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Photo of the day

On the left is my Chestnut, 14 footer that I finished restoring last Spring. It was out on it's maiden voyage. The single seat is hung from the original holes from the bow seat.

On the right is the only stripper I have ever built, a Bear Mountain craft called the Cottage Cruiser. 15 1/2 feet long. Christine uses it tandem and solo. I built it for her 3 winters ago.
 
On the left is my Chestnut, 14 footer that I finished restoring last Spring. It was out on it's maiden voyage. The single seat is hung from the original holes from the bow seat.

On the right is the only stripper I have ever built, a Bear Mountain craft called the Cottage Cruiser. 15 1/2 feet long. Christine uses it tandem and solo. I built it for her 3 winters ago.

Thank you... I think I remember you rebuilding the Chestnut. Glad to see it out. And I also recognize the Cottage Cruiser now... I have spent a lot of time looking over Bob's Special and Ranger plans on the Bear Mountain site.
 
Chessie dog on Lake Lila, chasing geese. Not a great picture, the fog kind of played games with the lens. I like it though because at full size the graininess of the pixels make it look like a watercolor painting. I may crop it and have it transferred to canvas to capture the accidental effect.



Barry
 


Fog rising off one our impoundment lakes here in WV.

I've been going to places I don't visit much or have never been to at all. I don't go to this lake in the season because of the traffic.

After the end of Sept. it gets quiet. Then it's good to do an early or late cruise when the surface is flat calm. It's even better to just sit in the boat and look.


The fishing is good. This is really a very slow moving river, and it winds through the mountains for almost 15 miles. The big water/big fish rule operates. A couple of years ago someone took a 45+lb stripped bass. Other species are represented in the lunker class too.

I've thought about trolling a spoon behind the canoe as I loiter around. Just to see what might one day happen. As I think of the fixation I had for bass fishing as a tween, I remember that maybe the best thing was just staring at the beauty and mass of a big fish.

But gosh. A 45lb stripper on the other end of a line from a 52lb boat? Seems kind of technical.
 
This is from my Fall 2012 trip.
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I was thinking about the thread about people avoiding obstacles and such not in tight little rivers. In 2009, the school club paddled one of our usual routes that starts in the headwaters of the kenogamisis River that eventually flows to the Albany river. At this point, it is a small, beaver dam, dead tree choked creek. A forest fire had been through about five years earlier, and everything was falling into the stream. In a 10 k stretch we had 17 log jams that had previously not existed. Fortunately, my buddy who comes on each trip, works for hydro and is a first rate chain saw man. He can perform spiderman like feats, dangling from a canoe, while wielding his saw. He saved the day on that stretch, without him, it would have taken us another two days to get through. We're going to do that route again this year, I might try to go upstream in a small boat and motor in the spring an clear stuff out.
 
A forest fire had been through about five years earlier, and everything was falling into the stream. In a 10 k stretch we had 17 log jams that had previously not existed.

This was south Louisiana for a few years after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina... the rivers were FULL of downed trees, and debris clung to everything, flooding the entire area every time it rained because all the 'normal' drainage patterns were clogged.
 
Ha ha, I'd rather we didn't have to carry them, but most portages up here disappear or become impassable after two years. I've burned more gas on trail cutting than on firewood gathering, and i burn around five full cord a year.
 
Father and son (Fitz and Brendan) with Sadie dog and a 17' Chestnut Prospector in downeast Maine spring 2013

 
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