10/31/15

[DeadEye_Dan]

40° & rain - N. Lake Huron
SSW winds at 7-12mph, waves 1-3', building to 2-4' by mid afternoon. Winds increasing to 25-30mph by early evening, waves 5-7' with a maximum of 9' expected overnight.


Woke up this AM, knowing that if yesterday's forecast came true that it was going to be a short hunt today.
1-3 are pretty much every day conditions. 2-4's are huntable, but not necessarily fun. I don't mess around in anything more than that.

Decided to leave a little earlier today and to be set up shortly after LST. Made the run out into the wind figuring if things got poor sooner, we'd at least have the benefit of surfing back in.
Motored around looking for the right spot to set and just couldn't find a good pod of birds to work that early in the morning, so we just chilled out and waited to see where the birds were wanting to go before setting up.
Sitting in the rain in 1-3 foot chop is about as much fun as it sounds like it is.
My experience with rain and sea ducks is that they generally don't go well together - the birds just tend to sit tight.

We finally found some birds that we wanted to work.
Not gonna lie. Wasn't a glamorous day...everything was wet before we started, and got wetter as it went along.
And the birds weren't flying like they did the day before - so it turned into a meat shoot. If it came into the decoys it died.
Where we may have decoyed 2-300 birds the day before to put 12 drakes on the floor, I let exactly 6 birds see the decoys, and killed all 6, including a nifty double to start things off.
My pard didn't shoot quite as well, but still managed to kill 6/8 birds that came in, and that still took us 3 hours to complete.
Overall was a fairly uneventful hunt. Because of the rain I elected not to get out the camera, and it's just as well - the birds were pretty waterlogged and nasty looking by the time we finished and I forgot to snap a pic of the pile for this log before we hit the road. We ended the Friday/Saturday hunt with 23 squaw and 1 WW scoter, zero cripples lost.
Got checked by a CO at the ramp, was a real nice guy and I'm quite happy to see him out. I see a lot a shenanigans while hunting and it's hard to enforce what happens several miles off shore when those guys don't really have the equipment needed to get out there, especially when they are by themselves

I figured we probably took on some water during the course of the day, and managed to catch a little clip to share...have I ever mentioned how much sea ducks bleed?? Ha ha.

http://youtu.be/KTu9y8eNw3Q

[DComeaux]

Nice write up Dan. Made me feel wet and cold.

Looks like you spilled your jug of pink lemonade in the boat.

[DeadEye_Dan]

Ha ha - wasn't expecting it or I'd have had the camera going while it was running red. You know it's been a couple good days when the drain runs red.