Hey, what the hell happened to Global Warming. It was 45 this morning, an all time record low for October. Let’s crank up the coal burning power plants – not that clean coal, but the good old dirty kind that adds a nice warming blanket to the earth. I’m comfortable between 75 and 85; can handle it between 60 and 75; but anything below that should be reserved for places other than here. I rush down to the dock, cast half a dozen times, and then rush back up to the house to thaw out. Even then, I’m wondering how bad it will be to catch one and have to deal with wet hands.

Some fishing trivia. I was down on the dock feeding the fish which I do most days. I fill up a cup with floating fish food, sit on the dock ladder, and pitch out a dozen or so at a time. As usual the bream swarm and gobble up the pellets with gusto. These bream are generally what I’d call palm size or dinner size, not too many small ones, and there are literally hundreds of them. I notice a larger shadow swim in and hover in the middle of the feeding bream. It’s about a 2 pound bass. The bream couldn’t care less. They swim in front, beneath and all around the bass. Even bumping into him as they feed. I guess they knew they were too big for him to be a bother. He made a couple of half hearted lunges, which clearly were annoyance moves rather than feeding moves. Then he lunged big time at something he spotted 8′ away. He covered that distance in milliseconds and the strike was breathtaking in it’s speed and strength. What surprised and impressed me was how far away the target was from the fish when he initiated the strike. I would have guessed it was out of visual range and that he would sneak up on his intended prey and then lunge the last foot or so. I fish with top water lures quite often so the news to me is that the fish that strikes can actually be quite a ways from the lure when he locks on to it. I guess I always thought they were lurking quite close to the lure and deciding whether it was edible or not before the strike actually came. It actually happened twice – about 5 minutes apart – so I’m guessing he missed the target the first time or the first one was small and didn’t fill him up.

The nice thing about living on the lake with a nice dock and plenty of fish is that I get to experiment. This morning I tied on a small, 1/8 oz spinner bait. It’s a Strike King mini-spin, one of my favorites. I had lost my last one last week and Nancy stopped by Wal-mart and picked me up 6 new ones. If I had picked them, they would have been yellow, chartruese or white – some of each. Nancy got one of each color which included some I would never have picked. So I went out this morning and put on a white one. First cast nails a fish, followed quickly by 2 more. The last was a big mudfish which broke the lure off. So I tied on what I figured was the exact opposite – a black one with black and blue tails. I’ve never been sure if it’s the spinner blade that generates the strike or the color of the tail so this was a good test. I cast about a dozen times and not the first nudge. So clearly on this morning they preferred the white to the black and since they both have exactly the same spinner blade, it was the tail color that made the difference. So I guess it makes sense to change colors if you’re not having success with one. And I think my bias toward bright colors is justified.

Nancy tells me she is on board my austerity program. Last night she said she was only going to buy things that were on sale and too good to pass up. Now that’s commitment. But in the 45 years we’ve been married, I can’t ever recall her bringing in packages that were not on sale and too good to pass up. While I’m reading up to see if there’s any way to fix grass to make it edible……………..

Going to try this new idea in the garden. i have a grasshopper problem. Not the great big monster hoppers but little green ones. A few weeks back I planted two rows of spinach seed. One row ran parallel to the border set back about 8”; the other row was parallel to the first and set further back another 8”. The hoppers fairly well decimated the first row but left the inside row untouched. At the same time I planted a row of radishes along the border in the same position as the first spinach row. Those plants are big, strong, and untouched by the hoppers. I take it from that the the hoppers don’t like radishes and also don’t get too far inside the garden but rather chew along the edges. So my new plan is to plant radishes all along the border and then the more succulent, tasty stuff behind the hedge of radishes. Maybe the hoppers won’t be able to see or smell the other stuff – whatever it is that hoppers do. I think if I live to be 100, I might get this right.

A comment about the economy. I’m really not sure I believe all the negative stuff I’m getting from the media. This weekend we ate at a restaurant that’s buried in a large mall. The tough part was getting a parking spot in this huge mall parking lot. On Monday we were over in Ormond for a doctor’s appointment and decided to stop at Wal Mart on the way home to pick up a couple of things. Same problem – had to park way far away from the store. So that was a Sunday afternoon and a Monday afternoon, two shopping areas 60 miles apart, and both were totally operating at capacity. I also note in the paper that the number of new home sales is far, far greater than the number of foreclosures. That’s something you don’t get from the TV media. I wonder how many of those people involved in foreclosures are just walking away from a home that has lost value and moving into a new one. A thing I wondered about a couple of years back was how in the world a young family could ever hope to own a home with the outrageous prices existing then. Bubble busted, problem solved. Plenty of homes available now for young folks and working stiffs. Is that so bad?

Great news! Joey’s PET scan showed him clean of the cancer. He goes back in 3 months for follow-up blood work and in 6 months for another PET scan. The only medication is vitamin B12 for the numbness in his fingers and toes. Nancy is bouncing off the walls. Me too.

Definitely fall weather. I made the first wardrobe adjustment after stepping outside the other morning. No more sleeveless shirts for 7 months or so. The uniform of the day is now a short sleeve tee shirt, shorts and flip flops. Next month I’ll most likely have to switch from shorts to long pants and from flip flops to tennis shoes with socks. Maybe even long sleeve shirts if it gets too harsh. This could be the shortest fall on record. They are forecasting winter for Thursday.

The second eagle is back. She was soaring along with her best buddy this morning. So I can cross that off my to do list.

Nancy had a big quilting weekend. Her club arranged for a quilting superstar to come and teach for a couple of days so she was gone from 7AM to 4PM Friday and Saturday. I gather it was a total success and she learned some life changing tidbits – such as how to make a 3D bow tie quilt square.

We’re actually eating out of the garden again. That makes it all seem worthwhile. It’s 100% planted out at this time and I have seeds started in containers to fill in the areas which will be killed off with a frost. The trick is in timing things so that you have a steady flow with a good mix rather than a ton all coming online at the same time. With a few exceptions, most of the cool weather crops keep fairly well even after picking so even the timing is less critical in cool weather. The cucumber vines are absolutely loaded with fruit with a few ready to pick now. I never cease to be amazed how many cucumbers you get from just one vine. So why do I plant 4?

And I found out a little more about the sugar/nematode relationship. I was right that the nematodes – also called eel worms to give you a feel for what they look like – are attracted to and consume the sugar. The sugar dries them out so they die of dehydration. Not sure what the clorox does so I’m planting some rows with the clorox and some without.

Because I write so much about fishing and gardening you probably think I know a little about the subjects. But what I really know something about is taking backlashes out of casting reels. I have years and years of experience with my own and those of others and have developed great techniques and much patience in dealing with ferocious birds nests. Which gets me to my story.

Last week Simon gave me a reel to fix. Bass Pro Shops has promotionals where people turn in old reels in exchange for a discount on new ones. Simon works occasionally at BPS as part of a Boy Scout program and last week they brought out a box of reels they had taken in on exchange and let the boys pick one to keep. Simon made a good choice and picked up a Quantum Flippin’ casting reel. I would guess the reel would have retailed for close to $100 new. It needed some work but after taking it apart and cleaning it, the reel seemed ready for some field testing. I noticed that it was actually overloaded with line; very good line of the braided carbon fiber variety. The kind that costs maybe 10 cents a yard. The previous owner had spooled on perhaps 500 yds. I found that out because it was loosely spooled and I trolled out the whole spool and rewound it under tension. Still too much line so I jettisoned maybe a 100′ or so and proceeded with the field testing. It turned out to be a very fast reel with a good magnetic drag system and I was generally pleased that it turned out so well and knew Si would be happy with it after he got used to the faster spool.

Over the next couple of days I would take it down to the dock and make a few casts just to be sure that it stayed tuned. Some reels do just fine right after a cleaning but gum up quickly. So this morning I was down there and a fish broke, maybe 150′ out from me. I was casting a small, 1/8 oz jig and figured I had a chance to reach it if I really laid one out there. I put everything I had into the cast – full arm, full body – but failed to notice that the lure had gotten tangled up with one of the cables on the boat hoist. In all my life I have never had a backlash like this. In fact, I’d never seen one so bad and, trust me, I’ve seen some really nasty backlashes This was truly the grandmother of all backlashes. I picked at it for about 5 minutes and knew it was a losing cause so I broke out the scissors. Even cutting and hacking, it took me a half hour to clear the mess. In the end I probably lost another 100′ of line but now it’s just about right. I should have taken that off before but hated to pitch such really good line. The good news is that with less line, the reel is casting like a dream.

Joey had his PET scan yesterday and will get the results in a week or so.

I mentioned in my last post that we were experiencing a full moon. What I forgot to mention was that the full moon brought out the coyotes. I’ve never seen one (here) but you could sure hear them howling at the moon. They would howl which would then set off the dogs – of which there are hundreds in the general vicinity. The dogs would quiet down and then the coyotes would start the cycle again. Awesome. I don’t know how widespread coyotes are in Florida and don’t remember hearing about them when we lived here in the 60’s but they are sure here now. Hard to say how far away they were but it sounded like hundreds of yards, not miles.

And while I’m recalling things that should have gone into the last post – Simon was inducted into the National Honor Society and we were invited to the induction ceremony. I remember my own induction and remember that Joey, Tommy, and Chris were all members but honestly don’t remember their induction ceremony. Chances are I was out of the country at the time – a steady state condition for many years. Congrat’s Si.

Nancy;s birthday was Saturday. This year it turned into an eating birthday. On Tuesday her quilting buddies took her out for lunch. Saturday afternoon another buddy took her to lunch and I took her to Billy’s for dinner. Then on Sunday Tom and Tina took us to Huston’s Steak House in Winter Park. Nancy said the crab cakes were the best she’s ever eaten anywhere; the cab was excellent. Nice setting on Lake Killarney, great food. We remembered the place from the 60’s when it was known as the Imperial House. We never ate there but it was a favorite of the high rollers at Dynatronics. Then on Monday Joey took us out to lunch in Port Orange. Wednesday is Brian’s barbecue where she gets a free birthday meal courtesy of Brian.

So since the bream are so big and aggressive and the bass are so reluctant to show themselves, I decided to focus on making the bream fishing more interesting. I have an ultra light spinning outfit but no tiny lures which are necessary for the tiny mouthed panfish. The bream will attack really large lures but their mouth is so small that you almost never hook them and when you do, it’s more often than not, a hook in the eye or something. So on the way to Tommy’s house, we stopped at Gander Mountain to pick up some smaller jigs. As luck would have it they were having a clearance on several items that looked perfect so I stocked up. I showed Nancy the variety of lures and asked her which she thought would be the best. I disagreed with her choice and headed down for the dock with my winner pick. I gave it about 20 casts and had one strike. Just to be fair I switched over to Nancy’s choice. Ten casts, ten fish and we’re eating fillet of bream for dinner tonight. I realized that I needed more of the killer spinner which was a 2” minnow shaped rubber tail, red on top and white on the bottom so I called Tom and asked him to go by Gander and pick me up a few zillion. Gone, none left. I got the last ones. Drat. I’m pretty sure that the same lure will be a killer for spec’s in a month or two when it gets cold.

Cukes and zuc’s before the end of the month – I might partially win the race against the critters but they still have a week or so to strike. And I found a silver lining on the crop eating bug front. The zillions of butterflies that have been hovering over the squash have done their thing and now I have zillions of little green caterpillars chomping away. The good news is that these little ‘pillars make great bait. One critter, one fish. Now I’m out there on my hands and knees scouring the leaves for bait. The dilimna now is whether to pull them when they are tiny and not doing any leaf damage or let them grow into nice fat juicy ones. It’s a squash vs bream tradeoff.

Joey gets his PET scan next Wednesday so until then, no news. He’s feeling good albeit a little apprehensive about the coming test. Plenty of business right now so the economy doesn’t seem to be bothering the cruise industry. The weather has been awesome for a while so I think he’ll be busy now until the cool turns to cold – January most likely.

Our eagle has returned for the season. I started seeing him a couple of weeks ago but his mate hasn’t shown up yet. They have two primary locations, one a nest the other a fishing perch. It’s really awesome to hear this guy screech and see him soaring over the lake hunting. Not sure why he makes so much noise but there’s no doubt when he’s out and about.

The garden is coming along fairly well. I keep nuking it so the bugs are manageable. They get their half and hopefully, we’ll get ours. If all goes normal, we should be past the real storm season and a couple of months from a possible frost. I’m calculating a return to picking mid November with green beans and squash,and then right on through until early summer with the winter stuff – lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, beets, carrots, peas, spinach etc etc etc. My plan this year is to cut it all off by the end of June and let it rest until mid Sept again. July and August are just too much to deal with between the critters and the storms.

Learned something about gardening in Fla; the hard way of course. I try to grow many different varieties which means that I buy lots of seeds. With most seed packs you get hundreds of seeds and use only a few dozen. So over a season you accumulate lots of partially used packs. In Utah, I would use the left over seeds the next season; and in some cases was still using the original seed purchase 3-4 years later and getting results about the same as the first year. Doesn’t work that way in Florida. Seeds that are 6-9 months old are nearly useless. I kept planting and having either very low or zero germination when I expect between 80-90%. I’ve been blaming the soil since that’s been the focus of my corrective actions and I’ve had this gnawing in the back of my brain that I wasn’t helping things regardless of how much blood, sweat, and blisters went into it. On a hunch I ordered some fresh seed and guess what, instant germination. I have to guess that the dry air and cooler weather in Utah kept the seed fresh whereas the heat and humidity here, take a toll on the seed.

I’m also on the trail of a solution to the persistent nematode problem. Nematodes are microscopic bacteria or critter that attacks the roots of vege’s and overnight kills a mature plant. When you pull out the plant the roots are full of large, white nodules. It’s very discouraging because the plant seems to be doing just fine and then, bam, it’s gone. In bygone days there were chemical products that took care of them but they’ve been banned due to toxicity, I guess. Nancy was playing bridge yesterday with a lady who’s husband is a long term, big time back yard gardener. I guess Nancy mentioned that I was having nematode problems and the lady volunteered that her husband had the answer with a special mixture of household stuff. I talked to him right away and he shared his secret formula. This is one of those gems you pick up from guys 85+ years old. He mixes a cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of clorox in a gallon of water. Then he digs a trench 4-6” deep and pours the mixture along the trench with a topping of 10-10-10 fertilizer. A gallon does a 30′ row. He puts a little compost or soil on top of that and then plants his crop. He also said that he has an old book called Tomatoes Love Carrots that describes which crops to plant side by side for symbiotic benefits. In that book they say to sprinkle sugar into a trench before planting. No clorox, just sugar. So naturally my plan is to use the sugar/clorox mix and then pour some sugar on top of that. I’m a big believer in nuking as necessary. I’m also going to dump a mixed gallon of diazanon or malathion in a row to see if that spices up the mix even better. That doesn’t work with nematodes but maybe it will kill off the cut worms. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I’ll sure be a happy camper if this works.

Bass fishing is still in the dirt. I’ve been banging it hard for the past week but nada. Tried lots of different approaches and nothing is working. We’ve had a full moon this week and historically I’ve learned that fishing stinks (during the day) on a full moon. This confirms it and next week will hopefully be better. Doesn’t seem to bother the bream so I’m still in good shape there and should break out the fly rod to take advantage of that. I’m actually picking up big bream on fairly sizable bass lures.

Big game tonight – Texas vs Missouri. I’ve watched both play and think it will be a good match. Missouri is coming off a loss against Oklahoma State whereas Texas is coming off a big win against Oklahoma. Good chance that the winner of this game will be the conference champion. My fingers are crossed for Missou and hope they can recover from the loss and that Texas is flat after leaving it all on the field last week. Not sure who the gators are playing and they’re not on the tube – at least not mine.

What happened to BYU? TCU – who’d a thunk it.

PS: I usuallly spell check before I post and it accepted “thunk”. Who’d a thunk it!

Good news. I’m going to be a great, great uncle again. Nickie just had her little boy and now my great niece Lindsay is expecting. So that will make me a double great great. How great is that!

How bout them Gators. All preseason they talked about how much speed they had but it never showed in the first few games. Sure did against LSU. The great thing was that the speed came from a couple of freshman running backs. I was sorry to see Tommy’s Missouri team beaten but I still think they gave a decent shot at the conference championship. All they have to do is beat Texas and maybe Oklahoma.

This next treatment, #8, may be Joey’s last. Fingers crossed. Soon after the treatment he gets a PET scan and if that shows clean, then he’s done, off the bag, hair growing back, etc etc. He’ll probably try to milk some sympathy so Nancy doesn’t cut off the kitchen but he needs to be weaned back onto his old diet.

Regarding the economy, I see lots of fish and vege’s in our diet. That’s the bene of living in the wilderness. Maybe a squirrel or a rabbit every now and then. The citrus trees are only a few weeks from putting some fruit in the diet. I’m into killing the cell phone, the landline, and throwing the switch on the power company. I might slash the tires on the vehicles to keep them off the road. Nancy’s not having any of it. Her contribution to my planned austerity program is to ……………….. I tried talking her into getting a job as a school crossing guard but ………….. She’s just not a team player.

Politics – things are looking bad for the home team. The only thing I have going for me is that they looked bad for Reagan, Bush 1, and both Bush 2 elections at this point in the cycle. If you had listened to the polls and the media, the Dem’s had them all over and done with a month before the election. Fact is, if it hadn’t been for Perot, we’d have had non stop Republican’s for the past 20 years. I’m a simple guy and about all I expect from the gov’t is to protect me from the bad guys and I can just see those Al Quaeda’s and those Taliban’s licking their chops waiting for the Obama administration.

Our great nephew Kassem is being deployed to Iraq soon. Kassem joined the Marines, a choice he had talked to me about several times while still in High School and as long ago as 7 years when we still lived in Utah camping at Starvation lake. I had the four boys with me for a few days and that’s a trip I will never forget. He listened to his parents and tried continuing his education after high school but the pull to his personal desire won out. I think he has the right temperment for the military and is physically tough. It won’t surprise me if he decides to make a long career of it and we should all feel safer that guys like Kassem are out there keeping us that way. He’s never been far from the front of my thoughts and I’m proud of him.

You know that one of my pet peeves is the storm prediction and naming game. Laura. I rest my case. This is maybe a storm that perhaps formed in the center of the Atlantic and is heading for Europe or someplace like that. They are calling it a sub tropical storm but reached into the list of names used, I thought, for tropical storms. Give me a break. I’m not saying I could make a better forecast but I probably could by just picking the average number for the past 100 years. I wonder if our hurricane tracking planes will track this event all the way to London.

Bear update – ran into an old friend yesterday at the Post Office. She lives on the road where the bear supposedly got the pot bellied pig. She told me that she didn’t know about that attack but that her neighbor had lost 2 full sized pigs that were being raised by their grandson for a 4-H show. I figure that’s good news. If the bears can get all that bacon a couple miles away, why would they rummage around my place. I know those places out Buckles road are farmettes with lots of chickens, goats and the like.

Heard a funny one on Fox News Wednesday. The studio was talking about the dire straits and the pending Senate vote on the bailout/rescue. “What does the man on the street in a pivotal swing state think. Our reporter on the ground in Bucks County PA will sample the mood there.”. The intrepid reporter is in a diner where the locals are eating breakfast. He goes up to a table of 4 and asks if they are following the bailout/rescue activity and all four say no. One said he hadn’t heard anything about it. Ok, let’s go to the next table. He got exactly the same response – total disinterest and the folks had no idea what he was even talking about. He told that group that a lot of people were really concerned and they just shrugged and said nobody there was even aware of it. Cracked me up. He couldn’t find anybody in the diner that had a clue about it, let alone being concerned.

I mentioned that Joey was experiencing numbness in his fingers. Turns out that it (peripheral neuropathy) is an anticipated side affect from one of the chemicals used in the ABVD chemo regimen. Normally it’s temporary and goes away as new nerve cells regenerate post treatment. Here’s the interesting part – Turns out the culprit is the “V” – a drug called vincablastine. Believe it or not, it’s derived from the vinca or periwinkle flowers that grow nearly wild here. So he’s getting a blast of vinca juice -maybe vincablastine is latin for a blast of Vinca. I know one interesting thing about Vinca’s. They are quite drought resistant and can handle heat, humidity, or lack thereof with relative impunity. The flowers are quite pretty and when we first moved here I bought a few flats and tried planting them in nicely prepared garden spots. They would bloom for a while and then die off. No success at all. But they started appearing from self seeding in my gravel driveway. I would carefully dig them up and replant them in the well fertilized, well watered, tender loving care section of the yard. Gone in a few days. But they keep sprouting up in places like the cracks in my concrete deck, between rocks on the retaining wall, and by the hundreds in my granite gravel driveway – which by the way is about 6” thick. So Vinca’s are tough, no coddling kind of plants which is maybe why the scientists decided to use them to terrorize cancer cells. Who’d a thunk it. Maybe lantana would be a good one to try.

Politics
I have listened to Obama speeches for the past two days and heard something that leaves me scratching my head. Maybe somebody can help me out. He said that he was going to cut capital gains taxes for small businesses. Should I interpret that as saying he simply doesn’t understand small business accounting – small businesses pay income tax on income, not capital gains. I never heard of a small business with capital gains unless they occur when the business is sold or closed down. Or should I interpret it that he does understand and is just making this statement to impress/fool people that don’t have a clue about small business. So is he stupid or does he think we’re stupid??? I know some of you either now have small businesses or did in the past so let me know if you ever had a capital gains tax.