If You Can Call It Work

This is a really good day for them. These are adult pallid sturgeon. They get really old. I asked Landon how old and he said, "If I knew that I'd be a millionaire." They estimate that the adult sturgeon they are catching are between 50 and 100 years old, but scientists don't know for sure how old they get.

Landon works for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks in the Fisheries department. He's a fisheries technician for the Pallid Sturgeon Population Assesment Project. He tried to explain it to me, but he spends most of his day netting fish, measuring them, tagging them, and occasionally performing surgery to implant them with tracking devices. They go out on the water as soon as the ice is off and work til October-ish in almost any kind of weather. Some days they don't catch any pallid sturgeon.

Species of Fish in Fort Peck Lake

This is the prized Walleye. Really tasty breaded and fried, or filled with crab meat.

This eel looking thing is a Burbot, or Ling. Looks disgusting but is really good in chowder.

This is a Chinook Salmon.

Small Mouth Bass

This is the first fish, a Drum, that I caught with the pole my Uncle Dewey made me. It's purple and pink, for girls only. Drum have little white rocks in their head that you can burn to tell how old they are (if you're a scientist and know how to do that kind of thing).

Lake Trout

Since We Don't Have Kids Yet...

We have dog friends over for play dates. We dog sit for some friends (two belong to them, the other two are their son's) every once in awhile. Abby loves to have friends over. 5 Labs is a little much though, especially when it comes time to clean up the poo. We've grown quite fond of the two we usually watch, Boone and Belle-two of the chocolates. If we didn't already have two dogs we'd definitely get another lab.

Our 2 Muts Being Human

This is Mesa's chair. She can sit in the sun and look out the front window. It's hers and hers alone. Abby is NOT allowed on it (Mesa will attack to defend her turf). On occasion, usually after a really long walk, Mesa is too tired to fight and Abby gets to peek out the window for a few minutes too.

Mesa

I thought I'd better put a picture of Mesa on the blog so she didn't get jealous. I don't have a lot of them, I'll have to take some more. She loves to go fishing too, mostly just to lay in the sun. Sometimes she goes swimming when we stop on shore. She doesn't like to be left on islands, she'll swim out to the boat if we leave her, which isn't safe with the giant northern pike we have in the lake-they could eat her!