Chris & Claire go fishing

I think I have time to get out a quick post...

Lately my time has been spent making lures, fishing, and working on my upcoming dub album. If you want to hear a few of the tracks, head on over to my tumblr. Once I'm done with all the tracks, I'll post the whole thing on music.chrisbeckstrom.com where you can stream it and download it for free. I'm pretty excited about it- I've been working on it for quite some time, and got some of my buddies to play on it, and they are awesome.

Most of last week I worked outside- my new job is remote, meaning I can pretty much work anywhere there's an internet connection. I work from home, so I've been taking advantage of the patio. Walter loves it, because he gets to hang out with me outside all day. Here's my "office" as of late:

"Please, step into my office. Watch out for the grill"

It's an amazing thing to head out of the "office" over to the grill for my lunch hour to enjoy some delicious grilled meat.

I've been turning out an average of a lure a day, some days three. My carving, sanding, painting, and hardware-adding is getting better and more predictable. I start with 2x4s, cut out the shapes I want, carve them with a little hobby knife, sand them down (sometimes not so well), paint with spray paint, acrylic, and nail polish, and add hardware. Recently I've made a few emulating some vintage lures I've seen- the whole white body red head thing is pretty awesome.

Topwater torpedo-style lure

This one started as a jitterbug clone, but I added a tail
and two propellors for good measure
I'm calling it mousie

..and this one looks pretty nice, but
is a complete failure in the water...
back to the drawing board

This weekend Claire and I did a lot of fishing together. We went to Blackwell Forest Preserve (Silver Lake) for the first time, and really liked it. Very pretty, big hills, awesome. We fished along the shore, then somehow we decided we should keep on walking and continue around the whole shore. Halfway through we realized what a huge distance it was and how we would have to scale an almost vertical path into the woods if we wanted to continue... We turned around and retraced our steps back to the boat launch.

There was a goose standing in the road like a moron, and when a car came up to it the driver honked profusely and yelled "Get off the road a$$&*#!" without a hint of sarcasm.

We went to check out a dog park, and noticed it was very close to the Dupage river. We decided to go and check it out, as neither one of us had ever been to that particular body of water. My first time wet-wading (wading without waders) and I loved it. The cool water was a welcome respite from the 95°F air.

The water was only about a foot deep, and looking at the stretch I guessed if there were fish, they would be hanging out under the bridge where it might be a little deeper and shaded. Turns out I was right! Claire and I fished some brush piles, rocks, and the bridge itself for about an hour. My wife, as I found out, is quite an angler. She caught her first smallie right there under the bridge- and then proceeded to catch 6 more! (Maybe it was 5, don't remember.. I was trying so hard to catch my own smallies, unsuccessfully, I was distracted.)

A nice smallie for a kick-ass wife

I managed to catch 4-5 green sunfish. Claire had the magical touch; she kept pulling out smallie after smallie while I struggled to entice a handful of 3" green sunfish. It was awesome- the water was incredibly clear; even in the dark under the bridge, we could make out every pebble of gravel on the bottom. I saw some crawfish scurry away, which was perhaps another reason the fish were there. Although I didn't do so well in terms of fish caught, it was some of the best fishing ever. Great weather, great company, just super great all around.

The next day, in an effort to avenge my dismal numbers (and explore the lake more fully) we headed back to Silver Lake with our kayaks. After about half an hour of waiting in line, waiting for somebody to come break our $50 bills, and $70 later we had Dupage county boat licenses and were ready to launch.

Almost immediately I got a little largemouth bass on a twister tail; he was hanging out with some bluegill under the shade of some trees in very shallow water. I wondered if he was eating bluegill eggs/fry.

Baby bass

The water was ridiculously clear; we could see very far down into the water. I wondered if that has to do with the lake's beginning as a quarry, or the types of weeds in it, or lack of mud, or what. Earlier in the day I installed a third rod-holder in my kayak, as well as a strap to hold my new fish finder. It was great- paddling around, armed to the teeth with fishing gear, seeing fish hanging out on all the dropoffs- just where I thought they would be.

Couldn't catch any more though; Claire on the other hand was slay'in'em, catching her first two crappies (and first fish in the kayak too!)

Claire's serious angler pose

We're both super impressed with Silver Lake and the whole preserve. It's a bit of a hike for us, but it's worth it. There seem to be a fair amount of fish in it, even if we couldn't catch too many of them. The shockingly clear water is a revelation to me, I can't wait to go back. I know clear water doesn't necessarily equate to clean water, but I think I might come back and do some bluegill fishing. I've got a filet knife that's never seen a fish, and would like to change that sooner than later. Great times with the wife, awesome times exploring new waters.

99 Fishing Trips

I go fishing a lot. Every trip used to be a huge adventure; setting foot into the outdoors was a major production because of my unfamiliarity of it. Going to Busse and exploring the Amazon had a lot more in common to me than improvising over the chord changes to Cherokee at 300 beats per minute. That I could do. Since then, I've spent a great deal of my time outside. Many weeks I'll go fishing every day, sometimes more than once per day. A lot of these trips are quick and to the point, without much adventure or story to relate... But I do want to record some of the highlights of the past week or two- the parts I haven't yet posted. Here goes...

Claire and I went fishing on Lake Pleasant in Michigan (near Hillsdale); I caught a bunch of little bass, and hooked into one on her "last cast" real close to shore, but it threw the hook.

Walter and me on the way to Lake Pleasant

My father in law let me tag along with him to his golf club- while he golfed, I caught 10 awesome largemouth bass out of some golf course ponds. My first time fishing a golf course (with permission or otherwise)! 9 of the bass came on a Heddon Torpedo I found floating at Busse a while back. It was amazing; a landscaper driving by on a riding lawnmower gave me a tip to use something that floats and makes a lot of noise to land fish there, he'd been fishing there for many years. I tied on the Torpedo, cast it out, and the bass took swipes at it. I didn't even have to move it much, once it landed on the water usually three or four bass would come investigate, eventually smashing into the lure like a ton of bricks.

This one apparently swallowed a little animal...
Mouse? Muscrat? I'd never seen that before!

Probably the biggest of the day.. I don't usually put fish
on the ground, but this one fell. It was probably
a safer way to remove the treble hooks too

I've been looking for new ponds to fish; my go-to retention pond is almost entirely filled with weeds and a thick floating scum. The fish are still there, and they're still biting, but sometimes I want to use a crankbait! I "discovered" a new, tiny pond next to an office building. Surprisingly, it doesn't say "No Fishing." I pulled some fairly big green sunfish out of there on my trusty jig and twister.

Big ol' green sunfish- hit like a bass!

I went night fishing the other day, hoping to catch another one of the retention pond catfish. Something possessed me to use hotdogs as bait. The internet says you can do that, so I did. After tremendous difficulty casting without tossed the hotdogs off the hook and into the water, I finally managed to get a line in the water with a hotdog on it. While that stewed I tossed out some topwaters for bass, which got hits every so often. Nobody connected though; it wasn't all bad, as I got to watch the almost-full moon rise and try out my new headlamp with a red LED. Pretty sweet. When I was packing up, around 12:15am, when I went to reel in my hotdog line there was something connected- something big! After a pretty awesome but short fight, I saw exactly what I hoped to see. A big old (channel?) cat.

23" (channel) cat caught on hotdog!

I recently started a new job; it's fast-paced and exciting, I'm really enjoying it, and because I'm working from home my commute is substantially shorter. For the most part, when I close up shop in the "office" I head out for some fishing. Much of it has been local, especially in the morning and at lunch. When I'm not fishing, I've been making lures. I think I'm getting the hang of it now; I've probably made 15-20 wooden lures now. Some of them work great, some are complete failures.. but I learn from each one and use that experience on the next.

My copycat of a Heddon Torpedo, made out of cedar
This one got a lot of hits at night at the pond

Glow-in-the-dark firetiger crank made of balsa

That firetiger crankbait, which glows in the dark because I mixed green, yellow, and glow paint together, might be my most successful crank yet. I made a little video (and the music) of the lure in action.

And then yesterday morning, I caught a fish on it!

I carved it, painted it, fished it, and caught this fish with it

This one dives medium deep and has a nice wobble. So far
one fish has taken a swipe at it

Oh yeah, and I got a fish finder! It's a Hummingbird Piranhamax 160. So far I've taken it out twice, and I love it. It's great to find out what's beneath me. I took it on the yak to Busse, found some fish in some deep holes, but couldn't get them to connect. I also took it to a big local retention pond (not the retention pond) and discovered the whole pond is about 2-3 feet deep with a thick mud bottom.

Yesterday I hit the local pond with my new fly rod for about 10 minutes and saw tons of little bluegill hanging out in very shallow water. I caught about 5 or 6 of them in rapid succession; one I didn't even know I hooked and ended up back-casting it 20 feet away from the pond! It seemed fine when it swam away.

Last night I kayaked the big retention pond; didn't catch any fish but I did catch two bullfrogs mostly by accident. It seems they'll take anything! I considered keeping it after reading Dan the Impractical Fisherman's post about bullfrog legs, but read the season for them doesn't open until June 15. When the season opens, might I keep a frog or two and try some wild-caught frog legs? When the zombie apocalypse happens I might need to...

Whew, that was a lot of fishing trips. Last night marked my 99th fishing trip of the year. I've caught 111 fish of 13 different species in two different states while kayaking, wading, shore fishing, still fishing, and fly fishing, at pretty much all times of day, on live bait, grocery store items, and lures both store-bought and homemade.

I caught my first walleye a couple weeks ago. I even almost caught a fish with my bare hands! I think I've had a great fishing year so far; I've learned a whole lot, spent a bunch of time outside, and generally had a great time doing it.

Although I've learned a huge amount about fishing, the primary thing I've discovered out of all these trips is how much I like the outdoors. I like catching fish, but if I had to be inside to do it, I doubt I would have gone fishing 99 times this year.