Mountaineer Chronicles

 As fall approaches, most backyard gardens start to look pretty meager. Unfortunately, I've let weeds and grasses get a little out of hand as well - we've all been there right? While it seems most folks don't put much effort into fall vegetable gardening (guilty!), this is a time you can extend your vegetable season with certain limited cold hardy crops. Kale, lettuce, even some peas and beans can be some great fall producers, though these do need planned out early and started well within the summer window. If you are like me this year and have gotten to fall, and your garden is overgrown and you are wanting to hold onto every last minute of tomato production you can get, there is still an option for how to use this otherwise idle time for your garden to help your production next year! Winter Cover Crops.  Simply put this is a grass or legume that you grow fall through spring to improve the quality of your garden soil. Having a cover crop can help smother weeds, improve soi...

Do you have an excess of fresh cucumbers? Refrigerator pickles are a very simple and quite quick way to preserve them.  The process is very simple. Fresh cucumbers cut how you'd like them packed into clean jars and pour over a hot brine. hot brine and some jars.  To boost the flavor of your soon to be pickles, add some pickling spice or other favorites to your jars. My choice of flavors is quite simple: some black peppercorns, smashed garlic, and some fresh dill.  Another important component is to add a crisping agent, and I've had great luck with Mrs Wages Xtra Crunch . These newer crisping agents are simply calcium chloride rather than the alum used heavily by our parents and grandparents. The FDA doesn't recommend using alum any longer and this option seems to work well without the need for additional chemicals. Pack your jars. Bring the brine to a boil, pour the hot brine over the cucumbers, put on a lid, stash them in the fridge for a day (or few), then e...

 Chanterelles are my favorite wild fungi. These guys grow through a long period in the summer, have a large range, and best of all they are EASY to find! Their bright orange coloration sometimes closely resembles hunter orange and is easy to spot a patch on a hillside from even several hundred yards away. Oh yeah, and they are delicious! I came across a patch last week and picked a gallon bag full in a matter of minutes. I didn't have any plans for immediate use, and didn't want to let these tasty summer treats go to waste, so I decided to dehydrate them for future use. Washed Chanterelles We recently purchased a  Dehydrator Air Fry Combo . We have a dedicated dehydrator with numerous racks, but rather than dig that out of the basement, I opted to try out the dehydrate settings on this thing. The capacity is smaller than a dedicated dehydrator, but was the perfect amount of space for the gallon of chanterelles. The dehydrator has temperature and time control which was perfect ...

Fall will quickly be upon us here in Mountain State. For most, this means the return of WVU football, changing leaves, cooler temps, and the quickly approaching fall hunting seasons. To me, all of these are a welcome change. The sweltering heat of summer and I do not get along well.  Who doesn't love college football?  For many outdoorsmen and women, the thought of a brisk October evening perched high in a tree waiting on a whitetail buck while orange and yellow leaves softly drop to the forest floor below is a special experience for which they long all summer.  I'm no stranger to the allure of fall. Crunchy leaves, back yard bonfires on cool evening, and that distinct smell of early evenings... Who, besides me, is ready for fall?

If you look closely at this photo, you can see a handful of snowflakes that were leftover on the deck from the few flurries we had last night. Many higher elevation places had more significant snow showers yesterday.  Here in the middle Appalachians, we can get spoiled by 70 degree days like we had last week, so when we get cold rains (or even snow) and 30 degree temperatures folks get taken aback.  The average last frost date for Morgantown is still almost 2 weeks away, and for the high mountains is more like a month away. You can see from the greenery in the photo that spring is certainly here, but spring for Mountaineers doesn't guarantee 60- or even 50-degree weather. Soon enough though, winter will finally lose it's grip...

For our first outing of the year, Roger and I headed to the Savage River in western Maryland. We started on the trophy section below the reservoir, but after fishing methodically for several hours, we decided to jump up above the reservoir to fish a tributary for native brook trout. The water temps above the lake were slightly warmer, and this, combined with some clear skies and strong spring sun warmed the water enough that the trout were hungry and feeding. We caught 18 trout in about 3.5 hours, each of us landing 9. All were smaller brook trout (< 8") with the exception of one 11" stocked rainbow that ran up from the river into this small tributary. We both were using double beadhead nymph rigs, and as long as you got a good drift the fish didn't seem to care which exact pattern you were floating past them. Here are some pictures of the day... Serene Small but pretty First brookie of the year Hemlocks Rhododendrons Cannibal - th...

I've tried several different approaches to keeping journals and logs of my fishing over the years. I enjoy looking back at these logs and they are certainly informative for planning future trips. So far, I have been unable to really stick with a single logging format for very long. I guess this is my own fault for simply not being devoted to keeping track of things. The best free, online option I've found is http://www.mydailyfishinglog.com/  . This website is oriented slightly toward flyfishing, but the framework is flexible enough to use for any type of fishing logs. There is even the option to attach pictures to each individual log entry. The best part is that it is 100% free, all you have to do is create a username to login. In the past I've also tried creating my own log forms in Excel. The advantage to doing this is that I can customize my log entry fields to precisely what I what, but the interface and ease of use is not quite the same as the online entry optio...

As spring quickly approaches, many folks begin to long to break the winter blues by hitting their favorite trout streams. Trout are coldwater fish and are definitely more active and catchable in cold water than other Mountain State fish, which is why they are pursued in the colder months. While trout are easier than warmwater fish to catch in cold water, they are definitely not immune to inactivity during especially cold water. Here are a few tips I've found to help me make the most of my late winter or early spring fishing trips. Early spring ice formation on a wild trout stream in western MD. Fish spring fed creeks and rivers. Streams with large spring influences stay much warmer in winter than freestone creeks. Springs in West Virginia usually discharge at around 50 degrees year-round, so fishing creeks and rivers with spring influence will have much more active fish than streams that may be hovering around freezing. In WV, the Elk River is the most well known and access...

I've started to realize that sometimes with my somewhat limited time to get outside, either for fishing, hunting, hiking, or sightseeing, I get in too much of a rush to see everything , and therefore overlook whats in front of me. I try to just cram two or threes days worth into just one day. All too much, I get too hung up on maximizing the efficiency of my time fishing. Efficiency when it comes to fishing is the number of fish caught per hour, or if targeting big fish, it could be the total inches of fish caught per hour. Sometimes it can even be about just covering as much water as possible. All of these metrics of fishing success or efficiency again cause me to rush. Places like this are too special to rush through Even when hunting, I get caught up in this mode. In order to explore as much territory as possible, I've found myself rushing through cover while stillhunting, which usually just leads to spooked quarry. This rush, either while hunting or fishing, ultimat...

So, despite my best effort to convince Brooke to let me thin the cucumbers to a more manageable number for our small garden, we are quickly becoming overrun with cucumbers. Luckily, I convinced her to plant small, pickling cucumbers, so it is no big deal. The cucumber vines on the left, have nearly shaded out our peppers. For those looking for some abomination of a sweet "pickle" recipe, keep moving. Sweet pickles do not touch my lips, and I consider it false advertising when restaurants don't distinguish that the pickles they serve are in fact horrible sweet monstrosities. So anyway, I've been wanting to try making my own pickles for a while. The real thing, dill pickles. So after quick bit of research, it is easy to find out that there are a couple main ways to make pickles. The first way utilizes vinegar solution, and is similar to the pickles packed on most grocery store shelves. The other way involves a simple brine solution and a little patience. These ...

We are a little more than half way through the year. Here is my update of how I've done on my goals so far. Fishing Goals: Catch a fish in every month of the year  Unfulfilled -- cold temps in Jan, Feb, and March put a damper on this.  April - July I've done well though. REVISED goal is to fish at least once in each of the remaining months. In WV, catch one new species of fish (northern pike, hybrid striper, tiger musky), and/or a species I haven't caught in a few years at least (flathead catfish, musky, freshwater drum, eel, or yellow perch). Currently unfulfilled Catch a 15"+ smallmouth bass on a fly FULFILLED -  Big smallmouth on the fly I have also caught two 18+" smallmouth bass this summer on conventional tackle Big smallmouth in the summer on conventional tackle Catch a trout over 17" on a fly Currently unfulfilled Float a new stretch of water FULFILLED x 3. Floated 2 new sections of the Cheat River. Floated ...

Well, we are 2 months into the new year, and I've yet to land a fish. My goal to catch a fish in every month of the year will go unfulfilled. Perhaps for this year, I'll have to modify that goal to be that I want to go fishing in every month of the year. Winter fishing is always tough, and for me, the best bets are either trout or walleye. I'm not an ice fisherman, so I need open water, which has been tough to find this year so far. Even the Mon was mostly iced up during mid-late January, which is pretty rare. Many trout streams were locked up tight. I missed my best opportunity in early January before the super deep freeze set in. I finally got out on the final day of January when some slightly warmer temperatures allowed some of the ice on the Mon to retreat just far enough that I was able to wet a line one evening to try for a walleye below the Morgantown locks. With water temperatures hovering just above the freezing mark, I knew most fish would be deep and lethargi...

Most all of us make resolutions or goals at each New Year. Some think it is silly, but our human nature sees the New Year as a time of renewal, and as such I feel it is a good time to refocus our personal efforts, whether or not you want to call them "resolutions". I, along with my wife, have made a list of some things we want to accomplish in our personal and spiritual lives, but those goals are personal, and wouldn't be all that interesting to share anyway. That said, I'm going to share a handful of outdoor activity related goals down here. I know most of these are of little real consequence, but are things I want to accomplish this year nonetheless. Here goes: Fishing Goals: Catch a fish in every month of the year (this is usually tough for me because I get so focused on hunting in the fall). In WV, catch one new species of fish (northern pike, hybrid striper, tiger musky), and/or a species I haven't caught in a few years at least (flathead catfish, m...

I didn't keep that great of a log, but to the best of my recollection, I fished on about 20 different days in 2013. That certainly isn't a ton of time compared to some, but is quite a lot for others. Some of my trips were all day, some were not much more than an hour. Overall I didn't catch anything enormous, but I think I did well considering. Here are some highlights from the year. First fish of the year and the only one I ate First trout of the year - gotta start somewhere First and largest brown of the year - early March, Savage River I always spend a lot of time after these guys each year For better or worse, a lot of my small stream brook trout fishing is with this guy Sometimes those rough fish can be pretty - this is a spawning male striped shiner from NF at Seneca Rocks I lucked into several slab crappies like this from the Mon Of course fishing the Mon, you'll catch some sauger too This monster redbreast sunfish came from De...

Dew droplets on a leaf of kale Fine coating of dew on a sugar snap pea leaf Baby cucumber plants popped up over the last day or two These were the first green bean spouts to break the surface Sage has quite showy purple flowers The thyme (right) is covered with hundreds of tiny white blooms right now