Preseason 2016...

[Rick]

I can't imagine the cluster that it will be to try and get everything "right" before the season, if yalls situation is anything like we got out this way.

Our home situations aren't anything like yours, but the countryside is still flooded, and truth be told, I'm hiding from the teal mess. Supposed to finish farm releases tomorrow (and Friday?), then maybe I'll shift gears.

[Rick]

Finally slipped into our marsh for farm releases today, via airboat and Cherry Ridge. Saw a grand total of two blackbellied whistling and one mottled duck between the two marshes and nothing but a few of the former over the ag lands en route to CR. Found two of the first three blinds we passed popped:


With the lucky ones having survived by vice of laziness. Last man guiding it was too lazy to pick up his decoys at season's end, much less put the lids on the blind. Same, it turned out, was true of two of the last three, except one man did have his decoys picked up but didn't get around to getting his lids on. Thought maybe I'd been incredibly lucky as we approached the mudhole:


But it turned out to be that it, too, had popped, only on the same corners of opposite ends, causing it to roll on its side:


Which will be a real treat to right and reset. Also couldn't help but note that with most of the marsh looking clean and open, the mudhole appeared to remain it's usual mess of lumpy flotant. Was in a hurry with scads of little tatailles to cut loose and didn't pause for a better look, so I guess we'll see when the water goes down enough to start rehabbing for teal. (Speaking of which, another storm cell is rolling through as I type.)

The good news, other than the open blinds that didn't pop, is that we checked the boathouse and found everything afloat, though a bateau had broken free and was adrift outside and very nearly sunk, along with its new Go-Devil, by rain:


And I got that remedied.

Really, really ready for the water to drop enough to get to work.

[Ericdc]

Could you explain how the blinds that the lids were left off faired better by not popping? How high is the water in mudhole compared to normal?


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[DComeaux]

Damn, That sucks about the blind, Rick. If you need a hand I can go watch and provide moral support......

[Rick]

Could you explain how the blinds that the lids were left off faired better by not popping? How high is the water in mudhole compared to normal?


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The rain (21" in one 24hr period) acted as ballast in those that weren't covered, and they simply went under the flood, rather than breaking their tethers or pulling their anchors when their buoyancy increased against the rising water.

Might want to compare the dog platform uprights in this season's end photo:


to what was showing if you look really hard today:


Tallest is even with the side of the blind, which is being held that high by resting on my boat hide uprights and, perhaps, the buoyancy of the wood floors and benches within.

[Rick]

Damn, That sucks about the blind, Rick. If you need a hand I can go watch and provide moral support......

Lord knows I'll need adult supervision.

[Ericdc]

Downside to leaving lids off?


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[Ericdc]

Yea, we don't have a lid on our field pit. Last year our blind was nasty when we pumped it out in October, but a flood 2 days before the season filled it with really fresh water and did a good flush job. Minnows were swimming around in it, straight from the boeuf River.


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[DComeaux]

Damn, That sucks about the blind, Rick. If you need a hand I can go watch and provide moral support......

Lord knows I'll need adult supervision.

I'm good to go. I could actually lend a hand.

[Rick]

Downside to leaving lids off?

More rust, shorter blind life, waterlogged benches and wood floor, and rust stained clothes for anyone brushing against the blind walls unless they're scrubbed. Plus, in my case, less weather exposure for my spinner toggle and rheostat, which are mounted on the blind wall.

[Rick]

Damn, That sucks about the blind, Rick. If you need a hand I can go watch and provide moral support......

Lord knows I'll need adult supervision.

I'm good to go. I could actually lend a hand.

Appreciate it, but am pretty sure we've got it. The three blinds that popped belong to the three workers we have left, so we've a built-in crew. And, assuming it was just the aluminum turnbuckles hooks that straightened, I'd really rather work alone and at my own pace once the blind is upright. Well, with the help of a jaeger pump.

[Ericdc]

Downside to leaving lids off?

More rust, shorter blind life, waterlogged benches and wood floor, and rust stained clothes for anyone brushing against the blind walls unless they're scrubbed. Plus, in my case, less weather exposure for my spinner toggle and rheostat, which are mounted on the blind wall.

Forgot about the electronics and also didn't know yours has wood floor. we just have the wooden bench in ours.

hope the blind work goes as smoothly as it can.



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[Rick]

Finally saw some teal: two wads, one maybe forty strong and the other half that buzzing the open water of an old crawfish pond on Creole Bell (about as south as you can drive of Klondike). Also found a flooded set-aside field west of there that seemed to be holding every mottled and wood duck and half the tree ducks in the tri-parish area but not a teal I could discern, so I'm guessing the teal we did see just got here.

[Ericdc]

Good deal. Still haven't had any stop through at my pond yet? But seeing how it's so wet I probably won't attract as many.


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[Rick]

Been on the phone with one of our other marsh guides who mentioned that we only have two weeks until the season, while I'd had three in what's left of my badly gelled mind. Gonna be a horse race, only in terribly slow motion...

[Ericdc]

Yea teal season starts on my birthday this year. #34


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[Rick]

Another rainy day in paradise. See that the cell goes all the way to the Gulf, so it's raining on Dave C's plans, too, unless he's like the house-bound hounds and I who went for a run in the country, anyway.

[DComeaux]

Rained out this morning will go back out tomorrow morning and work in between rain showers water is extremely high. We came home but are headed back out to the camp now. Go word as we were leaving this morning that they cut a levee just north of 82 Grand Chenier to help move water out of the mermentau basin not sure how we will be affected by this I guess we'll be okay if our levees arent toped. Having to do this from my phone isucks.

[Rick]

SIL and grandson were moving cattle from Little Chenier yesterday. And a friend on the drainage board here was given a helicopter tour the other day to look at a Rockefeller levee cut - that was clear over by Rollover, instead of below the Superior canal, as we'd all been assuming. Probably the genius of the same Corps engineer who stood behind a temporarily walled portion of our town levee and said it wouldn't work.

Hope you can at least get out, ride around and feel like you're doing something ducky. A pass by the calling contest to shake some hands I don't often see will be about as ducky as I get. Or I may pass on that to duck (Get it?) the inevitable "Is my teal spot ready?" questions from renters I'd run into there...

[Rick]

Long day at the Gueydan Duck Festival's calling contest, and, no, I wasn't calling. Don't know pecans about contest calling and lack the dedication to practice hard enough to do any good at it if I did take a fit to try. But it's a chance to see some folks I too seldom get to, which I did.

Found Rod Haydel there promoting a line/brand of "H2" acrylics I've been living too far under a rock to even know they'd introduced, and learned little bro, Kelly, was off in California doing likewise.

Also quite a few local guys I used to guide with or for, and got to meet WFF's own JohnC in person for the first time. John took a first in duck team meat calling, second in state speck and, perhaps, something else I was too busy BSing to catch. But he can plainly run pee out of a call.

Was catching up with Ronquest when Doug's 8yr-old great grandson, Cole, was calling, and Jim made a suggestion I thought it best that he pass on, himself, and introduced them for a shot at it. But our lad flat froze.

Did, on the second attempt, make it to the north end of the farm Jarren and friends will be hunting, and does appear the first crop has probably been cut at their blind, but there's still no telling if they'll be able to hunt the blind or be moved elsewhere away from possible second crop.

And, "last but not least," something filled the sky over a new lease of ours with ducks as I was passing on my way home. At first thought they were all big ducks, but then balls of teal came buzzing back from wherever they'd initially scooted off to. Don't know that I'll ever get to hunt them there, but it was neat to see.

(Now about to shower and head to a rosary for a friend who was crushed by a tractor. Live and love all you can, while you can.)

[DComeaux]

(Now about to shower and head to a rosary for a friend who was crushed by a tractor. Live and love all you can, while you can.)

Sorry to read this, Rick. I'll say a prayer for those involved.

[Rick]

Was a freakish thing where people were doing the kind of thing they'd done countless times before, only this time something went wrong. Richard was 69 and had lived a pretty long life, so the bigger tragedy might be the young fellow on the tractor who'll have to live his wondering if it was his doing. Bad deal all around.

Will attend another rosary this evening for a wild child (of 49) who was hard on himself and scared a lot of folks but was always good with me and, essentially, died from a turtle bite. No telling whether it was the bite or something that got into the wound when he went on cleaning them, but Sid was a bad diabetic, who'd already lost a foot, and developed an infection that killed him.

[Darren]

Sorry to hear of the losses, Rick; seems like there's been a fair many of those lately between your circles over there and I've had a couple myself in last 45 days or so. Also caught up with the in-law from Oak Island at a family gathering over the weekend, we chatted about Francis' funeral a bit and he reiterated that Bob still not doing well at all either unfortunately.

At least you got out and about to add some positive to the weekend between the birds and the duck talk at the 'Fest.

[Rick]

'Tis the season when I find myself up and rattling around by 3:30 - and had been awake worrying over our marsh mess for a couple hours prior. Hope to get started on it with at least one other marsh guide tomorrow morning and presently making my possibles list, so we don't go through the current access hassle and find ourselves lacking something critical.

On the plus side, the camp has a mess of teal on one new ag land lease, and the owner of another says it's loaded, too. But that remains to be seen, and there are no end of places they're not.

[Darren]

May be a deal where most get a day or two of good shooting then they do indeed find some of the available out of the norm flooded land.

That's the part that always concerns me following these types of rain events. On my end, it's usually flooded cane and bean fields from a skirting tropical storm, or even the backyards of people's homes along the Miss River abutting marshes. Birds scatter everywhere but the marsh ponds with blinds and end up concentrating where there's water and shouldn't be, nor hunters.

[Rick]

I normally take the "glass is half full" view that heavy rains scatter the birds enough that they aren't all chased out of the country opening weekend, and that those enjoying sheet water refuge will shift into gunned areas gradually as the water drops. But there's a difference between freshly flooded ag land and that which has been under long enough to be dead water. So we'll see.

Off now to see what the hounds and I can find farther below Gueydan than I could get last weekend - assuming that we can now...