.  I picked a bunch of both to eat.