Gnats

If you live in Southern Wisconsin you know all about mosquitoes.  They’re a part of summer life.  But this summer we’ve been attacked by another smaller pest, the gnat.  These little devils don’t really bite much but they just hum around you and try to crawl into any hole in your face that they can find.

One solution is to wear a head net.  Of course when it’s 90 degrees, you really don’t feel like putting something over your head that will make you even hotter.  So there are a couple of home remedies that you can try.

One is Avon Skin So Soft lotion.  This is a very strong sweet smelling concoction that keeps the gnats away from you.  Just rub a little over your face and ears and they stay away.  The only drawback is that for guys, it’s a little feminine smelling.

Another solution is Vanilla.  Yes, the same vanilla you cook with.  Do the same with it rub it on your face and ears and it will keep the gnats away from you.  I like the vanilla smell much better too, it reminds me of dessert.

Try either one and you’ll be a lot happier outdoors than listening to those little gnats humming in your ears and face.

Post by: Dan Bomkamp    

Rural Real Estate: www.RuralPropertyPro.com

Crappies For Family Fun

If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to entertain the family some weekend, try taking them crappie fishing.  Crappies are an easy fish to catch, are abundant and usually when you find one, you find a whole bunch of them. 

There are many places to fish for them in our area.  The Wisconsin River bottoms have nice crappies in every one of the dozens of sloughs that lay along the river.  Look for a tree top or a beaver house and you’ll usually find crappies.  Also Blackhawk Lake or Yellowstone Lake both have many nice crappies that are easily caught.

The simplest way to catch them is with a small minnow, a medium sized wire hook and a bobber.  Toss your bait out and you’ll soon see the bobber “sneaking” away.  You can also try small jigs or small spinners for them.  The thing is, crappies are easy to catch for anyone of any age.  They make a great fish for a family outing where success equals fun.

Take the family out and when you find a school of crappies, you’ll have a day of fun, and when you get home, you can have a great fish fry too.

post by: Dan Bomkamp

Wisconsin River Smallmouth Bass

A lot of people don’t realize that we have some of the best smallmouth bass fishing in the entire state, right out in our Wisconsin River.  There aren’t a lot of places where you can spend a day fishing and catch the numbers and size of smallmouths that you can catch in the lower Wisconsin River.

Some years ago a friend and I put our boat in at Gotham and fished the shorelines back to Muscoda.  We only used topwater baits such as the Rebel Pop R and between us we caught and released 146 smallmouths with half a dozen largemouths thrown in for good measure along with a few northerns and even a walleye caught on a topwater bait.  Now that was a day of great fishing!

But, that day wasn’t unusual.  Ever since the DNR put a 14 inch size limit on bass, the size and quality of the fish has just exploded.  The numbers of big fish is amazing and there are trophies out there in great numbers. 

Fishing for smallmouths on the Wisconsin is a simple thing to do.  Get yourself a few topwater baits, a few small spinners and a few jigs and you’re all set.  It’s fast simple fishing and when you find that first school of smallies, you’ll be grinning from ear to ear as you fight these amazingly strong fish.

post by: Dan Bomkamp                                                 www.WisconsinLandValues.com

Here We Go Again?

The DNR is worried about the spread of purple loosestrife, an aquatic invasive plant that is crowding out our native plants.  Near perfect conditions last summer cause this weed to spread and thrive.  Now they’re asking people to help control it.  Nothing wrong with people helping….but I’m not sure that their idea of how to help is a good one.

If you’d like to help you can contact them and they’ll send you a beetle starter kit that will allow you to grow a beetle that feeds on purple loosestrife.  Yay, what a dandy idea, but wait, have they forgotten the dozens of other “cures” that turned out to be worse than the problem they were to fix?

It wasn’t too many years ago that they found the Asian beetle which was released to eat aphids on soy beans.  What a great idea.  But then when there were billions of these tiny little orange critters crawling around our soy bean fields, the fall came and the farmers picked the soy beans.  What happened?  The billions of beetles had no home, nothing to eat and they headed into town and began crawling into every crack and crevice they could find.  Remember the beetle wars? 

There have been dozens of these cures over the years that have ended up being worse than the initial problem.  Maybe I’m pessimistic but releasing yet another exotic species doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.  I’ve got enough beetles in my house already.

post by: Dan Bomkamp

Da Plane! Da Plane!

If you wake up one of these May mornings and see a plane flying low over the hills and woods don’t panic.  They’ll be folks from the DNR who are spraying for gypsy moths.  They spray very early, right after dawn and fly low so the spray is concentrated in specific areas.  The spray will not hurt people, pets or wild animals.

They use a compound called Foray which contains a bacteria that is present in soil but that will kill gypsy moth caterpillars that ingest it.  It’s a perfect compound since its natural and doesn’t affect anything but the gypsy moths. 

The DNR has been battling the spread of these little critters for many years.  They are just one of the never ending new pests that threaten our outdoors.  They’ll probably never be able to stop them but they can slow them down which helps.

So if you see a plane low over your woods, don’t worry, it’s the good guys.

www.DanBomkamp.com

Whiteout is Coming Soon

www.danbomkamp.com

Those who are fans of my books have been waiting for this one for a bit longer than usual.  Normally I have a new book ready each fall but I got a little behind this past summer and didn’t get Whiteout finished on time.  But I’m happy to announce it’s now finished and being printed as we speak.

I’ll have copies of it for the Morel Mushroom Fest in Muscoda on May 14 and 15.  Each year I sit near the Muscoda Theater and sell my books to local folks and visitors from other cities and states who come for the festival.

Whiteout is a fictional version of the great Armistice Day Storm of 1940.  The storm which killed 167 people in Wisconsin and Minnesota bore down on the area on Armistice Day that year.  The morning started out in the 60’s and hundreds of duck hunters set out for the marshes dressed for warm weather.  By early afternoon a blizzard blew in and the temperature dropped and whiteout conditions caught many people unprepared.

I think the readers of my books will enjoy my account and my characters in this telling of the story of the Armistice Day Storm.http://www.danbomkamp.com/about

Strong Current but Some Fishing Action

Despite strong currents in both the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers, there are a few fish being caught.  At the dams on the Mississippi they are getting white bass and still getting perch behind the long wall of the dam.  These are 12 inch perch and bigger so they’re really worth the effort.

On the Wisconsin the current is still very strong but the water has dropped back into the banks of the river.  My brother tried it this week and got one smallmouth and a real surprise, a brown trout.  While trout are very rare in the river, they do show up in the spring, often after a flood.  They get washed out of trout streams and the river water is fresh and cool enough for them to survive.  Catching one is quite rare but it does happen.

We need some warm days and nights to get the water temperature up a bit and then we’ll see much better fishing.  Next weekend is Opening Day for inland waters and hopefully the weather will be better for a lot of anglers who will be heading out to the lakes and rivers.

post by: Dan Bomkamp