North Platte WU
Newsletter Editors
7 p.m. Jan. 5
at Game and Fish Building
Off we go to another year. Should be fun. Our first event coming up is our third annual banquet on March 4th. We only have three more monthly meetings before the banquet and still have a fair amount of work left to do. We will have a banquet committee meeting on Tuesday, January 17th at the Sandbar Lounge at 6:00PM. This is open to all members who would like to help out with the planning and/or execution of all the details that goes into the banquet.
This year we will have a Walleye Pro Panel presentation the Friday night before the banquet, also at the Parkway Plaza where some of Wyoming's best walleye fisherman will give techniques and tips on how to fish Wyoming waters. The admission to the Pro Panel Presentation.is included in the price of the banquet ticket which will be $30.00 per ticket this year. There will be some door prizes awarded at the Pro Panel Presentation.
If you want to mark your calendars, our family outings for this year will be Saturday, June 17th for Glendo and Saturday July 22nd for Pathfinder. More details will be forth coming later in the year.
In the Berkley Journal that came with the In-Fisherman magazine this month was a small piece about a program that Berkley is doing. For 75 UPC codes from Berkley Fireline or Trilene line spools, they will send postage paid, a 4' by 4' fish habitat cube. These fish habitats can be snapped together or places individually and anchored to improve fish habitat. There are manufactured out of recycled fishing line and other post consumer waste.
I think this might be a good project to pursue. If we all save the UPC codes from these two lines, no telling how many fish habs we might end up with. It certainly fits into our budget and at the same time does not constitute a major effort by our membership. On the same note please recycle your old fishing line. Most all tackle stores in Casper have a recycle bin to deposit old line and line spools.
Fishing Reports-Tips-& tricks
The ice fishing season is here but not without some caveats. Glendo does not have safe ice as this is written. Pathfinder has some ice but you will have trouble getting onto the ice because of the water between the ice and the shore as the lake is rising. Pathfinder has risen a little less than a foot in the past 30 days.. Alcova has open water in the main bodies of the lake and I haven't heard if the cove ice is safe or not. Boats can be launched at Okie Beach and perhaps other ramps as well.
Boysen has good ice and the fishing is good, especially for perch. I have gotten lots of reports of fish being taken in the 20' depths but the report I got of the most fish taken was from John Green and company who caught 150 perch in one day in 40' of water out in the middle of the lake. They were fishing the area between Fremont campground and Bad Water bay. Don't tell anyone. The preferred method of all the reports was a jig and minnow. The weather at Boysen has remained for the past two weeks as relative calm but much colder than the Casper area. All in all great ice fishing weather.
Any recent large snowstorm creates a new load on the ice. If the new snow is heavy enough, the ice sheet will sag and its top surface will be submerged below the water level. Then water will flood the top of the ice sheet through cracks, saturating the lower layers of the snow. Until this slush is completely frozen, stay offthe ice sheet. When the saturated snow becomes frozen, it is an added thickness of white ice.
Contrary to what you would expect, a rapid, large air temperature drop makes an ice sheet brittle, and the ice may not be safe to use for 24 hours or more.
A load deflects the ice slightly into a bowl shape. When you drive on floating ice, this moving bowl generates waves in the water. If the speed of the waves equals the vehicle speed, the ice-sheet deflection is increased and the ice is much more likely to break. The problem is more serious for thin ice and shallow water. In general you avoid this danger by driving below 15 mph.
Keep your auger covered. The blades are sharp, and can easily cut you, your dog or your children. Spray vegetable oil on your auger and snowshoes. Snow won't stick and you won't cut yourself cleaning off the show.
Keep your bearings on the ice:
On a large lake you can lose your sense of direction if you get caught in the dark, or if the weather should turn nasty. Some anglers have a compass strapped right to their arm where it's visible or one in an accessible outside pocket. These anglers take a compass reading (bearing) of their intended route before leaving shore. If a blizzard or a "white out" should hit, they can follow their compass in the reverse direction to get back to shore quickly. It wouldn't hurt to take a bearing from your fishing hole back to a visible landmark as well. Careful planning begins with checking the weather report and getting back to safety before dark.
For those with internet access there are some funny fishing videos at: www.fishingpixels.com. Here's an old trick for keeping holes open:
Submitted by John Eddy and found on the internet site of the Niagara River Anglers Association Inc.:
For those that like to rough it out in the open come hard water, here is an old trick I'd like to share with you. Take a one pound coffee can and drill a ¼ inch hole one-half-inch from the bottom of the can. Take 8 feet of one-quarter-inch copper tubing and stick about 8 inches out of the hole in the can and wrap the tubing around and around the inside of the can with the last foot or so sticking out the top, aiming down. Throw a couple of handfuls of self-starting charcoal in the can and light it. Set the can next to your hole, with the lower end of the tube in the water. The heat from the charcoal will suck up the water, heat it and spit it back into the water from the top tube, keeping your hole ice-free no matter how cold it gets and the charcoal will burn for hours. You can fashion a handle from a coat hanger or whatever.
BE SAFE!
On the brighter side......
A helpful blonde
As a trucker stops for a red light, a blonde catches up. She jumps out of her car, runs up to his truck, and knocks on the door. The trucker lowers the window, and she says "Hi, my name is Jenny, and you are losing some of your load!"
The trucker ignores her and proceeds down the street. When the truck stops for another red light, the girl catches up again. She jumps out of her car, runs up and knocks on the door and, again, the trucker lowers the window . As if they've never spoken, the blonde says brightly, "Hi, my name is Jenny, and you are losing some of your load!"
Shaking his head, the trucker ignores her again and continues down the street. At the third red light, the same thing happens again. All out of breath, the blonde gets out of her car, runs up, knocks on the truck door. The trucker lowers the window. Again she says, "Hi, my name is Jenny, and you are losing some of your load!"
When the light turns green the trucker revs up and races to the next light. When he stops this time, he hurriedly gets out of the truck and runs back to the blonde.
He knocks on her window and, as she lowers it, he says. . . Hi, my name is Bruce, its winter in Minnesota and I'm driving the SALT TRUCK!"
Some funny video links:
http://www.fishingpixels.com/evinrude3.html
http://http://www.fishingpixels.com/popcorn1.html
http://www.fishingpixels.com/funnyvid.html
Quotable quotes:
Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair. ~George Burns
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either. ~Dick Cavett
"The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraor-dinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack." ~John Cleese
wyowalleyenewsletter@hotmail.com
Tight Lines -- Woody and Bruce