Ground is thawed in unprotected areas in ND, I dug up about 250 rooted haskap cuttings on saturday and potted them up yesterday.
2 Likes
Here in southeast Nebraska we did not have the ground frozen all winter. Only a few days of really cold temps quickly followed by unseasonable warm-ups. All the early flowers have begun blooming. The fruit trees are quickly coming out. My 75 year old apricot bloomed a couple weeks ago and then we had the typical cold snap that froze off the blooms…no apricots again this year. We get fruit about one in six years since this tree blossoms so early.
1 Like
that sucks, kinda typical of apricots I guess. im going to experiment with wood chips on the ground around mine to insulate them and hopefully slow down flowering a little.
You don’t have blue-gills or or sun-fish there? I find that really interesting, being as you and I are at a pretty comparable latitude North. I think you’re about 40 miles further north than I am. We have lots of those pan fish around here. Also lots of yellow perch, crappie, smallmouth bass, and northern’s. Largemouth and Musky are around, but fairly rare. Then we have the big lake fish like lake trout, salmon, white fish, cisco, ect.
1 Like
Apricot tree is going to be a very spotty bloomer again. The winters just knock out most of the fruit buds.
4 Likes
We are just seeing the snow recede in open areas near trees and buildings here in the UP of MI. I got about 8-10” down before I hit frost today. Hoping to get some things planted in 2-3 weeks.
2 Likes
up until the late 1970’s we only had coldwater fish here. lake and brook trout ,arctic char, landlocked atlantic salmon and whitefish. then in the last 40 years illegal intros .brought in musky, s.m bass, y. and w. perch. a buddy told me he found several baby black crappie last summer in his minnow trap so now the fish river chain of lakes has them as well. most of them dont compete directly with the coldwater native species except the musky which are in the st. john river and havent jumped the falls on the lower fish river where it dumps into the st. john. too fast and high for them. brook trout will suffer though as they prefer the weedy shallow water the perch and bass prefer. i broke my white perch record 3 weeks ago with a 16in.cocker caught on a light ugly stick ice rod . it handled it well but took some finessing as the hali sukkula lure i was using only had a sz. 10 light wire hook on it. that day i caught many in the 12-14in. range with everything smaller than that left for the eagles. bios said if we dont thin them out they will over populate and stunt like they have in s. maine. was using chunked rainbow smelt and sucker for bait. they are for their size, the best fighting panfish ive ever caught. they fight hard like their striper cousins!
1 Like
thats some nice perch, good eats!!!
1 Like
My Harglow cot is in full bloom, but nothing for the Flavor Delight
2 Likes
i hate filleting anything smaller than 10in. its not worth the work but those big humpbacks are! i can catch easily 100 of them in a good morning. about half are keepers. i was thinking of setting up a spot dedicated to processing them in my garage and selling the fillets. theres no limit on them as they are invasive.
thats wild, maybe youll get luck and have walleye invade soon also! Not a bad thing when the invasive fish are better eating than the natives… lol
1 Like
central maine had some in long pond 25 years ago mistakingly stocked w/ s.m bass . they started to do well then the state put a regulation that all walleye caught must be killed. they disappeared 5 yrs later. that lake was connected to 5 other rather large lakes. would have been one hell of a fishery for them. they already had invasive pike in there. why target the walleye instead of the pike with eradication? and the state was the one that put the eyes’ in there.
Yeah thats unfortunate. even pike are better eating than trout. I lived in montana for a few years in an area that only had trout to catch, it was rough… lol
2 Likes
i like them small brookies from cool streams. small lake trout around 2lbs. are just as good as wild ocean run salmon. i havent eaten pike but muskie are darn good if you can get around the bones.
1 Like
I know the mid-west waters where I live are warmer with a few exceptions for deeper reservoirs. That said, favorite fish species in our area are walleyes (the right waters need to be searched out), crappie and bluegills (most fished for for eating), and catfish found in the clearer streams and ponds.
The several varieties of bass and bass crosses are also popular but I enjoy others better. Southern Missouri and northern Iowa and Minnesota are a few hours away for much better varieties and tastes.
2 Likes
yeah bones suck, I always fillet them out, pike and musky are pretty much the same. Its hard to remove bones in smaller fish, but when they get to be 3lbs or larger its not so bad.
1 Like
I always filet pike in 3 “strips”. 2 get eaten, one gets tossed.
1 Like
its to find and get around those y bones. top ‘‘ backstraps’’ are the best.
The y-bone strips are pretty good pickled a couple days in vinegar with some sugar.
3 Likes
Woodmans has frozen walleye from Lake Winnipeg for $7.50/lb. Cheaper than driving to Canada 
Menards has $30 fruit trees for $20 right now. They had a bunch of Contender peaches for that price.
4 Likes