07.31.24 Poaching up north...

 

     While I was away a post from the New Hampshire Fish and Game came across Facebook. The above picture shows an officer with 14 illegal oversized striped bass. Currently the size limit for recreational striped bass is one fish at 28-31 inches while commercial takes vary. 

     So what's going on up there. It really is all coming down to the bunker, or menhaden, or the pogies as they call them up in New England. We see them down here in the Raritan and New York Bays, the New York Bight, and along the Jersey Shore in the summer and fall. Big bass on adult peanut bunker and then bass of all sizes on immature or peanut bunker. We know how the striped bass migration works, they winter down south, for the most part, and summer up in parts north in and around New England. 

     Menhaden are "the most important fish in the sea" and are not only fodder for all types of predators fish but are filter feeders and do an incredible job in keeping waters in check. That's why when the Omega Protein boats come up off of New Jersey and New York to harvest bunker for fish food the damage to fish, whales, birds, and the water is disastrous. Depending on the year bunker make their way north, and it varies on how north they go. Montauk, Block, and Boston Harbor are locations where big bass summer over and will prey on bunker if they are around. So this year New Hampshire anglers      

seem to be enjoying the visiting big bass that have pushed the pogies close and into Portsmouth Harbor. Portsmouth Harbor is in New Hampshire and just a stones throw to Maine. Since this story aired I am 

sure the angling pressure has increased a lot in and around the harbor. When I talk with people about bunker I am surprised how much or little, they, or I, really know. But what usually gets them is this, bunker spawn off shore. Period. A lot of people think bunker in the bays and rivers are there to spawn. But that's not true. They spawn off shore and then the eggs "travel" into the bays and rivers, which becomes their nursery, and then grow before their migration out in the fall. 

     So back to the poaching. The ASMFC set the regulations to have a slot limit for striped bass at 28-31" for recreational anglers. That is along the East Coast except for the Delaware River on the Pennsy side and inside the Chesapeake Bay. There are commercial fisheries in some states but most have stopped those practices in part or in whole. North Carolina closed both recreational and commercial harvest in their waters hoping for a rebuild. New Jersey closed their commercial fishery and transferred that quota to the Bonus Tag Program. Massachusetts, pretty much the epicenter of commercial striped 

bass fishing outside of the Chesapeake Bay, closed the Cape Cod Canal for commercial fishing. In Mass. boat and shore anglers can participate in commercial fishing. To relate it to what happened with the poaching remember Maine and New Hampshire don't have a commercial fishery. 

   According to the NHFG on July 15th they started receiving calls that a fisherman was seen catching and keeping large striped bass just outside the harbor. The alarm was sounded to the neighboring states and the search started. At a ramp officers found the fisherman as he tried to discard the 14 striped bass 

that ranged from 37-47 inches which are about 22- 42 pound fish. Why would a guy keep those big bass if the size limits have been reduced to a slot? Well, in Massachusetts the commercial boat based size limit is 35 inches with a daily limit of 15 (FIFTEEN) fish. That lasts until the quota has been reached each summer. Massachusetts publishes those quotas each day as seen below for July 30th. 

     In addition to the quotas the commercial season in Massachusetts is also regulated by open and closed seasons as seen below. You can see that both shore and boat based fishing can only occur on 

certain days of the week. This situation occurred on July 15th which was a Monday, but it was at night, and these New Hampshire fish would be "turned in" and counted for the Tuesday Massachusetts quota count. And while this guy seems to be the poster child the NHFW also caught more Massholes crossing 

state lines to fill their Massachusetts commercial quotas. The quota for Massachusetts for 2024 is 683,773 pounds of striped bass. If the average sized fish reported is 28 pounds, a 40 inch fish, then about 24,420 fish will be harvested this summer. That's a lot of dead striped bass. I won't even get into the legal commercial fishery in the CB and those numbers.

     Poaching has been going on forever. Wherever there are rules they get broken. That goes for recreational and commercial catches as well as for hunters and fishermen alike. We see it here in New Jersey but it's more on the recreational size. We tend to stereotype poachers here in New Jersey always 

thinking it's non-citizens who do this illegal activity under the cover of darkness. Now that occurs, don't get me wrong, but poaching includes taking fish out of season, outside of size limits, and fishing outside of the three-mile line in federal waters. 

     In the New Hampshire case the poacher admitted he was going to return the fish to Mass. and sell them under his commercial fishing license there. According to the NHFG the value of those fish was $1,600, or $114 a fish. When these incidents are made public there is always outcry on what should happen to the guilty party. The officers write tickets and take the fish for evidence and usually to a local food bank so they don't go to waste. Rarely do we see the person arrested, and in this case, like many others, they go unnamed. Many people think the penalties should be more severe as to send a message to others who are part of this practice. Seizing fishing gear, or their boats, and even the trucks they used to tow the boats, should be part of the penalty. 

     About ten years ago I read a book written by Jeff Nichols, a Montauk chapter Captain. The book talks about the highs and lows of commercial striped bass fishing in New York. New York has it's own

storied history of commercial striped bass fishing between boat and shore based anglers. "Anglers", used loosely, as a large part of New York's harvest came from beach seining. Guys would drive on the beach in pick up trucks and find large schools of striped bass. They would deploy rowboats and net, or seine, 

almost the entire school. The fish would be tossed into the bed of the trucks and then sold legally to fish markets, like the famous Fulton Fish Market in Lower Manhattan, or illegally through the back door of 

restaurants, even the poshest ones in Manhattan and cities along the East Coast. Nichols speaks to this in his book, Caught. Which is a great read and can be found on Amazon, HERE. Today the Fulton Fish Market calls the Bronx home after moving there in 2005. I was lucky enough to spend a night at the old market one night back in the 1980's, but those were the good old film days, and I don't know where those photographs or negatives are. 

I also shot at the new market in 2011 doing a story for New Jersey Monthly Magazine on sustainable fishing. That night I followed New Jersey restaurant owner Peter Panteleakis, of Oceanos in Fair Lawn fame, over to the Bronx market as he picked out fish for his restaurant. Interestingly, the above pick shows him checking out a striped bass, which can't be served in New Jersey restaurants. It was a good 

assignment. I able to get behind the scenes in the wee-hours of the morning and watch the action go down. It's a difficult place to just break out a camera and shoot as people there tend to be camera shy and a little suspicious. The market has a long history of being controlled by, well, you know. 

     Time will tell how well the 28-31 inch slot will do towards rebuilding the striped bass. The commercial fishery continues to chip away at the larger cow female bass which are what do the heavy lifting as far as breeding each spring. Be it Chesapeake Bay, Hudson or Delaware River, strains having those fish return each spring is the only way to rebuild the fishery. Not playing by the rules, recreationally or commercially, is selfish and isn't fair to the fish or the other people who play by the rules, regardless of what you think about them. 

07.30.24 Nice wedding anniversary weekend away....

     What to do when it's your 9th wedding anniversary? You wouldn't think of loading up the the family ride with the kids and the dogs and heading to Cape May but that's what we did. It's funny as you get older the things you realize and miss. I know for Theresa and I the whole "Empty Nest" thing is something we really have a hard time getting used to. Kids, well first we love them, most of the time, but are a real pain in the ass, and we spend most of our time as the grow up figuring out how to get away from them. And then they leave and we try and figure out how to get them back, even for a meal. 

     So on Thursday night we decided to celebrate 9 years of marital bliss. I'm alway amazed when people say they've been married for 50 years and never had an argument, a bicker session, or a drag out fight. At the end of the school year I received a gift card from a student to one of our favorite places in The Swan in Lambertville. So, in keeping with trying to lure the kids back, we invited Erin and Lauren to join us. One of the best things about getting old is being able to watch your kids rolling into adulthood. Additionally, it's nice to watch the sibling relationships kind of take a turn back in time as they reminisce and act like kids again. 

     And as far as marriage. I don't think marriage is tough as long as you picked someone who is close enough to you and you're both willing to negotiate and work things out. The biggest problem with marriage is all the shit in life that gets in the way. Kids, money, jobs, health, and future plans. Plus there's always the baggage we drag around from our childhood and previous marriages and lives. It can be tough to manage all of that yet alone your own stuff and your partners as well. 

     So in continuing our anniversary weekend we loaded up the girls and the dogs and picked up our nephew Evan and headed south. The dogs. The f'in dogs. I like the dogs. I take care of the dogs. I try to be a good dog dad. I'm done with the dogs. You can't do anything, at least easily, when you have them. 

     Cape May has been a thing in our family for decades, like going back to the 1980's, and maybe even before that. My parents started with Wildwood and then eventually called Wildwood Crest and Diamond Beach and Seapointe Village our annual weekly home away from home each year. There are tons of pictures from those trips stacked in bins and photo albums somewhere in my parents basement since the early days before cell phones and digital images. Below are a few pics from a trip in 2006

when Erin was just a year old and Sean was seven. Looking below you can see that Erin isn't a tot anymore and how grown up she and Lauren have become. Like all of the "stuff" that we accumulate over

the years, and desperately need to get rid of, the memories and rituals of things like family vacations are etched in our minds and hearts and, sometimes, become things passed down from generation to generation. So it was no surprise that as my parents stopped with the yearly vacations to the Cape May area I picked up the torch and kept that going. While Theresa and I couldn't plant our own roots at Seapointe Village, where condos there start at around $1,000,000 we found something up our financial alley on the mainland in Lower Township. At least it's the same town. In 2018 we purchased a travel trailer for $3,500 off of Facebook Marketplace and started doing the camping thing. It was fun when we got down there but I hated looking at it 11-plus months out of the year sitting in the yard and the back 

and forth just wasn't for us. Then Theresa found Cape Island Resort in July 2020. It's a seasonal resort made up of 700 park model homes just a mile from Cape May. It seemed to be right up our alley. For some reason the prices there were at an all time low and for an asking price of $14,000 it seemed a 

perfect price point for us. In the end we paid $11,000 and were on the hook for the $4,500 fee for the May 1st to November 1st season. We quickly sold our trailer and I sold my newer Ford F-150 to get it done. Over the last four years we have done a ton of work there and have been rewarded with some great

weekends and weeks alone and with the kids. Friends and family have used it as well so it's been a win all the way around, until.... What was once a family owned and operated resort has now been sold to Legacy, a huge conglomerate of similar type places around the country. And when things go corporate so do the prices. They jacked the rental fees from $4,500 to now $9,300 in just four short years. While some say, or argue, "Go and try and rent a place in Wildwood Crest or Cape May for a week", which could set you back $6,500, it's still a lot of money for our "Shore House". So what to do? We are on a three-year exodus plan from New Jersey heading down to Hilton Head. We could keep this and spend six months, in whole or part, in Cape May, which isn't a bad thing, and do our family visiting while escaping the hottest times of year in the Low Country. We could tow the line and have it for us to use as well as for kids and maybe their families to use going forward. But then is it their responsibility to take the reins in to use, upkeep, and pay the freight? It's a real tough decision. And kids don't all think like us. 

     How many of us grew up with second homes, camps, and shacks in our family? In the 1990's I purchased two homes in Big Bass Lake in Gouldsboro, Pa. After we sold them it was off to the Adirondacks for a couple of homes which eventually got sold as well. In family conversations going back forever how many have heard, "Why did they sell?", or, "They should have just kept it". "Imagine what it would be worth today?". It's all easy to say, but in the end someone has to use it and pay for it. 

     Let's just say 10-grand a year. That's a lot of money. Smart people would say imagine if you invested that for your future. True. By age 70 we would have some money to get us through the Golden Years? But what price do you put on living now, while you're able, along with the value of instilling in your kids the importance of family and family stuff like this. That may be priceless. What my parents offered me as far as opportunities and experiences must have had a positive effect on my DNA because I continue to try and relive it and pass it down the line. 

     What is funny is, we pretty much hate the beach. Don't like the sun and hot either. We are the two who shelter in place on beach chairs with overhead awnings situated under a large beach umbrella, or two if needed. A day or two a summer is just fine. God bless those sun worshippers and ocean swimmers, we're good for a quick dip before retreating back to the shade. But maybe when the grandkids come, if they do, we'll be different. But this weekend we did our annual thing. We have all 

the beach stuff, and I might say we do a really good job getting down there and setting up. Look at that set up, five beach chairs- two with awnings, two beach umbrellas, four of those bamboo things you lay on, and beach toys for the sand castles that were never built. My thoughts about having a place down the

shore, or not, all went to the positive when I rolled up and saw the above crew waiting for us to join them at the Newark Avenue beach entrance. They paid for parking on Atlantic Avenue, we parked for free and huffed it the two blocks to meet them. To me the above pic is iconic. Maybe not iconic like when the sailor kissed the nurse at Times Square after WWII or when they raised the flag at Iwo Jima or at the World Trade Center, but personally iconic in its own right. Three adults, 18, 19, 22, well really kids, holding their beach bags and toys ready for a day at the beach in 2024. Wait till they pull that pic out in say twenty years, maybe after my days here on this earth are done. What memories they'll have. 

     I spent part of the beach day reviewing for this upcoming fall semester. It's coming soon, in fact it's starting to feel like fall already. July is really summer and August is the transitional month as kids get

get ready to head back to college and teachers anticipate the start of a new year. The equator like temperatures have subsided and the leaves are even starting to drop here and there. June went into July and soon into August. 2024 will soon be 2025. It was over a month ago that Theresa and I were down in Hilton Head proclaiming this is where the next chapter of our lives will hopefully be. But what have I done to get ready for it, like really done? Yes, I've picked up sticks in the yard, mowed the grass, and moved things from one place to another, but if this is going down in less than three years I've got to start moving, like really moving. When you continue to do the same things each day you tend to move sideways and not forward. 

     Over the weekend we hit the pool, hit the beach, caught a sunrise, and part of the sunset. We ate at home, and since this was "the vacation" we did the go out to dinner, and lunch, thing as well. I don't

remember my Dad having the same nauseous look on his face when he would take us out to eat. Dad just paid. I never looked at the bill. It was just what you did when on vacation. Going out to eat was just as much as a continuation of the hang as it was to fill a physiologic need to satiate our hunger. But I'm not like my Dad. While I love going out to eat I just can't not think about how much food costs, and most times, average to shitty food costs as well. We just take it, "Yeah, it was okay", after dropping a couple hundred including a 20% tip. But it's all part of it. We did our best

to spend wisely without coming off as cheap. As I sit here I can't recall all the meals we ate and where, but a quick glance at the bank statements quickly put it in the forefront of my hippocampus, the part of the brain that handles short-term memory. A couple of beers, a few apps, some salads, and a few entrees 

and you're talking over $200 with the tip. Britton's Bakery in Wildwood Crest will set you back $25 and ice cream at Fleck's $30. All good in the end. We barbecued one night and made breakfast each morning but still probably spend $700 on food over the four day weekend. While some of it is just tourist trap dining the real value to me is being in the moment and watching your gang, as well as the other gangs, enjoy time with their families in a place that is your old go-to or a newly discovered adventure. The kids have done this circuit for years so when they say, "We have to go to Britton' s and Two Mile Landing", it's not just for the food as much as it is to continue reliving the memories that have a special place in their minds. Erin ordered three #1 crabs, not cleaned, which ran $24. While I sat across from her watching her use her learned techniques on how to get all the meat I couldn't help but think how many we could catch with a couple of drop lines and a few pieces of bunker or chicken. But then I'd have to buy the butter, and the Old Bay, and stink up the house, and then clean up. Maybe one day she'll be sitting where I was looking across the table to her own family and child. If I'm lucky to be there to watch it then the $10,000 a year we spend would have been all worth it. And we have six kids so hopefully some of them get it and can enjoy it as we did this weekend. 

The weekend was a good one. I needed that. Now it's time to get to work in more ways than one. 

07.26.24 There's a tank....

     After I posted my woes from yesterday my buddy Mark sent me these pics from a quick "Take A Kid Fishing" outing he did a few hours after I had finished up. They fished for a while without a tap and then just as they were about to leave the kid jumped a tank of a smallmouth bass. Very cool. 

 

07.25.24 What goes up must come down...

     On my way home from work the other day I stopped to check out the river. Basically it can come down to two words, low and warm. What caught my eye was the dimpling occurring on the water's surface that moved down the river with the outgoing tide. While hard to photograph with just an iPhone

if you look closely by clicking on the photo you can see small herring fry. The NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife studied the river herring through 2016 taking sampling on the Maurice River Great egg Harbor River. The results showed that blueback herring outnumber alewife's almost 2:1. River herring collectively are made of up of both types that we see in the Delaware River. River herring are anadromous, living in the saltwater and returning to the freshwater rivers to spawn. The herring come up the river in March and April and leave in later May and June. Striped bass, also anadromous, follow the herring both ways before and after they spawn. 

     While the fry are tiny, 1-1/2 - 2 inches now, there are a lot of them. Smallmouth bass, snakeheads, catfish and striped bass all take part in chowing down on these tiny morsels as they make their way back to the ocean. Later in the summer the shad fry, which are larger, will make their way to the ocean as well. 

     Since the equator-like temperatures have subsided so has the river's temperature. From a high just below 87 to a now first light 79 things must be better for the fish that tolerate the warmer temperatures. Since I was in the mood to fish I got out around 430 am and thought why not give a mouse a try. "Mousing" has been a thing for large trout and when the Upper Delaware gets too hot to fish during the day some anglers go nocturnal and throw their favorite mouse imitations. The only time I went big trout

mousing was way back in 2007 when Chris Roslin and I did a story for Eastern Fly Fishing Magazine. we were sent to Labrador , Canada where we took a series of planes to get to Cooper's Minipi Lodge. 

we spent a week throwing big flies both day and night for large, like 7, 8, 9, and 10 pound brook trout. That trip was 17 years ago, wow, how time flies. I was 39 years old. I had hair on my head and face and 

a little extra weight on me. While I did the photography and Chris did most of the fishing I was able to get in on the action from time to time but Chris caught the biggest fish of the trip. Funny to see an old

The Fly Hatch hat on my head from back in the day. This picture was from the tail end of the trip and you can see how exhausted I was from the long week of work. That spread came out sometime in 2009. 

     I threw the mouse fly without any attention from anything swimming below the surface. I had low expectations but did enjoy watching the retrieve and just waiting for maybe something to blow up on it. 

 

     With the water temps still warm I really hoped a striped bass wouldn't be the one to strike. I made the with to a small minnow fly but caught more grass on the dropping tide then attention from any fish. It's 

amazing how the feel and smell and sights of the river change from say early spring till now. It just seems dead. I can't wait until the spring of 2025, one of maybe two or three springs I have left until the big move to South Carolina. 

     I spent some time walking and went to check out how construction on the new waterfront is going. Nothing has moved in months and I talked to the lead engineer who told me the final plans haven't even been drawn up yet as there's no money that has been allocated for completion of the project. The only thing new is more sturdier fencing keeping bathers and fishermen out. 

     I did share the river with a lone kayaker who trolled around and made some acts from time to time. I'm sure he wasn't expecting much either it's just a nice way to start the day, all alone on the river.

07.24.24 Hey, let's grab some Beast Fleyes and...

 

...go find some bass on the bunker pods. The above video was captured off of Portsmouth, New Hampshire about a half a mile from shore. While whale encounters occur frequently when the large mammals surface when eating bunker this actual strike is more rare than often. 

07.23.24 Nothing good is going to come out of this...

     While cracking my crabs on Sunday a lady at the bar erupted and said, "Biden just dropped out!". The first thing I thought to myself was, "No, they forced him out." This blog isn't political and I'm not political but, like everyone else, I have my own thoughts. And my thought is this isn't the way democracy is supposed to work. Yes, President Biden is getting old, as we all are, but he's having a harder time doing so as of late. Best case scenario, he realized this and bowed out on his own accord. Nothing worse than being told "It's over Joey". But the right people, or the right amount of people, got in his ear and head and forced him to go. Whatever you think about him or politics, it's kinda just sad. 

     Well if the news cycle hasn't been busy enough here's more fuel to add to the fire. No doubt his naysayers and those on the Right will crucify him on his way out. And in my opinion I think he's going. Whatever umph he had closing out the end his first term, or possibly a next term, I think is gone. When you leave somewhere against your own will it deflates you like a balloon. Biden will age quicker than he has and he will turn over the President to Vice President Harris. Just my prediction. And I think that will also come from strong hints from his people, like Obama and Pelosi and Schumer. And don't forget to follow the money, big donors will donate, only if they're getting what they want. 

     And just like the Right the Left will have 1,000 people, who helped keep Harris in the closet the last three years, come out and support her overlooking all the things they were worried about in the past. Let's face it, Democrats and Republican are just shallow, period. 

     She is on a speed train to be the Democratic nominee and will soon pick a running mate. That should be interesting because no one in the running thought they would be as the ticket was Biden-Harris. But like Vance, who crucified Trump before pulling an about face, that V.P. nominee will most likely have had some kind of opinion on Harris, we'll just see if the graveyard diggers in the media can dig stuff up.

     We're on our way to another lesser-of-two-evils election this November. Never Trumpers may be delighted that Biden stepped down due to his age even more then their concern that Harris could win, and more importantly be the leader of the free world. And never Bidens or anything Democrat will rejoice in the endless barrage of gaffs that Harris has made over the last four years that will be on a 24-hr. loop on every conservative leaning media outlet you can find. 

     It all has changed. Remember when the incumbent was pretty much a shoe in? You did your four years, the other side just let the next four go, and then would come out hard when the term limit kicked in. Not anymore. we're heading to four-year one and done terms with constant fighting between the two sides. 

     I don't know what would be worse, a Trump-Harris debate or a Vance- Harris debate. Who knows what this will do to the independents and undecideds and the various different sectors of voters that the media likes to dissect down to hair color and weight. Women and different ethnic groups are always be fought over, mostly for votes over a candidate really wanting to help anybody. 

God help this country. I'm so done with it all. I just want it, and them, to all go away. 

07.22.24 Cool family story from up in the North Country....

     This weekend while I was day drinking or cracking' some shells while swallowing some suds my 9 year old niece June was finishing up her Adirondack High Peak journey by joining the ADK 46'ers. Starting at age four she and my sister have, for some unknown reason, have spent 263.22 hours 

traveling 393.92 miles climbing up to a total of 95,986 feet to complete the climb of the 46 highest peaks in the Adirondack Park. The highest in Mount Marcy at 5,344 feet and the lowest is Couchsachraga at 3,820 feet. Being outdoorsy and adventurous no doubt runs in my family and being 

the oldest it no doubt somehow comes from me and my DNA. Well maybe my sister has a little bit to do with it as well, since she did things like bike across Vietnam and like Asia after high school. And I can't forget my bother in law who's a Mountain Man through and through. I looked back into my archives of pushed-to-my-limits of physical exhaustion to see where I stood as a potential 46'er. 

In 2019 I joined my family to tackle Ampersand Mountain. I took a look at the list of all 46 High Peaks and their heights but mistakingly Ampersand wasn't on the list. I've come to learn this is "an excellent hike", hike?, really.

I thought I was going to die by the time I got up there. At 3,353 feet to the summit it's 500 feet shy of the lowest 46. However, I have scaled Whiteface Mountain which comes in at number five in height at 4,857 feet. It was 2004 when Ryan, Sean and I took the trip and motored up

the backside of Whiteface to get to the summit. "Motored up" meaning we drove up almost to the top and then took the exhausting climb of like 200 feet to finish the journey. We did the same thing in 2007

and was there the moment Norm Mueller completed his journey to join the 46'er club. It's a big deal and for many it's a Bucket List kind of thing, and June did it by age 10. And I can't forget to include my 

sister Megan who joined that club as well. I'm hearing my other niece Eden, age 7 (above), is on her way to join her sister (I'm sure there's no sibling rivalry there) and Mom in their huge accomplishment. And while my sister and her daughters really did this all on their own, 

and in no way did any of my DNA, and lack of physical prowess, have anything to do with their success I will say I may have a played a small part of their story going way, way back. In 1989 I ventured up to Saranac Lake for the first time. Just outside of town along Route 30 we camped at Mountain Pond and 

I climbed to the highest, well lowest, peak, or rock, for the above picture. That was 1989, I was just a tot at age 21. While there I explored around a bit and found Paul Smith's College. But how it connects is this. I came back to New Jersey and introduced the idea of that college to my brother Ryan, and then my sister Megan. Ryan passed but Megan went, and never came back. She settled in Saranac Lake some thirty years ago, attended Paul Smith's and went on to SUNY Plattsburgh. We have made numerous trips to 

visit and over the years and I purchased the above two houses on The West Branch of the Ausable River in Ausable Forks. Unfortunately the Hurricane Irene flood of 2011 pretty much washed through the houses ending my dreams of having a place up there. But thankfully my sister and her family give me reason to visit and stay connected. 

    And things come full circle. Next month the next member of the family will be exploring the North Country and settling down near Saranac Lake. Lauren will be finishing her education at Paul Smith's and we are just as excited as she as she becomes a "Smitty". So, you see, it's all about me, and all of there successes in life can be traced back to my trip back in 1989. It must have been a long, long time 

ago because that looks like a spinning rod in my hand. Oh, how the times have changed. Bur seriously, congratulations to my niece June and sister Megan and best of luck to Eden and Lauren on their Adirondack journeys.While up there next month of the college move in maybe I'll just take some time away for myself and tackle Mt. Marcy, why build up to it, I'll just start from the tallest down.