Manual Coffee Grinder

My coffee grinder is pretty sweet. I have Cuisinart automatic burr grinder. It definitely gets the job done, and done well.

I have had a couple situations though where I was curious if there were manual grinders still being sold. Well, I took a look and stumble onto the Camano Coffee Mill. It is a fully adjustable manual burr grinder. I am now intrigued with the idea of buying one of these.

So far here are my reasons for wanting a manual grinder…
1. On a camping trip with no electricity available, I could still fresh grind beans.
2. On a Saturday morning when I am trying not to wake up everyone in my house, I could quietly grind some beans.
3. At work, I may have a hard time justifying running a grinder in the office, but I don’t think anyone would argue with a manual grinder. (or notice).

Anyways, I continue to take a deeper path down the road of coffee snobbery, but this looks like a fun gadget to have on hand. It seems a little pricey, but on the other hand it looks like it is made out of steel and cast iron and is handmade. So this thing would probably last my lifetime.

Anyways, check ‘em out and join me along the path to better coffee.

http://www.camanocoffeemills.com/blog/?page_id=33

 

First Trout of 2009

Trout season opened in Michigan back on April 25 this year, so 77 days later I caught my first trout. The best part is I forgot my camera. I hate reports with no pictures. Oh well.

A thunderstorm rolled through this morning around 7:30am, and I actually got to sleep in today until around 9am. So, by the time I woke up the storm had passed, and I checked the USGS streamflow web site to see how the local trout stream was doing. Unfortunately the site was last updated at 7am, and I wasn’t getting any any new readings. With my daughter at my in-laws house, I decided this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I headed out to the creek.

I decided to try a location about half-way up from the confluence with the main river. I got there and the water looked great, so I guess the storm had not taken a great toll on the stream. I fished with BWO upstream, and a pink-squirrel back down stream. I got out and took the main trail down to a foot-bridge and fished down stream with a BHE nymph, and than back up with an adams dry. Not even a creek chub was interested in my offerings.

So, I hopped back in the trusty van and headed way upstream to a favorite location. I still had the adams on, and when I got to an access point, I was greatly disappointed. The stream had totally changed character. It was slightly up, running and fast, and with a stain. I got my adams stuck in a tree, and decided I wasn’t going to catch anything on a dry fly with the creek looking this way anyways. I swapped in a black woolly-bugger and tossed it into the first pool I came to, and instantly had a fish on.

I had an 8″ brown trout come to hand shortly, and admired the fire red spots before releasing it back into the fast moving creek. This is my first brown trout I’ve caught out of this water, and the first trout I’ve caught this year. I fished down through the rest of the creek until the next bridge, and found one really nice hole. I had switched between the black bugger, a nymph, and back to the bugger. I had a fish on once, and it got loose. The best was when I was stripping the bugger back, I had a fish break the surface trying to get it. Either it was a really small brown that couldn’t fit the bugger in it’s mouth, or a decent brown that was too smart…

I am heading up north sometime before the trout season closes, so maybe I’ll get another chance at a trout. However, this was a fun time spent on the creek this morning.

 

Quick fishing

Got to go fishing for about an hour last night. Went to the homewaters, and they were already closing the gates to where I usually park. I found another spot to park in, and got geared up.

Walked down to the river, and it looked amazing. Water was about as clear as I’ve seen it in a long time. I waded down and back, but only caught a few blue gills. Nothing big this time…..

 

That time of year…

It is definitely that time of year. The bulletin boards I frequent are all buzzing with stories about the hex hatch happening up in northern Michigan. I did some poking around you tube and found this video that provides a good explanation of fishing during the hex hatch:

 

Intro to Dutch Oven Cooking

I was looking for Dutch Oven recipes and stumbled onto this really good introduction to dutch oven cooking.

If you ever wanted to to give it a try, this article lays out the basics pretty good:

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/beattie47.html

 

Spring time at the homewaters

So, after visiting my favorite local fishing spot twice within the last couple weeks, I was finally able to catch some fish today. The local water has been washed out because we have had an overabundance of rain so far this year, and I was glad to see the water the way it was this morning.

I was somewhat wary about going today because fishing during Memorial Day weekend can be ruined very quickly by people who have are not in nature to be at peace, and would rather do quite the opposite. There happened to be an entire boy scout troop doing some Memorial Day camping near where I parked the car. Interestingly, there was a handful of them already fishing at one “my” spots. So, after getting geared up I headed in the opposite direction.

The river was clear enough to see the bottom, and the water temp was below 60. I almost wish I could talk to the DNR about stocking this place with trout because I think they could survive, but then it would probably get overrun with anglers. Anyways, I battled mosquitoes in between casts as I made my way down the the river until arriving at a familiar pool that I thought I might have a chance in. Sure enough, my first fish of the day was a chunky little creek chub who took a woolly bugger quite eagerly.

I couldn’t stand the mosquitoes any longer so I fished my way back to the car, and sprayed my stetson and shirt sleeves with some bug spray. I noticed all the boy scouts went to go eat breakfast, and decided it was my opportunity to fish “the honey hole.” I thought if I positioned myself in the right spot, I may be able to drop my woolly bugger next to a tree emerging from the far bank, and just might get lucky. After the second cast I felt a big tug and then a weight that felt like a dumbbell was just tied to the end of my line. The fish started to fight, my rod bent over, and I knew I had a decent sized fish on. After a couple minutes of tussling with the fish, I had it in my hand. A nice sized smallmouth between 12 and 14 inches long. In this river, this guy is one of the monsters.

Just after I released the big guy, I heard a “gloop” across the the river. I quickly tied on a popper hoping that I might get some top water action as well. On the second cast, I had another fish on, and it was fighting like another smallie. I knew it wasn’t huge, but pound for pound, those fish like to fight.

I waded upstream for another hour or so. On my way upstream I saw a longnosed gar swim past me, probably over 2 feet long. Today I fished some beautiful pieces of water, but I again I wish it had some trout taking up residency for extra fun. The next fish I saw was at a mucky pond just off the river. A big sploosh got my attention, and I took a seat to wait and see if it happened again. Several minutes passed by, and a fish over 12 inches lept almost 2 feet from the water to take an insect flying overhead. While I’m not exactly sure what type of fish it was, it definitely had some spunk.

As I waded downstream back to my mini-van (which I think I may start calling the fish van, like Traver’s fish car), I hooked a little blue gill on a dry fly – a white wulff actually. I continued back to my car, and saw that the park was being overrun by a secondary event other than the already present boy scouts. It was time to head home.

 

Wet Spring

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/cms.php?n=DTWyeardate

A lot of local water is washed out, but I hear reports of fishi being caught so I guess they still need to eat…

 

Old Fly Box

My grandfather’s 90th birthday was this past weekend. As a gift, some of my family helped clean his house. My mom called me and said she had found an old tackle box, and they were going to throw it away. I told her that I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.

Well, a couple days later my mom gave me the tackle box. I cracked it open and there were three sinkers, a pack of huge hooks, and fly box.

I couldn’t believe it. I figured there would be some old spinners maybe, but not a fly box. My family grew up in East Jordan, MI and my great-grandmother’s house was on a trout creek. So, I guess it makes sense that my grandpa had some flies.

Here is a pic of the box:

Inside the box, there is a few wet flies and a few poppers:

There is a small logo on the inside:

I did a quick Google search and it didn’t turn up anything on the SFT company, but it did turn up a Ebay listing with a similar fly box – and it was going for 99 cents. It may not be worth a lot, but it has a lot of character and I’m glad to keep it in the family.

 

Tennessee Trip 2009

My daughter is quickly approaching her first birthday, and my wife and I are quickly approaching the end of our sanity. Well, it may not be the drastic, but we definitely needed a vacation. We were worried it might be an extra burden to take her on a trip, but I felt we needed to get away. So, we went to visit some friends down in Tennessee thinking that it was not too far to drive.

Our first stop along the way was at the Creation Museum. The museum is out near the Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana border close to the Cincinnati Airport. The facility is amazing. They had a series of exhibits that were themed around topics about creation, but the overall theme was showing man’s sinful nature and how to reconcile with God. There was a life-size portion of Noah’s ark you could stand in, various movies, and a special speaker was presenting on the day we were there. I even got to feed a camel at the petting zoo on the grounds.

We then traveled to the Montgomery Bell Inn in Tennessee. This is a state park, that is also a resort with a full hotel on site. While we did have a couple issues while staying here, overall it was a very nice place to stay. The workers were friendly, and you couldn’t ask for a better view. Every room in the hotel overlooks the lake, so no one has a bad view. I was able to catch a few blue gills right out side the hotel, which was fun on my 3 weight fly rod.

The next fishing adventure came when my friend Matt and I took his really nice canoe out on the Harpeth River. As we were putting in the canoe, there were fish rising everywhere. I was expecting a few small mouth, but it was pretty crazy. From what I could tell it looked like gar, but it was hard to tell.  Unfortunately it was the last fish we would see on that canoe trip.  The first big gravel bar we came to, we pulled over and started casting.

As we floated down the river, we actually passed a group of three fly fisherman armed with fishing kayaks.  You can see them off in the background of this picture:

One common theme along the river was turtles.  Every 10 feet there were a half dozen of them, and they usually slid off their log as we came by.  Matt was able to steer us in close to this brave one for a picture:

One thing rhar stuck me about Tennessee was the amount of rock everywhere.  I am used to sand or clay, but there everything was rock.  The banks of the Harpeth either led out to some pasture, or were amazingly tall rock cliffs:

The biggest town near the Montgeomery Bell Inn seems to be Dickson, but just to the east is the small city of White Bluff that had two really good places to eat.  First, there was a Mexican restaurant called El Monte that had amazing food. I got some tamales on our first visit, and we had to go back again.  The food joint was called Carl’s Perfect pig.  They had amazing BBQ, and I especially like the corn cakes (basically a cornmeal pancake).  This was also my daughter’s introduction to sweet tea – she loved it.  Click here for a blog post on this cool little restaurant.

Matt and I went out for one last fishing expedition in his trusty canoe the day before we headed home.  There are actually three lakes available at the Montgomery Bell State Park, and we ended up at Lake Woodhaven.  I was hoping to get into some bass, but instead we got into a handful of blue gill.  Here was the view as we paddled across the lake:

While there were a ton of insects and a bunch of lizards, there really didn’t seem to be a bunch of critters running around.  However, we did bump into some newly hatched geese on the lake:

The highlight of the day was when Matt switched over to a fly that he tied himself.  A few minutes later he caught his first fish his own fly; a decent little bluegill.

And yes, I caught a few too:

Before we left Tennessee, our last stop was at the Nashville.  We had fun looking at all the animals, and as we walked into the corner of the park it turned into a bamboo forest.  While I don’t know much about making bamboo rods, I thought it was cool to be standing in a bamboo forest, and it was ironic that I wore my fly fishing t-shirt that day as well:

Upon arriving back in Michigan, I was met with a torrential downpour on the I-275 detour around I-75.  Every creek and drainage ditch we passed was overflowing.  I thought I might be able to hit my homewaters on my last vacation day, as it doesn’t always get blown out like everything else.  Upon arrival, the water was over the banks and moving to fast.  Almost every river and lake in the area has had too much rain, and it keeps raining.  Hopefully soon, the fishing will begin before the next season is already over.

Overall, this was a trip of many firsts.  My daugther’s first vacation, first stay at a hotel, first time out of state, and her first taste of sweet tea.  It was Matt’s first time taking his canoe out on a river and his first fish caught on his own fly.  It was my first time in Tennessee, my first time a the Creation Museum, and the first time I didn’t tip over on a canoe trip.   I’m glad we went.

 

First Fish ‘09

After two days of Spring-like weather, and a couple weeks after most of the snow has melted, the weather man said it would be overcast and 50 degrees.  I figured it might just be time to get the rod and reel out.

I headed up to my lunch-time fishing hole and tied on a soft hackle emerger.  By the end of my lunch hour I had caught my first fish of 2009, as well as two more.  Three little blue gills decided they were hungry enough to take a fly.