DS19 Part 11: I still fish for trout sometimes

Mixing a little fishing in with my deer season prep. Fished with an old friend the other night. We only had about 3 hours to fish till dark, and spent the first hour drinking a beer and catching up at the truck. Caught a bunch of fish after. He is about 25 years my elder, dont know why, but I've always got along better with older guys.

Well, I found a new spot that I've been driving past on the way to another spot. It's a massive swamp around 4x8 miles that basically seems impenetrable as you are driving by. By sheer coincidence, I found myself driving along the northern edge on the way to a family dinner. My daughter was driving and I was able to pay more attention to the area from the back seat, and I noticed things I hadn't noticed before while being in the driver's seat. I pulled the area up on google earth and caltopo and onx when I got home and found something awesome, the west side for probably 2 miles is basically a bunch of ag that you cant see from any of the main roads. And the transition from private ag to public nightmare swamp is all public. I can walk that line from the road a couple miles into the area that butts up against the ag to what looks like a good sized island in the swamp.

I'm not gonna prescout this particular spot on the ground, will wait for the first weekend day during season with the right conditions and scout my way back there after lunch for an evening sit. There is also a SW facing point jutting into the east side of the swamp that looks interesting. Basically no way to get there easily. It will be at least a 1.5 hour hike one way through, but it looks worth it.

Dropped my oldest off at college yesterday, youngest leaves this coming friday and then we are empty nesters for the first time. Which has some pretty awesome implications for my time in a treestand. It was hard having our kids so young, but feels like it was worth it now.  I'm looking forward to watching our kids get their bearings in life and start families of their own.  And truth be told, I can't wait for grandkids, though I don't want my kids to start their families as young as we were when we started ours.

Heading out to the back yard to practice single trips up the tree with stick talons. Starting to like em a little more, but need more practice. Busted another axle on my car, so no shining till that's fixed. And just leaving a note here that leaf colors are really starting to change from a vibrant green to yellow green, with sporadic spots of full color. Ferns are dying in low elevation areas.