Just before the win­ter hit, we had a new walk­way put in…finally. It’s been too long! As always, here is a time-lapse video for your enjoyment.

…Mike

This is my niece Halle and Charlie the Dog mak­ing snow angels. I hope you all had a hol­i­day filled with as much joy as this.

…Mike

Almost as soon as I got back from Alaska, it was time for the annual retreat into the wilder­ness of Kenora for a week of fish­ing.? And other stuff.? But mostly fishing.

Warning: fish­ing geek stuff ahead.

It was actu­ally a ban­ner year for me, fishing-wise.? I caught one of almost every­thing the river has to offer: small­mouth, large­mouth, pike and walleye…even a perch on a lure just a bit smaller that he was, all within about 6′ of the sur­face if you can believe that.? I was con­cerned because the water was really low this year and all of my go-to spots were too shal­low.? So I struck new ground and tried some new things.

Specifically, Mepps.? I have never caught any­thing on a Mepps. I have always hated them because they never worked for me.? I have Mepps that are at least 15 years old, and they all sucked.? But when my Dad was in town he made me promise that I would try the one he gave me (he is a rabid fish­er­man). So I said I would, and for kicks I threw in one of my really big old ones.

Well, I am converted.

Between the big red Mepps which the pike loved, the lit­tle blue Mepps that the pike also loved (and that I lost when it snagged some rocks but found the next day when I went back for it) it was (to steal from ten­nis) Advantage: Mike.

Add in the lure that Al (Christine’s brother) dis­cov­ered, and it was good times all around.? Casting these babies against the rocky shores resulted in a ton of qual­ity fish. To whit (and these are all dif­fer­ent fish FTR):

That’s the gold and red Mepps hang­ing out of his mouth there.

This was a total shocker.? Usually these babies are really deep, but I man­aged to get into a bunch of em at the right time of the evening.? This one was 18″, and the one below was 23″.

This is the baracuda: the 32″ pike that attacked my Berkley Frenzy. That lure is like magic. One sin­gle hook landed this baby, and on a bar­b­less hook to boot!

And on the last day, a large­mouth attacked it as well…he was 16″ (yes, my hands are really big). Now, no fish­ing trip would be com­plete with­out “the one that got away” story. So here it is.

On the last evening I walked down to the dock, and started cast­ing the frenzy around.? I quickly got a small­mouth (no photo, sadly) and worked my way down the rocky shore. And then what felt like a freight train hit the lure and just…left. I had 80′ of braided line with 100′ of mono back­ing, and it took almost all of it with the drag set as high as I dared.? I man­aged to drag it back within about 30′ of the shore, and it took off again.? By this time I knew I’ve got some­thing big­ger than I’ve ever seen in real life…it would have to be: even the 32″ pike I caught ear­lier fought for only 5–6 min­utes before he was beside the boat, and I was into 10 min­utes with this thing and he was on his way out again.

So I yell for Christine to get the cam­era, and she comes down with it.? And so I haul it back within 30 feet of the shore, and there is a huge swirl…and he spits the lure (I use bar­b­less hooks so that is always a risk). I nearly wept.

I have no idea what it was. Christine’s Dad thinks it was a stur­geon. All I know is that I angered the fish gods by call­ing for a cam­era too soon.? They fur­ther pun­ished me by snag­ging my trusty Frenzy some­where in the rocks, and despite my snor­kel­ing I couldn’t find it again.? Christine doesn’t under­stand the bond between a fish­er­man and a lure that catches fish…I have jit­ter­bugs that I got from my Mom when I was 15 that I would jump in after in a heart­beat (and I have, in fact, done just that in Rice Lake).

This is it, after one night of being sav­aged by var­i­ous and sundry pike and wall­eye. RIP.

Yes those are teeth marks.

Anyway, lots of fish­ing excite­ment. Oh, and we saw other stuff too.

I hope I can make it back next year.

…Mike

I scooted off to Alaska last week to hang out with my friend Melissa and her fam­ily (she is also a pho­tog­ra­pher). It’s always fun to watch another pho­tog­ra­pher work­ing in their own back yard, and we did some shoot­ing, and some tourist­ing, and I gen­er­ally had a great time.? Mike (Melissa’s bet­ter half) was smok­ing the salmon he had caught a few days ear­lier. I wanted to do some fish­ing too, but once I com­pared the fan­tasy of fish­ing for salmon in Alaska with the real­ity, I wasn’t so sure:

The locals call this “com­bat fish­ing.” These are all tourists. Doesn’t look like much fun. Mike said that when the main fish­ing sea­son is open, it is lit­er­ally shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists. When the locals go fish­ing, they go to their secret spot. No, I don’t know where that is. But I do know that the filets that their neigh­bor who so kindly gave me were 18 inches long.

While we were dri­ving to an fro I man­aged to get a few neat-o pho­tos, despite the fact that the sun was vis­i­ble for about 5 sec­onds in the entire week I was there. And the sun never even really sets this time of year, so I was dou­ble bit­ter.? But I digress.

First off, water­falls.? If you spend any time at all look­ing through my blog, you’ll know that if there is a water­fall around, I’ll sniff it out.? This one was eas­ier than most to sniff, due to the huge sign on the side of the road that said “Thunderbird Falls” and the nicely groomed trail lead­ing right to it.? The way I tell it though, it was a battle.

See those friendly-looking maple-tree-like things on the lower right side? They are not friendly. They are thorny and if you get stung by one, it gets all red and rashy. The maple tree bush things in Alaska are tough.

We messed around in the moun­tains at bit too, at a spot called Hatcher Pass.? In this one, you can see the lit­tle hillocks formed as the soil grad­u­ally slides down the side of the moun­tain (for scale, each one is about two feet across):

The geog­ra­phy major in me was fas­ci­nated by the U-shaped val­ley and cirques com­mon of glac­ier ero­sion. The place is thick with glac­i­ers BTW.

See that road? A few days later we drove from Talkeetna back to Wasilla along that road, dur­ing which we scared a moose:

Speaking of: Talkeetna!

This is the fur­thest north I have ever been BTW.

Most of the drive looked like a typ­i­cal north­ern tun­dra scene:

The fire­weed broke up all the greens:

It was a great trip! Thanks Mike for the hos­pi­tal­ity and the salmon jerky! Thanks Ben and Bek for the full-contact Age of Empires matches! And thanks Melissa for shut­tling me around for a week

…Mike

You may have noticed that I haven’t done too many wed­dings this spring…well, there’s a rea­son for that ? I decided to take the spring off to do some things around the house, specif­i­cally build a new 16×16 deck to replace our old rick­ety 7×13 one.? The Inlaws were in town for a week to help out and we got the main part of the deck done despite the ridicu­lous amount of rain we have had.

During the build­ing, I set up a cam­era to take a photo every 30 sec­onds, and then strung them all together into a stop-motion video that you can see below.? I still have to fin­ish the handrails, benches and planters (I’ll show that stuff in a sec­ond video) but for now, enjoy!