Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Fishing Hurts.
I have the worst pinched nerve in my neck today.
That happens whenever I put any strain on my back. I try not to do it. But last night, a big lingcod surprised me.
Friend and fellow artist Chris Wasankari was with me when I was fishing for greenling.
A lot of greenling fishing involves starting to haul in a foot-long fish, and suddenly have a huge pole-bending fight on your hands, and then the fight goes out of it, or the fish escapes. You wonder that such a small fish has so much fight.
A greenling started its small steady pull on the line, and I started to reel it in. Suddenly the pole dropped and I had a real fight on my hands. Reeling in so hard and fast is what hurt my neck.
I nearly had the fish to the beach when the heavy pressure came off, and the fish I pulled in was again just a foot-long greenling. Good eating, but where comes this huge fight? Are greenling that strong?
The fish was scored with the marks of larger jaws, and the vent was torn open. I had proof of what I'd long been suspecting.
When you hook a greenling and drag it out of a kelp bed, sometimes a lurking lingcod rushes out and grabs it. A ling is a big mean cousin of the little mollusk-eating greenling.
If the ling can haul the greenling off the hook, you lose the fish. If the ling can't get the greenling off the hook, it spits it out and you get a bit-up fish. I once saw one of the Hat boys haul in a three-foot-lingcod, its greedy mouth stuffed with a hooked greenling. The fish was dragged clear into the shallows and the only reason the kid didn't grab it is because, unlike its smooth-mouthed cousin, it has a mouthful of tiger teeth, befitting a predator. That one managed to yank the kid's catch loose and take off.
So if you're ling-cod fishing, grab fast, don't get your hands near its teeth -- and don't reel in too fast or hard.
Ow.
I have the worst pinched nerve in my neck today.
That happens whenever I put any strain on my back. I try not to do it. But last night, a big lingcod surprised me.
Friend and fellow artist Chris Wasankari was with me when I was fishing for greenling.
A lot of greenling fishing involves starting to haul in a foot-long fish, and suddenly have a huge pole-bending fight on your hands, and then the fight goes out of it, or the fish escapes. You wonder that such a small fish has so much fight.
A greenling started its small steady pull on the line, and I started to reel it in. Suddenly the pole dropped and I had a real fight on my hands. Reeling in so hard and fast is what hurt my neck.
I nearly had the fish to the beach when the heavy pressure came off, and the fish I pulled in was again just a foot-long greenling. Good eating, but where comes this huge fight? Are greenling that strong?
The fish was scored with the marks of larger jaws, and the vent was torn open. I had proof of what I'd long been suspecting.
When you hook a greenling and drag it out of a kelp bed, sometimes a lurking lingcod rushes out and grabs it. A ling is a big mean cousin of the little mollusk-eating greenling.
If the ling can haul the greenling off the hook, you lose the fish. If the ling can't get the greenling off the hook, it spits it out and you get a bit-up fish. I once saw one of the Hat boys haul in a three-foot-lingcod, its greedy mouth stuffed with a hooked greenling. The fish was dragged clear into the shallows and the only reason the kid didn't grab it is because, unlike its smooth-mouthed cousin, it has a mouthful of tiger teeth, befitting a predator. That one managed to yank the kid's catch loose and take off.
So if you're ling-cod fishing, grab fast, don't get your hands near its teeth -- and don't reel in too fast or hard.
Ow.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Ducking the Bullet
Had the guys from Rainmasters putting up a new roof on Thursday.
Friday, 70-mph winds hit the coast.
We ducked that bullet by ONE day. Jeff Layman, who owns the company says that our roof was just beginning to rot and go soggy. The storm would have brought a flood down on our heads.
BUT now we have a lovely new roof that should take us the next thirty years.
"Good!" I said. "We'll be dead by then."
When you're 53 and 58, you see this big projects as something you won't have to do again because you won't outlive them. It comes as a relief. THAT's done. One less worry in life.
Anyway, the Harvest Brown roof matches our little yellow double-wide just perfect. The roof can air out now, because it's vented all along the ridge. The old double-wides were too airtight, and they'd rot from the ridge. The new venting will let the house breathe.
A guy I was talking to about roofing, who had put his own roof on a couple years ago, didn't know this, and he had to do it all over again. And Labor and Industry won't sign off on your roof unless a bonded company does it. Maybe not a problem now, but who needs to jump through more hoops come time to sell? The job wasn't that expensive, anyway, not for the great job they did and with all the materials.
Up here you don't fool around with roofs. Maybe in Arizona, but up here the rain will just eat a house to death if that roof isn't put on right. It's worth the money to get a professional with a long history of putting up roofs between the rain squalls.
Even though the power went out Friday at about 11:00 am and didn't come on again until about 3:00 pm Saturday, we sat by the woodstove and listened to the wind howl and whip at our perfect ease. Because I couldn't get on the computer -- everything was down, trees, electricity, dsl -- I just sat and did pages for the newestDesert Peach all day long.
I don't get depressed in the dark. Some candles in some cut-glass vases -- which act as Fresnell lamps -- and I'm good for the day.
We will have to build some kind of shelter for the Bug. Or hold the tarp on the car better with the punji cords.
Had the guys from Rainmasters putting up a new roof on Thursday.
Friday, 70-mph winds hit the coast.
We ducked that bullet by ONE day. Jeff Layman, who owns the company says that our roof was just beginning to rot and go soggy. The storm would have brought a flood down on our heads.
BUT now we have a lovely new roof that should take us the next thirty years.
"Good!" I said. "We'll be dead by then."
When you're 53 and 58, you see this big projects as something you won't have to do again because you won't outlive them. It comes as a relief. THAT's done. One less worry in life.
Anyway, the Harvest Brown roof matches our little yellow double-wide just perfect. The roof can air out now, because it's vented all along the ridge. The old double-wides were too airtight, and they'd rot from the ridge. The new venting will let the house breathe.
A guy I was talking to about roofing, who had put his own roof on a couple years ago, didn't know this, and he had to do it all over again. And Labor and Industry won't sign off on your roof unless a bonded company does it. Maybe not a problem now, but who needs to jump through more hoops come time to sell? The job wasn't that expensive, anyway, not for the great job they did and with all the materials.
Up here you don't fool around with roofs. Maybe in Arizona, but up here the rain will just eat a house to death if that roof isn't put on right. It's worth the money to get a professional with a long history of putting up roofs between the rain squalls.
Even though the power went out Friday at about 11:00 am and didn't come on again until about 3:00 pm Saturday, we sat by the woodstove and listened to the wind howl and whip at our perfect ease. Because I couldn't get on the computer -- everything was down, trees, electricity, dsl -- I just sat and did pages for the newestDesert Peach all day long.
I don't get depressed in the dark. Some candles in some cut-glass vases -- which act as Fresnell lamps -- and I'm good for the day.
We will have to build some kind of shelter for the Bug. Or hold the tarp on the car better with the punji cords.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Ling Cod Back
Eagles at Slip Point:
With the fish having taken off for vacation or something since September, we hadn't been getting much fish in the diet.
The greenling do seem to be back on the beach. Caught three nice ones within the last week, which means that I can feed raw fish to our old cat Spuds.
Yes, Spuds is still around. His nose is still blooming, but we're keeping the virulence of the growth back with a silver/sulphur cream. He'll probably end up with a Jimmy Durante nose, but at least we won't have to drag him all over the place for biopses and surgery. The old man is 17. Dan and I have a living will so nobody will put us on machines. I've threatened to have "Do not resuscitate" tatoo'd on one wrist, and "no heroic measures" on the other, just so the emergency personnel would read it for sure while trying to take my pulse. After having inflicted heroic measures on other old cats, we don't want to do it to Spuds. He's having too much fun sleeping in front of the wood stove and running out into the sun.
Anyway, about the ling cod: threw the greenling heads and guts and skins back into my favorite fishin' hole. So I shouldn't have been surprised when something HAULED on my line today and chewed it off, twice. If I'm going to chum for ling cod, even by accident, what do I expect?
Ling cod season opens in May. I'm getting a wire leader.
Dan on the first nice day in a long time. He's watching eagles:
Eagles at Slip Point:
With the fish having taken off for vacation or something since September, we hadn't been getting much fish in the diet.
The greenling do seem to be back on the beach. Caught three nice ones within the last week, which means that I can feed raw fish to our old cat Spuds.
Yes, Spuds is still around. His nose is still blooming, but we're keeping the virulence of the growth back with a silver/sulphur cream. He'll probably end up with a Jimmy Durante nose, but at least we won't have to drag him all over the place for biopses and surgery. The old man is 17. Dan and I have a living will so nobody will put us on machines. I've threatened to have "Do not resuscitate" tatoo'd on one wrist, and "no heroic measures" on the other, just so the emergency personnel would read it for sure while trying to take my pulse. After having inflicted heroic measures on other old cats, we don't want to do it to Spuds. He's having too much fun sleeping in front of the wood stove and running out into the sun.
Anyway, about the ling cod: threw the greenling heads and guts and skins back into my favorite fishin' hole. So I shouldn't have been surprised when something HAULED on my line today and chewed it off, twice. If I'm going to chum for ling cod, even by accident, what do I expect?
Ling cod season opens in May. I'm getting a wire leader.
Dan on the first nice day in a long time. He's watching eagles:
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Brakes
Yes, the busses in Clallam Bay's school district DO have brakes. In an earlier post, I guess I scared people by making it seem like the busses won't stop. I meant that the brakes are very very delicate, being air-brakes. One has to step on them softly but firmly.
I'm getting not half bad at driving these things, or so Bob Cain says. Bob owns Cain's Marina, and does the maintenance on the busses and got stuck with teaching me to drive. I'm not scaring the willies out of him when I back up any more. At least he's not ducking behind the seats.
I didn't grow up driving trucks and boats or backing them up, so backing up is difficult for me. Bob's got this extremely narrow little alley beside his property that he's using to teach me to back into. It's a bear, but it's a good idea. If I ever get the hang of back-turning the bus into that alleyway I'll be able to back between the line of traffic cones during the test. Bob's a pretty good teacher.
Yes, the busses in Clallam Bay's school district DO have brakes. In an earlier post, I guess I scared people by making it seem like the busses won't stop. I meant that the brakes are very very delicate, being air-brakes. One has to step on them softly but firmly.
I'm getting not half bad at driving these things, or so Bob Cain says. Bob owns Cain's Marina, and does the maintenance on the busses and got stuck with teaching me to drive. I'm not scaring the willies out of him when I back up any more. At least he's not ducking behind the seats.
I didn't grow up driving trucks and boats or backing them up, so backing up is difficult for me. Bob's got this extremely narrow little alley beside his property that he's using to teach me to back into. It's a bear, but it's a good idea. If I ever get the hang of back-turning the bus into that alleyway I'll be able to back between the line of traffic cones during the test. Bob's a pretty good teacher.
Cyber-Fish
After 3 and a half months without a bite, I finally pulled a decent-sized female greenling in off the Slip Point beach. Fish haven't been biting all over the straits and into the ocean, so this one was a bit of a surprise.
She looked a bit odd. Her golden back was nearly red and the light places on her gill covers and belly were more white than the usual yellow.
When I opened her up, her flesh was bright blue. Not the usual greenish-blue of a greenling, but bright chemical blue. Her stomach was pale artificial blue and very stiff. In fact, everything in her except her heart and liver was like hard plastic. It was like cutting into Cyber-Fish.
Her fillets, after two days soaking in milk, came out nice and white, but the milk was chemical blue. We ate the fillets anyway. They cooked up lovely white and tasted great. No ill effects.
No one I described her to could explain why a fish might be bright light blue, until Dan and I were out cutting wood with Tim van Riper. He said that the divers around here sometimes illegally use copper sulphate crystals to drive octopodi out of their holes in the rocks. This greenling, in her foraging for crustaceans on the reef, had probably swallowed one of the crystals.
At least now we know.
After 3 and a half months without a bite, I finally pulled a decent-sized female greenling in off the Slip Point beach. Fish haven't been biting all over the straits and into the ocean, so this one was a bit of a surprise.
She looked a bit odd. Her golden back was nearly red and the light places on her gill covers and belly were more white than the usual yellow.
When I opened her up, her flesh was bright blue. Not the usual greenish-blue of a greenling, but bright chemical blue. Her stomach was pale artificial blue and very stiff. In fact, everything in her except her heart and liver was like hard plastic. It was like cutting into Cyber-Fish.
Her fillets, after two days soaking in milk, came out nice and white, but the milk was chemical blue. We ate the fillets anyway. They cooked up lovely white and tasted great. No ill effects.
No one I described her to could explain why a fish might be bright light blue, until Dan and I were out cutting wood with Tim van Riper. He said that the divers around here sometimes illegally use copper sulphate crystals to drive octopodi out of their holes in the rocks. This greenling, in her foraging for crustaceans on the reef, had probably swallowed one of the crystals.
At least now we know.
Already On Television.
I'd been thinking this place would make a good setting for a play or a book or a movie.
It's been done.
Picked up a dvd of the second season of "Northern Exposure" at the library the other day. In the course of watching the show I started recognizing the characters and places and situations around here.
If that ain't that bunch of red-headed kids I don't know what is. And the way everybody is always running around doing something with kayaks and second-and-third-hand trucks, and moose in the streets (or, in our case, eagles and the occasional cougar).
Or maybe these little rural towns are just all like that. When I was watching that show a decade ago, I never realized I'd be moving to it.
I'd been thinking this place would make a good setting for a play or a book or a movie.
It's been done.
Picked up a dvd of the second season of "Northern Exposure" at the library the other day. In the course of watching the show I started recognizing the characters and places and situations around here.
If that ain't that bunch of red-headed kids I don't know what is. And the way everybody is always running around doing something with kayaks and second-and-third-hand trucks, and moose in the streets (or, in our case, eagles and the occasional cougar).
Or maybe these little rural towns are just all like that. When I was watching that show a decade ago, I never realized I'd be moving to it.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Nice Review
Francois Pernaud gave my latest color book, Pithed, real nice review at:
http://gaycomicslist.free.fr/pages/blogarch.php?month=2005-11#187
Francois Pernaud gave my latest color book, Pithed, real nice review at:
http://gaycomicslist.free.fr/pages/blogarch.php?month=2005-11#187
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Maybe we should get them Safeway cards.
WISH I'd had my camera today. Guy had shot a 7-foot female cougar and she was lying in the back of his truck.
Of course I had to go pet. Cats are my totem animal. Some other guys were gathered around the truck. While I was petting her, I asked: "So what do you do with a cougar?"
A young guy said, "They eat real good." (He was petting her, too).
Another young guy said, "They jerk good, too."
And then another guy said, to the first young guy who was petting: "She ain't gonna feel your affection!" To me he said, "They eat a lot of animals."
I said, "Well, they can't go to Safeway."
The second young guy said, "And they would get children, too."
I can understand killing any animal to eat or use the hide -- circle of life and all -- but I don't understand sports. If you're going to KILL something, tell me you did it to eat it or because you were cold. Don't be making excuses because you just wanted to shoot it. I don't catch-and-release fish, because let's face it, there are kids on the beach, and teaching kids to torment animals for the fun of it is just asking for future trouble -- you can end up being one of the animals.
And I thought cougars were a lot bigger than THAT. If this is a big one, they're really kind of small.
When I got home and let the cats smell my hands they had no reaction. Which was a surprise to me.
WISH I'd had my camera today. Guy had shot a 7-foot female cougar and she was lying in the back of his truck.
Of course I had to go pet. Cats are my totem animal. Some other guys were gathered around the truck. While I was petting her, I asked: "So what do you do with a cougar?"
A young guy said, "They eat real good." (He was petting her, too).
Another young guy said, "They jerk good, too."
And then another guy said, to the first young guy who was petting: "She ain't gonna feel your affection!" To me he said, "They eat a lot of animals."
I said, "Well, they can't go to Safeway."
The second young guy said, "And they would get children, too."
I can understand killing any animal to eat or use the hide -- circle of life and all -- but I don't understand sports. If you're going to KILL something, tell me you did it to eat it or because you were cold. Don't be making excuses because you just wanted to shoot it. I don't catch-and-release fish, because let's face it, there are kids on the beach, and teaching kids to torment animals for the fun of it is just asking for future trouble -- you can end up being one of the animals.
And I thought cougars were a lot bigger than THAT. If this is a big one, they're really kind of small.
When I got home and let the cats smell my hands they had no reaction. Which was a surprise to me.
