More Fishing Of Course

You might wonder why I put a picture of Landon swimming on our blog. You may also notice he is swimming with a shirt on. What you can't see is why he is swimming. He is swimming because Mike tried to net a fish and he needed to extent the handle to reach it. Well, the net didn't click together right and the net end went flying into the water. It is aluminum and was starting to sink. It was such chaos in the boat that Landon, not willing to lose a net, jumped in after it. The water was about 70 degrees-cold enough that I would have had to buy a new net. It's always comical to me what he will do for one of his fishing things. Last year Mike even went scuba diving for a rod Landon and his dad, Dave, lost in a tournament. Now that's dedication.

Landon's mom, Karen, and Mike came over for a weekend o' fun. We went to the play and went fishing. Landon let us catch all the fish, these two at the same time (they're lake trout for those of you who haven't educated yourselves with the previous fish identifying post). Don't worry, both of the fish lived. We only kept one out of the five to eat.

Too Lazy to Find a Bigger Patch of Shade

I had to take this picture of Mesa. She had been laying in the front yard most of the day, moving with the shade of the teeny tiny tree. If she would have just moved to the north about 20 feet she'd have been in the shade the whole day-without moving. Or she could have moved to the shade in the back yard, or to the other side of the house with shade from the neighbors tree. She just has to be in the front where she can see everything that is going on. It think it was about 90 degrees that day, which normally she likes and would lay on the black rug on the front steps. Dogs sure do wierd things.

My Very Thoughtful Husband

My husband, by all accounts, is a 27 year old adult. He is responsible, dependable, honest, dedicated, and mostly recently he has let his thoughtfulness shine through. Why, just last night as we were sitting at the table, waiting for the dishes to do themselves, he tells me that there are frogs in the tupperware in his lunch box. He found them at work. WHAT POSSESS' A GROWN MAN TO BRING HOME FROGS IN HIS LUNCH BOX? I'll tell you what-fishing. At least he was thoughtful enough to tell me they were in there BEFORE I started doing dishes and found them myself. Thankfully, he took the frogs and Abby and left before they got loose. He will most likely bring more frogs home tonight-there is a catfish tournament on Saturday night and frogs make good bait. If all his fishing and hunting wasn't putting meat on our table, I would have gone crazy by now. All I can do is shake my head and hope these "lessons" help me when we have kids.

Stinky Pete

Meet Pete. He's a stray Westland Terrier that was found in a raceway at the Fort Peck Multi Species Fish Hatchery. Landon felt sorry for him and brought him home. He was really matted and smelly so he had to stay outside. Then the cold weather came back. I told Landon he could come inside but he had to have a bath first (notice the hot pink gloves). So this is Landon giving Pete a bath. He had to wear rubber gloves because Pete stunk so bad and we weren't sure what he had for bugs.

He cleans up pretty nice. We had him on Tradio and the Dog Gone Show for about 10 days before someone took him. We never found his real owner, but did find someone who wanted him. I told Landon we weren't keeping him and if we did that he couldn't have another lab until we were down to one dog. And since we all know that small dogs live longer than big dogs, he would have ended up hunting with a Westie or a Chihuahua and that didn't sit well with him, so Pete had to go even though we were attached. I'm afraid our kids may inherit the "bringing home stray animals all the time" gene from Landon.

More Fish Work

This link will take you to the Billings Gazette Outdoors section (I think) with the article about Pallid Sturgeon and a picture of Landon with a fish he caught. http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/05/15/features/outdoors/28-sturgeon.txt

The Ground Is Just Not Good Enough

I guess the hammock works the same if it's upside down. She was sleeping until I got the camera. She just doesn't like laying on the ground, but she'll run through the smelliest mud to retrieve a duck, what a weirdo.

This is what's left of Abby's chair after one year. She just sits in it like a human, so we're not sure how they get destroyed so fast. She'll sleep in it all night if we let her (using the arm rest for her pillow)

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.