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!

A Little Bit About Fort Peck

This is the spillway, in case the lake it too full. It hasn't been opened since 1997. It flows down into the Missouri River.

These are the power houses. There are two that supply electricty to the southern United States, not all of it obviously.

This is the lake side of the dam. The water level is pretty low, the lowest it's been in years. This picture was taken from the road on top of the dam. The water level has been right up to the rocks at the bottom of the picture in years past. From the picture, the power houses are behind and to the left and the town of Fort Peck is right behind.

There is a wildlife refuge across the road from us. There are about a dozen each of elk and bison. Most mornings and evenings they come up on top to show off. We can see them from our front porch when they aren't bedded down in the trees.

Sometimes it gets hot, really hot. This is in our living room in about the middle of July. Obviously we don't have central air yet.

The town doesn't have a police officer anymore, but in the summer we have Harold. He watches out for speeding tourists. I guess the "POL" fell off.

The Hunting Never Stops

When it isn't hunting season, it's fishing season, but on the off chance the weather doesn't permit either, out come the DVD's. Abby is just as addicted to hunting as Landon.

More Abby

We really aren't such bad parents that we don't give our dogs beds-Abby just gets creative when she's looking for a place to sleep. We didn't have any straw bails yet and after a long day of duck hunting Abby needed a warm bed for a quick nap. Luckily, we hadn't finished the raking yet. I felt sorry for her and she got to come in even though she was wet.

From Wedding to Hunting Season (AKA Grocery Shopping)

This is my deer for 2007. We had been elk hunting and were on our way out when we saw him. We had to do quite a bit more hunting to fill the freezer for the year, but this was one of the better pictures of our success in 2007. I had to revise this post to suite Jane from England, although she'd rather have had me delete this blog all together. Her entire comments can be read by clicking on "Jane" and then scrolling down to "Carlisle Lass" and visiting her blog. Feel free to comment on our behalf.

The Deck

I think Abby enjoys the deck more than Landon and I do. It gives her a pretty good view of whats going on in her town.

We built it all by ourselves, and still got married. It's 16'x20', gray composite decking with 2x6 joists on 12" centers-so it's not going anywhere. It took us about a month and a half to build in our spare time.

The guys from work (I work at a lumber yard/construction company) took out a window and put the sliding door in. We lived with a 4' drop off for about a month. It drove Abby crazy that she could jump up and see in but couldn't get into the house. Mesa stood at the door and laughed at her. Abby had to learn to wait for the door to open before coming in the house. Hopefully we only have to replace the screen once, or twice if we get another dog.