Preseason

[BGkirk]

Made a preseason thread 3 days too soon in the 2020-2021 log so I moved my first post over here. Currently watching all the waterfowl shows that come on sportsman channel. I’ve never cared for Chad Belding and his show “the fowl life” but this second or so episode in California with an old timer was good. Old timer made the episode worth watching.

Go devil at the shop getting some routine maintenance as it may get more of a workout at new place with a one way 10 mile run. If I knew some guys with outboard tunnels setup right and see how they perform I’d be willing to make the swap.

This spring had me so busy I wasn’t able to go to the marsh until just the Sunday before last. I was surprised to find very little vegetation coming back. Water was above average , which this water level seems to be the new norm. And my rainfall tracker says we got another 3” in the past couple days.

I’m mostly discouraged about the land loss we are experiencing. What I find odd is that there was a lot more mud/vegetation when I last saw it in early feb picking up decoys. Maybe the salinity from the storm surge didn’t make the most visible difference until vegetation started trying to grow back.
Our ponds have mostly become lakes. Although I’ve seen it this way after hurricane Rita and it did eventually bounce back. But if I recall we had a drought around 2010-2011 and I would think a lot of vegetation was able to take hold again that summer.

Anyhow, will be back at it brushing blinds come late august.

I will also be doing some hunting on the west side of big lake closer to Sabine refuge. We will have an interior brackish pond to hunt along with what I’ll call the “lake side” as its wide open as far as you can see for the most part. There’s also some scattered interior ponds that are freshwater from what I can tell based on the vegetation I see. It looks promising and new places are always exciting.


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[Ericdc]

Chad's show has improved a lot.

You can trace a lot of these guys back to the old original Avery pro staff days. It's pretty neat to see how many of them got their start there.


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[BGkirk]

Chad's show has improved a lot.

You can trace a lot of these guys back to the old original Avery pro staff days. It's pretty neat to see how many of them got their start there.


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Vandemore got the flannel fad started. Can’t wait to see Chad’s new fad take flight with the cutt off hoodies.
Suns out guns out


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[Rick]

Vandemore got the flannel fad started. Can’t wait to see Chad’s new fad take flight with the cutt off hoodies.

Thought that was Bill Belichick's thing.

[BGkirk]

Made a trip this morning to the marsh to yank out our fiberglass pit for repairs and hopefully re deploy at the new place. Atleast that’s what my thoughts were until it was much more of a pain to get out and load on a trailer than I thought it would be. It was easy to “barge” it to the launch but we are much closer to the launch here than at the new place. If it gets put out there it may never leave.
The pits replacement will be a new platform above water. While I’m not too excited about it, I’ll get over it for the simple fact that we shot them pretty good from a platform prior to it rotting out and the pit filling in for 2 years.

Water level seems to be average, but hopefully will go down a tad leading up to teal season/hurricane season.

Found a few patches of either milfoil or Widgeon grass in the real shallow areas. Duckweed is everywhere! Especially in areas with wind protection.
Some of the shallow areas were old
Levees that are now 6” under.


As much as I’m looking forward to this season, I’m curious what next year will look like as the marsh continues to rebuild as long as hurricanes stay away. I do think we will have some holding power with all the water around. We’re supposed to have a teal workday on the 21st, but after last year I think that’s a little premature seeing that a lot can happen in 4 weeks.


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[BGkirk]

Other guys went to the new place and attempted to start spraying salvinia but the tide must’ve fell out as they claimed they couldn’t get into an interior pond that has a 50’ gap of marsh between them and the nearest water. I “jumped it” last time but apparently the approach was too much of an incline to attempt.
I came up a boat length short and had to push it last time.
Any ideas about getting a boat across a little more safely?? I thought about setting up pvc pipe similar to a “train track” or spaced close together horizontally to give my boat something to slide on.
They tried chewing on it a bit with a pro drive but i don’t think they’ll be able to do it the whole distance.


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[Rick]

PVC pipe rollers are the only land bridges I've seen for boats, but that's only been over hard levees, not 50' of marsh ground...

[Darren]

Land locked pond? Must be worth the hassle getting into. We just walk to those......

[BGkirk]

Land locked pond? Must be worth the hassle getting into. We just walk to those......

Yes Darren it looks like it’s worth getting into for sure. If all else fails will just have to bring canoes/pirogue and paddle to hunting spots from there. It’s a large interior pond so being able to motor up to blinds would be nice


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[Darren]

If landlocked or has less water interchange, very likely to have the best feed of the area, at least that's the case on my end. Our best pond is remote, fed only by small trenasse. Always the one that has birds on arrival.

[BGkirk]

I forgot to mention on my last trip to that we saw a solid 25 mottled ducks all flying together. I’m fairly certain I haven’t seen that big of a group at one time flying together.

We going down Friday and sat to work. Always fun prepping when it’s warm

[Darren]

I forgot to mention on my last trip to that we saw a solid 25 mottled ducks all flying together. I’m fairly certain I haven’t seen that big of a group at one time flying together.

We going down Friday and sat to work. Always fun prepping when it’s warm

The mottled flocks are usually just something we see right now/into teal season, and of course lots of people claim that they are grays. I hear some areas around little pecan and also venice are places you can see phenomenal early season wads of mottleds before they break up into the smaller groups/pairs we're accustomed to during the season.

Get out there early, good luck with the work!

[BGkirk]

Went to the new place and sprayed salvinia today and placed some blind material in places we think will be our spots.
Friend of a friend loaned out his sprayer setup which was really nice. Small kinda powered engine with a diaphragm pump and a 50 gal tank. Bad part was it was sent with no instructions and that cost us, Atleast I think it did as I’m really not sure if we got good coverage or not. I do know we went through 50 gallons rather fast and I’m sure wherever the spray landed will be toast. They sprayed one small area 2 weeks ago with a back pack and it did well. See below
The chemical was given to us as well or I may have been even more paranoid about not getting good coverage (Atleast I didn’t think we did because I didn’t have control of the wand) , seeing that I didn’t pay for it. I’m sure will have a round 2 spraying prior to big duck.


Tomorrow is teal work day for old place.
Itll be a lot of Roseau cutting with weed eaters. Thankfully we have a better crop to cut from than years past so it should go quicker. Also we have a good crew so there will be cutters, Roseau taxi drivers, and blind brushers.


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[BGkirk]

Oh, and I saw 3 teal buzzing !


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[Duck Engr]

Oh, and I saw 3 teal buzzing !


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That always makes work days better!

[Darren]

Re: roseau harvest for brushing

Weedeaters? Using string or a disc of some kind?


My battery operated 40V hedgetrimmer has been a beast for this task but a GAS one would really be the ticket for brushing as many blinds as yall are. Hope it went well!

[Ericdc]

My gas stihl trimmer with cutting blade on it will get it done.... just ask my bride


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[BGkirk]

Re: roseau harvest for brushing

Weedeaters? Using string or a disc of some kind?


My battery operated 40V hedgetrimmer has been a beast for this task but a GAS one would really be the ticket for brushing as many blinds as yall are. Hope it went well!

Yea it’s the blade with 4 or so “edges”
we had one guy brought a gas hedger one time and it worked real well.
Used chainsaws before and I like that too.

We were able to cut from dry ground this year and did it in half the time. We finished up before 9. Of course we had one less blind to brush but that made all the difference


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[BGkirk]

And we saw about 10-15 teal to boot!
Singles pairs and maybe a small group of 4-5. I thought it was odd to see them in anything less than a bigger flock.
This is also the first time I’ve ever seen them in this marsh prior to opening day so that was exciting. Lot of SAVs bouncing back and water is average or below average


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[BGkirk]

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[Ericdc]

Wasp report?


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[ryan_k]

None


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[Darren]

Good deal! Sure sounds/looks promising

[BGkirk]

Took the boat down and got it in the water. Our pond for opening week is without a blind currently so me and another found a suitable spot to pull boat in and hunt out of. Have plenty of cover to our backside but will use a 20’ piece of netting with Myrtle and willows along the front side. Gonna rig up something temporary to stab in the mud and angle back towards boat to drape netting over.

Didn’t get in the water til after 9 but had a threesome pass close enough by that would’ve should’ve made a closer pass with decoys out. What surprised me the most was the few groups I saw just off the side of the road which we normally don’t see til late second split. So I guess they found the marsh foods sooner than later. All blinds will be filled so hopefully enough birds to go around. It’s impressive how fast the marsh changes. There’s duckweed and more and more SAVs growing by the week it seems. Water level is low and I like it.


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[Ducaholic]

Sounds encouraging!

[BGkirk]

Went to retrieve decoys that were left out in teal season. We got about 8” more water then we had.
Saw plenty of teal Buzzing about in the distance but nothing close by.
On the way on I thought I spotted a mondo wad, which my cousin thought it looked like an old deteriorated levee with leftover tree stumps or Roseau remnants.
I stopped on the way out and pulled out the binos and confirmed it was lots of little brown ducks.
Sitting in less than a few inches of water in a pond that appears to have excellent water control or a busted levee somewhere.

I guess they didn’t like my truck sitting there as long as it did


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[BGkirk]

https://youtube.com/shorts/vqq2O-Q736g?feature=share


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[DComeaux]

That is good to see.

[Duck Engr]

Already flighty

[jrock75]

Some how, some way I am going to get the water control on at least a couple of our fields to be able to guarantee just a couple of inches. Down here I think that is the key to keeping the green wings around.