New Turtle Craft!

My holiday wishes came true and I found myself the lucky owner of a new "turtling" (fishing) kayak this year.  I had spoken about my dream boat before, the Jackson Kayak Coosa, and I can't wait to really get this thing out on the water...

It's a decent sized craft, coming in at 11'3" and weighs a bit under 70 lbs.

Getting her unwrapped was a breeze, and I quickly had her outfitted for a trip!

Notice the fishing pole and snake hook fitting nicely.

But now the question became how to store it??  I am not the handiest of fellows, but I recruited my buddy Rob to help figure something out.  Rob recently got a hard top Jeep Wrangler and had rigged a pully system for the hard top in his garage.  Turns out it broke and fell, but he assured me he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.  I figured he had more experience than I, and maybe he learned a thing or two from his earlier transgressions...

A couple stops at Home Depot, Lowes, the neighborhood ACE hardware, (and then Home Depot and Lowes again) and we were in business.  The boat doesn't weigh a ton, but Molly wasn't thrilled about the idea of it hanging over the front of her car, especially with twiddle dee and twiddle dum suspending it.  We opted for the fairly high load bearing pulleys, rope, etc.  We made sure to try and and eliminate any "weak" points in the system.  After buying everything, I am sure it won't fall due to equipment failure.  Now, knot failure is a whole other issue.

Most of our supplies, just after getting started.  

We rocked out to some Black Keys as we fashioned the webbing around craft.  We used heavy duty caribiners to connect the webbing to the rope, with a section of rope to keep the straps tight in the middle.

Here we are getting ready for the first test pull.  We quickly fashion rope loops around the rafters just for the test run, and ended up with heavy duty chains, as eventually trading up for climping rope too.

Good thing we checked first too.  The initial pulleys didn't have a swivel feature, and the "track" for the rope was too shallow.  The rope kept coming off and getting wedged.  New pulleys, new rope, and our chains now in place...

To keep the chains from sliding, we bolted them in place in the beam.

Another test run later, the craft pulled up and down fairly easily, with everything staying smooth.

I read you should hand your kayaks upside down to prevent warping.  We lowered it down, figured out how to tie it off on the wall, and we were in business!

It isn't the prettiest, or easiest tie, but it is redundant and it works.   We used a heavy duty loop and hook initially.  The loop is bolted into the beam, and when you pull the hook and knot down it easily hooks in.  Makes it pretty simple for one person to do.  We could only find a small cleat, and probably should have gotten a bigger dock cleat from a boating supply store. Since this was kinda the backup, we opted to just loop a knot around the cleat we had.  What little excess rope there is is looped above.

And there she is, all hoisted up!

Many thanks to Rob for all of his help!  Now I just need to come up with a creative herping name, and get her in the water!  Spring and the rivers are just around the corner...

Any name suggestions for a river worthy turtle craft??

BH

By the way, we hung her Jan 9th, and if any of you were wondering she hasn't crashed down on Molly's car yet!

Northern trip part duece

This is part 2 of a 4 day trip up north I took midAugust with my brother and my dog. If you missed it, you can read Part I here.

When we left off Brian, Cid and I had just finished booking it farther west to set up camp for the next two nights before it was too late. We found a nice campground right along the river we wanted to canoe and were able to walk in and grab a campsite for the next two nights without a problem. The campground was fairly wooded, and even had water pumps and latrines. We weren't too worried about missing out on a shower or two...

We set up camp in the dark, and my new tent went up without any issues. Unfortunately, pitching a tent in the dark meant we couldn't really scout the site. Needless to say out we picked a pretty terrible section of grass and our backs were less than ecstatic a few hours later. The fire was crackling soon after arriving and we quickly had a meal of beans and brats ready for consumption. Cid was already fast asleep near the fire and we didn't last too much longer.

We rose early with the dog and decided to go scout around for a place to hike for the morning. We found a nice trail and after only going 20 yards, Brian had already flipped a blue spot salamander and a redback salamander.


Our hike produced a good amount of wood frogs, some spring peepers, water snakes and green frogs. We again struck out one of the main purposes of the trip - wood turtles. The woods around the river were loaded with mosquitoes and we finally had to hang up our hats around noon. We decided to head back to camp to stock up on ice and inquire about a nearby canoe liverey. I decided to take the scenic route on our way back to camp for no good reason and a few minutes of delay later we were heading up the road to our campsite. About 100 yrds from the site, we noticed the domed shell of a turtle crossing the road. Sure enough, it was our wood turtle!



After a few quick pictures he wandered off into the fields between campsites.

We ended up canoeing again all after noon. As luck would have it, we were able to rent the last canoe in town. Unfortunately, this meant we were stuck canoeing with the drunk party-goers for the afternoon. Despite the lack of wildlife due to their noise, they frequently tipped their canoes and Brian and I were able to fish out a few cold beers as they floated by. We did see some fly fisherman, and were suprised to see very large and fast fish swimming in the clear water below us. Imagine our surprise to find out they were salmon! Turns out the great lakes have populations of atlantic, chinkook, pink and coho salmon. Sure enough, all of them are non-native fish. We do have native anodromous fish though, primarily the lake and brook trout.

We stopped after a few hours of pleasant canoeing and drunk people dodging for a quick snack and a swim.


Cid did not appreciate being gently placed in the water.


As the day wore on, we did see a few painted turtles, map turtles and water snakes. Despite the much decreased amount of wildlife compared to the river the day before, we all had a great time.

Camp that night was more of the same, great food, fire and company.


We turned in pretty early, around 9, and slept a little better this night. After a strong 12 hours of sleep we all rose, leisurely broke camp and headed on our way home. We managed to swing by another spot a few hours later. I was just using my delorme atlas to identify possible locations and decided to swing through some back roads. We crossed paths with a powerline cut, and despite Brian's skepticism, I convinced him to give it a go. It was very nice and open with some tall grass, sandy soils and even swampy areas back in the woods. I thought it looked excellent for a few of our target species. After a little while, I wandered up on this...


It only took checking a few slabs of wood to turn up a nice large blue racer in shed.


Soon after, I also spotted a ribbon snake crawling in the open.


Unfortunately, the heat was against us and we didn't see much more after that. Cid didn't mind though, and enjoyed the freedom and endless supply of sticks.


All in all, it was an awesome trip.