BIRD DOGS,THE BITE AND REAL VINTAGE STUFF

    The weather continues to play havoc with any planned excursions to the woods and waters here in the Grand Lake area. A day or two of sunshine and then it's back to the rain,at times a veritable downpour! That being said,there has been lots going on outdoors in our area,starting with Jamies purchase of a new English setter gun dog. Jamie has been bitten with the dog bug and he's got it bad. Along with the golden retrievers Ken and Jamie own to help on our duck hunts,Jamie decided he needed a woodcock and grouse dog.He asked me if I knew anyone who had good upland bird dogs and I told him Billy B. who guides some for the Ledges Inn had some good dogs and I knew he just had a litter of pups.Jamie wasn't long in getting hold of Billy and after seeing his dogs,Jamie purchased a nice male setter. I really like English setters because not only are they great gun dogs but they make a very nice house pet also. Jamies pup is very birdie and is off to a great start,pointing wing and feather and following commands as well as any pup could be expected at that age. This is a photo of Jamies new pup on point using a wing.

I can tell already that this pup is going to be real good on woodcock and with some experience,he will likely be able to handle the more skittish grouse. Grouse can sometimes be a problem for a young dog because of their tendency to run. Many times this will cause the pup to relocate the bird before the gunner arrives to give the OK and will inadvertently flush the bird while moving up on it. With experience and maturity,many good bird dogs will naturally figure out how to handle grouse and learn to stay further back on them to avoid a premature flush. This pup is ready to move on to live birds and Jamie is in the process of raising some quail and pheasant so the pup will have some birds to work on this summer. With any luck,Jamie should have a good working setter by the time fall arrives. Good luck with your pup, Jamie! I will be providing updates this summer on the pups progress and hopefully it will be all good news.

    As I said in my last post,it seems that the fishing is a week or so behind for the various species at home here on Salmon River. The annual shad tournament held on the upper Salmon River saw very few fish landed during the tourney. There were some fish there but the water temperature was quite low and the water was higher than normal. I guess this is what caused the low catch numbers because it certainly wasn't the calibre of fishermen who participated in the tournament. Some of the guys fishing would qualify as expert fishermen no matter what species they were fishing for on any given stretch of water! The white perch were also slow to arrive and were not taking well at all during the usual hot period around the first of June. I did manage to catch a few later on but not in the numbers we usually get them. This photo shows me catching one on my shore at home. Normally,we catch all we want right off of our shore when they are running good and the water is at a normal level.

The white perch bite will continue a bit later this year and I can see us still catching them well into July in the deeper holes. The second run of gaspereau are now flooding the shores of Salmon River and the pickerel bite will continue to be slow until the blue backs start backing out of the river. This is quite a sight to see,as tens of thousands of these smaller gaspereau slowly back down the river in huge schools during the first part of July.

The real big news this year is the very early run of salmon and grilse that are running up the MSW Miramichi and her tributaries. Many guides with  years of experience on the river say they have never seen so many fish running this early. According to some of the data coming in,there are some tremendous runs of fish entering the rivers this year and this will make for some fantastic fishing on the Miramichi River system this summer and fall.

The spring bear season is slowly winding down and this spring was a tough hunt,mainly because of the poor weather conditions. There were some very large bear taken in southern New Brunswick this spring,despite the tough hunting conditions. I know there were a couple of boars taken handy to home that were over four hundred lbs. That is a huge black bear by any standard. We had several nice bear at our baits again this year,including this one we caught on the trail cam.

Although we are just about done hunting for this year,Ken and I will continue to bait a couple of our sites just to keep them around. The bait that this bear was hitting also had a large bull moose in for a visit.This is the first time we have had a moose hit one of our baits and the only thing we can think of was he liked the smell of the molasses and came in to check it out. I want to mention a couple of other oddities I heard about lately. The first thing I heard about was a huge black Russian boar was found dead near Coal Creek. Last deer season I posted a picture of what I thought was a pig in one of my blogs.A local DNR officer said there was no way that was a pig in the photo.He said it must be a bear.Well,he was wrong! It was indeed a pig and a very large one at that! Nobody seems to know where this beast came from or what killed it but everyone hopes this is an isolated incident.We sure don't need any of these critters rooting around in our forests. Another report I just received was a sighting of a seal at Indian Point on the southern shores of Grand Lake. A local gent was out for a drive and spotted something laying on the beach and when he got out to take a look,it was a seal! Now this thing was a long way from salt water and I have never heard of one up this far. The only thing we can figure out is it must have followed the gaspereau up while feeding and got lost or got carried away while feeding. The guy that spotted the seal managed to get a photo but I haven't received it yet so I will post the photo in a future blog. Finally,I have a report by a local outdoorsman from Cumberland Bay who was travelling to work last Sunday and came upon an animal standing in the middle of the road. As he approached the animal,he thought it was a coyote at first but when he got closer he seen the long sweeping tail and the large eyes of what he says was a cougar. As he approached the animal standing in the middle of the road,it took a couple of bounds and was in the woods in a flash. Then,out of the corner of his eye,he spotted another smaller one come bounding out of the ditch and leaped across the road following the path of the other one. This was almost too much for the guy to bear but he swears he got a good look at both of these animals and they were definitely cougars! I usually take these reports with a grain of salt but I know this guy is an experienced outdoorsman and I don't think he would mistake these animals for something else.

If you look at this blogs title,you will see it says 'real vintage stuff' and by that I mean I want to share with you some information on one of the rarest gemstones in the world. This gem stone is called Ammolite and the reason it is REALLY vintage is that it is made from the shell of a nautilus that lived seventy million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. Now that's what I call vintage! A few years back,I dabbled in this stuff,along with some high grade fossils and in the process,learned a lot about the world of gems,stones and jewellery.Ammolite is derived from the shell of a sea creature,so it is classed in with pearls and amber,which also are derived from a source other than stone. Ammolite is only found in one place in the world and that is in the ancient Bear Paw Formation in southern Alberta. This was once an inland sea and the ammonite nautilus that lived there perished in the disaster that befell the earth at that time. After being buried,minerals reacted with the shell material and over time the shell changed into a beautiful gem material that is so highly prized today. Ammolite comes in three forms.They are naturals,doublets and triplets. I have experience with all three forms and I can tell you this gemstone is very difficult to work with. It's complexity won't allow me to go into detail on the making and grading of Ammolite but the finished product is stunning in it's beauty and compares to any of the finest gems on earth. I no longer deal in fossils or Ammolite since the Alberta government tightened up the regulations on this precious material but I still have some raw material that I can turn into gems someday. This is a photo of some beautiful Ammolite that I still have kicking around.

This type is called 'dragon skin ' because of the pressure lines in the raw Ammolite. The triange shaped piece has a couple of lines but it is close to being called a ' clear ' because it is nearly devoid of any lines.

Ken and I are starting to do day trips on Salmon River and hopefully we will get some good weather when the pickerel bite starts in earnest,so if you would like a day or week in the bush or on the water here in the beautiful Grand Lake area,just shoot me an e-mail and we will make all the arrangements. This is Dale Bauer saying Happy Trails to you....Until we meet again!

SPRING BEAR,THE BITE AND VINTAGE STUFF

    This spring has been one of the coldest and wettest in recent memory. We have had only a handful of sunny,warm and rain-free days in the last six weeks and then its been back to the cold and gloomy weather. The spring freshet here at home on Salmon River was seven to ten days late,peaking around the eighth of May this year instead of the normal time around the first of the month. All of this weather has thrown the scheduled arrival of the various runs of fish and the black bears off by a corresponding period of time.The gaspereau are running heavy in the river right now and that means the trout will be coming right behind them. One gent from the Miramich recently wrote that it was his understanding that the sea-trout followed the smelt in their run up the Miramichi each spring and that may well be true for that river but I had always been told by the old guys around here that our trout followed the gaspereau run and one year I found out just how true that old tale was. My brother and uncles fished the Newcastle Stream religiously every spring while trying to intercept the run of brookies coming up from Grand Lake. Many years we would follow the fish as they made their way up the stream starting very early in May fishing the deep, deadwater pools near the mouth and ending up in the headwaters near Clearwater Brook around the first week in June. One day in late May many years ago,my Uncle Gowie and I put my canoe in at the Park in Minto and planned to sail down to the stone bridge at Newcastle Bridge,hoping to intercept the run of trout that we thought would be starting to pass through the area. We fished along for a few hours with just a couple of bites,nothing of consequence.As we were nearing our take-out point,I dropped anchor and Gowie and I had a couple of beverages while we contemplated our lack of action and what had happened to the run of trout. As I was sitting there in the canoe,my line was dangling in the water,just hanging there. As we were talking,I thought I could feel something on my line. It wasn't really a bite that I felt,just a weight on the line that wasn't there previously. I lifted the rod tip and low and behold,there was a nice plump,silvery run brook trout. As I grabbed the trout to take it off the hook,I noticed a lot of fish eggs spilling out of the trouts mouth. Gowie and I looked at each other in amazement and immediately realized we had been fishing way to quickly for these trout that were stuffed to the gills with gaspereau eggs! We started fishing very slowly,not actually reeling,just letting the line and hook hang in the current.We then proceeded to catch trout after trout,quickly limiting out just minutes from our take-out spot. A lesson well learned on that day by a couple of fishermen who thought they had seen it all and had nothing new to learn.

    This is a short video clip of Ken and I fishing some deadwater on Pleasant Brook last year. Ken and I caught and released well over one hundred brookies that day. Nothing real big but it was non-stop action all day long and we had a ball!

After fishing the head of Pleasant Brook for half the day,we headed over to the Gaspereau River to finish the day off fishing some of the spring fed pools located in the upper reaches of the river. Again,we had non-stop action catching small brookies,nothing huge but in large enough numbers to keep us entertained for the afternoon. This is another short clip of me landing a trout on the Gaspereau that day.

The black bears in our area have been late leaving their dens this spring. I'm assuming it's because of the cold,wet spring we had this year but they have finally started hitting our baits on a regular basis. We have areas in our hunting territory that we watch closely early in the season when the bears are just leaving their dens and are foraging for greens to start their digestive systems working. This is a perfect time to take an early spring bear and Ken and the boys always keep a sharp eye out while running our baits for any bear that may be out wandering in the clover fields. Usually,every year one of us will take a nice bear over the fields and this year Jamie was once again able to seal the deal on a nice sow bear. Jamie watched this bear for about ten minutes before he took it to make sure there were no cubs around. This nice sow didn't have cubs for some reason,so she was fair game and Jamie made about a three hundred yard stalk on it. Good job,Jamie! Here is a photo of the bear Jamie took earlier this spring.As you can see,this was a good sized sow and the fur was in perfect shape. We have bear baits in several different areas so we don't overhunt any one spot.That said,we are always looking for big tracks and scat and listening for any sightings of large bears. We have found the home range of many large boars through the years just by paying attention to sightings made by walkers or bus drivers and sometimes the local truckers will tell us of seeing a big one while hauling wood to the sawmill. Of course,we can set up just about anywhere within thirty kilometers of home and have bears of some sort on most of our baits but it's nice to know there is a big boar in the area you are baiting.

    We are just starting to fish for spring run brookies and it's also the time to pick some fiddleheads to freeze or bottle for the coming winter. Fiddleheads and fish is a Maritime staple in many households,especially communities along any of the larger inland watersheds. They all hold copious amounts of these wonderful green ferns and one cottage industry that has sprung up is picking and selling these tasty delicacies to the local market and some of the larger packing plants. But it is not without it's perils.Just this spring two young men from the St.Mary's band on the north side of Fredericton drowned while out on the Saint John River picking on one of the islands. So if you decide to go,do your homework and err on the side of caution because Mother Nature isn't very forgiving.

    The white perch will be starting to show up ,usually by the first of June and this species of fish can provide a lot of action and some very tasty fillets for lunch. Ken and I and all the rest of the boys have a grand old time catching dozens of these great panfish. They are very easy to catch once you find a school of them. We just use a small spinner and a worm on a spinning or spin-cast outfit and cast and let it sink to the bottom and do a slow,stop and start retrieve back. They don't like to chase their food,they are kind of lazy in the way they feed. The key to taking these fish is a very slow retrieve or use bobbers set a foot off the bottom. Follow these tips and you can take a limit in a hurry if you hit the run right and fish the right spot. This is a photo of me and my grandson Tyler with a mess of white perch ready to be filleted out and deep-fried.

    The shad run is just getting started here on Salmon River and we usually get a good run of fish up the river most years. These fish are getting more popular with fishermen all the time.Fly fishermen like fishing them because they can use all their regular salmon gear,other than changing up the flies a bit.Best time to fish shad is in the evening,when they are most active. This is also true of the white perch and another shared trait is that you must fish shad slowly also. Try to let your fly or dart hang in the current where a school has gathered. A word of caution,hang on because a shad can strip a lot of line in a short time,so you will have to reel quickly to stay in touch with the fish after one of those reel-screaming runs. The seventh annual Monte Farrel shad derby is coming right up on June the fourth.Entry fee is $20, with 100% payout. Registration and breakfast is at the Queens County inn

I continue to pick up any nice or interesting items that I see for sale in my travels and it never ceases to amaze me  the amount of great stuff just kicking around until it finds its way to the open market.I've been collecting for a long time now and I don't see any signs of either my passion for finding stuff or the supply of  vintage items to be found slowing down any time soon.So I will continue to share some photos of vintage items as I find them,including this one of a print of hunters at a camp looking at the game off in the distance.

I would date this print to the 1930's,judging by the frame and the subject matter. I love these old hunting and fishing prints that depict some sort of action happening in the scene. I have literally dozens upon dozens of prints from the by gone hey days of the outdoor sporting world. This next item is a photo of an embossed print on copper plate of a great stag. Although this item is a little fresher,I would put it in the Sixties sometime,I really like the style in which this wall hanging has been done.

You don't find this style of work very often and I was really happy to add it to my collection. If any readers of this blog see something that they are interested in,please feel free to contact me via e-mail and we can discuss the item and see if we can come to terms.

The spring bear season is just getting started and we will be running day trips on the Salmon River soon,so give me a shout for a day out and about in the beautiful Grand Lake basin. Until next time,Happy trails to you,Until we meet again!

SPRING SALMON,BLACK BEAR AND VINTAGE STUFF

    The April 15th fishing opener produced some good fishing for some and some cold and stiff fingers for others.As usual,I was on the MSW Miramichi with friends and family fishing from Doaktown to Carrolls Crossing and nearly everyone who could stand the brutal weather conditions caught fish. I will be the first to admit that I am a fair weather fisherman and I just don't enjoy fishing in the kind of weather we had the first few days of the season. On the other hand,wild horses couldn't keep me from the river on the first day of the season! The first morning started off a little slow but by the afternoon the water had dropped a bit and it seemed to put the salmon in the mood to take. I only fished for about two hours in the afternoon of the first day but I did hook a fish on the very first cast of the season. What a way to start things off! I didn't land that fish and I never landed the next two fish I hooked but some of my friends from Storytown and Chipman did manage to land a few while fishing at Big Hole Brook. I fished the opposite shore and watched the Beeks and their crowd catch several fish both from boats and from the shore. These boys always have a good crowd on hand and their howls and whooping whenever someone hooked one or lost one could be heard echoing up and down the river. As I said,I only fished for a short time and had to continue my journey upriver to Carrolls to meet some more fishermen who were arriving. I pulled the boat into the bogan just as one of the local guides was pulling in with his grandson and when I asked him how the fishing was he replied it was the first opener in memory that he didn't hook a fish! Now, I know this guy quite well and I know he is a good fisherman but  neither he or his grandson could get a strike that morning. I will say in his defence that they were calling it a day just as the bite was starting to turn on but it just proves that angling for atlantic salmon is not a slam dunk at any time,under any conditions. I spent the night in Carrolls Crossing and was up the next morning looking at the thermometer and I said to my fishing partner for the day that we should go to Tim Hortons and get a bite before we ventured out in that brutal cold. Usually,the day warms up towards lunch time and you don't get the guides freezing up as bad but not on this day! We hit the water about ten o'clock and we fished until about four with limited success. I managed to boat two grilse in the back channel at Sutter Pond but I really had to work for them. The fish were there and they were taking if you could keep your fly clean of debris and get it down deep to where they were holding. One sport caught about four or five while fishing in front of us farther down the run and I notice he was getting caught on bottom occasionally and I mentioned to my fishing partner that he was getting down to the zone and that was contributing to his success. His guide also had him well positioned and that was also helping with his success. This is a short clip of me landing a grilse on the second day.

I usually don't keep a spring salmon unless old Wes wants one or Donna A. wants to make fish cakes, so the grilse I caught on the second day all went back in the river. In days gone by,we would always keep a fish or two for a shore lunch or supper on the first day but nowadays keeping a grilse is frowned upon and many elitists will shoot you a look of disdain if they see you carrying a tagged fish. Although I am conservation minded,I don't find anything wrong with keeping a fish once in a while as long as it's a legally tagged fish, especially if it happens to be a persons first salmon.

    I would like to comment on some of the antics I see every year on the river with regards to boating ethics. It seems that more and more boaters are being very inconsiderate when operating their crafts in the area where sports are fishing. If you want to troll,head down river where there is more room and this method of fishing is  more accepted. Up river,there just isn't the room and it usually raises the hackles on both sports and guides who are fishing in the traditional manner for that area and I can't say I blame them. Crowding and boats flying by fishermen without slowing down was also quite evident on the first few days of the season. Nobody,sports and guides both, likes this kind of behavior and people have to start using common sense and some courtesy before it gets out of hand. Here is another short clip of me playing a grilse on the second day of the season.As you can tell by this video,it was a cool day to be on the water and you really must be dressed for the conditions if you want to enjoy your outing.After all,even the best

fishermen have gaps in the action and that's when the cold will start to settle in your bones! 

    With bear season just around the corner,Ken and the boys have been out scouting already with hopes of finding some good bear sign.Last year at this time we had grass sprouting and bears starting to roam around grazing on grasses and weeds while getting their digestive tracts active again. During this stage,black bears don't respond to a bait because their guts just can't handle solid food that soon after emerging from their dens. A couple of years ago,Ken took a beautiful bear very early in May and it was one of the nicest bears I have ever seen taken. We had an early spring that year and the bears were active very early in the season. Ken spotted the track of this bear while out scouting and because of the location,he decided to try and take this bear so he could concentrate on getting the rest of the baits out. He killed this bear on the first evening in his stand and he was a little surprised at how quickly it came in. The fur on this bear was absolutely flawless,full and plush,like an expensive carpet. Again,Ken was able to take this bear so early because we had an early spring and he did his homework and found a bear that was ready to start feeding a little. Here is a photo of that bear.Ken and the boys always try to take a bear early so they can concentrate on the baits we put out for any sports who may want to hunt with us and they are definitely meat hunters and they don,t wait it out for a trophy sized bear. These guys were raised as meat hunters and they would much rather have a nice piece of meat than a big old black bear with meat tougher than boot leather! This works well for us because that leaves the larger bears for our sports to hunt. We had some really nice bears on our baits last year that we got on the trail cams that weren't taken and we are anticipating we will have some of these same bears showing up again this year. This is a photo of just one of the nice bears we had hitting our baits last year.

Our hunting territory has some very large bears roaming around and for those hunters looking for a real trophy,if you have the patience,you stand a very good chance of bagging one of these large bruins. Here is another photo of a nice bear on one of our baits.

As you can tell by these trail cam photos,we have some very nice bears hitting our baits and these are the calibre of animals we are setting up for.

    I have been busy searching for vintage items related to hunting and fishing and I have been finding some very nice pieces while travelling around southern New Brunswick. One of the things I recently acquired is a magnificent painting of two herd bull elk locked in mortal combat that was done by the late Moses Weaver. I have spoken of Mosey in past blogs and I was stunned when a picker I know visited my home with one of his paintings that he wanted to sell me. To say I jumped at this chance would be an understatement. This painting hung for a couple of decades in a smoking home and I am in the process of having it cleaned and when I get it done I will post a photo of it in a future blog, so be sure to watch for it. In the meantime,I will show my readers some photos of some other nice items I have picked up. This photo is one of a milk picture made in the style of Royal Bayreuth with a transfer decorated body of a stag in various poses. This item dates to the early nineteen hundreds.

The next photo shows a framed print depicting deer grazing on the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River.This item dates from the Fifties.

And last but not least,a photo of a very fine piece of chalkware modelling the bust of a doe and fawn. I'm not sure of the year this item was made because  the very good condition of this item makes gauging its age difficult. I have seen another one in a collection but it was nowhere near the condition of this one but if I had to make a guess,I would say this item was produced in the late Forties or early Fifties.

    I hope my readers of this blog enjoy seeing these items and I will continue to show photos of my finds as I acquire them and at some point in the future I will be displaying most of these items in a separate area on our web site to make them available for purchase. In the meantime,if anyone is interested in any of the items you see depicted in my blog,feel free to contact me through my e-mail address and we will see if we can come to terms. For now,this is Dale Bauer bidding you adieu and wishing you Happy Trails.....until we meet again!