Mountaineer Chronicles

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

Some pictures from our annual Men's Retreat which was a little over a week ago. A little fishing, a hike to the top of Seneca Rocks, and plenty of food! Ben the tough guy Me with a cheesy pose on the top of Seneca Rocks Chunky rainbow from Smoke Hole This is my fish geek picture - a male spawning striped shiner (Note color on fins) Pile of kabobs ready for the grill View from Seneca Rocks looking west.

A post was made on the wvangler.com message board that begged the question "Is catching fish the point?" and it linked a video response. It got me thinking.... Here was my response on the message board, copied to here: "If it didn't matter, we would focus as much of our time and energy in the least productive times of the year as we do in the most productive times. I'd have to say that the Elk has more people fishing during hatches that make catching fish easier. The freestone streams don't get pounded in the middle of winter when the water temps are 34F, so yeah catching fish matters. With my increasingly busy schedule and additional responsibilities, I find myself scheduling my longer fishing trips into periods when the probability of poor fishing is as low as possible. I don't take as many winter fishing trips. I don't fish as much in the heat of summer. I try to maximize my potential, and we all do something like that to an extent.

Here I am again, that right, its me, your local weather nerd. Hi. I couldn't miss the opportunity to create a post about spring on the first day of spring (that's today if you didn't know). It looks very spring-like today, bright sun, blue skies, but all that is from inside looking out. Venturing outside may give you the idea of warm day in late January, as the temps are still quite chilly. We are definitely going through a little cold snap. None of the high temps in the long term forecast break the 50 degree mark. The daily average high for March 20 in Morgantown is 53°F. The record high is 79°F and the record low is 15°F, so even though we are a little cooler than average, we are still well within the expected range of temps for this time of year (high temp today is about 41°F). I feel like some folks think that as soon as the calendar flips to March, that winter is over and it should at least be in the 60's everyday. That's fine, and I'm probably in the m

Chad and I took off this past Friday and Saturday in search of trout. Sure enough our trip started with a breakfast feast at the Casselman Inn before braving the cold. We even had to traverse a little leftover snow to get to Grantsville, MD on I-68. After our big breakfast, getting bundled up, and somehow managing to get into our waders with the extra bulk from breakfast and all the layers, we started fishing the Cassleman River delayed harvest area. For me it started off slow, but I finally found a pod of rainbows willing to take a very slowly presented wooly bugger. I ended up catching about 10 standard sized rainbows before my toes got numb, and I walked back to the car to warm up. Chad caught a few fish, but didn't luck into a pod of fish like I was able to find. First of the year - even if a little guy. We decided we would then warm up in the car and head to the Savage River trophy trout area below Savage Reservoir. The water here, like Cassleman, was low, clear, and c