Am I just getting old?

Thursday night I went to the Kid Rock concert at the Xfinity center in Mansfield. I have seen Kid three times before. I am a huge fan of his. I think he is ridiculously talented. He writes his own music. He plays multiple instruments, and he certainly crosses musical genres. Is he crude? Yes, but beneath some of his raunchy stuff is one of the few artists out there with all around talent.

Twice I saw Kid with Lynard Skynard. As you can imagine, yup,I'm a huge fan of Skynard. I absolutely loved the show. This year, Foreigner opened up for Kid Rock. They were awesome. The lead singer sounds exactly like he did years ago. My favorite songs by them are "Hot Blooded" and "Jukebox Hero"

After Foreigner's set, Kid played for about 90 minutes. He is a showman. He played multiple instruments and talked about some of his struggles in his life. He was a ton of energy and still rocks at 44 years old.

All that said, I felt very awkward at the show. First off it was not my crowd. Almost everyone had multiple tattoos and wore black or leather and seemed to be in a motorcycle gang. I'm more of a shorts and t-shirt kind of guy. More importantly, Since pot is no longer criminal in Massachusetts EVERYONE was lighting up. As I've said before, I have never smoked weed, but I am not against it. In the old days when it was illegal, you still smelled it concerts, but a few people were doing it. They would try to hide themselves so as to not get caught. At this concert, there was no hiding from it. So for three hours I was surrounded by the smell of herb.

About two thirds through the concert to my right I notice a girl about twenty three  completely bent over, hands on the ground, rubbing her backside against her boyfriends front side. It couldn't have been much more graphic if they were naked. I was in disbelief that this girl could be so dirty. Even drunk, most people have more class than that. And I asked myself, would I have found this so gross ten years ago?

I've been to Kid Rock concerts before, yet this is the first time the crowd made me uncomfortable. Were most of the fans at previous concerts Hell's Angel wannabes before? I assume they were. When I was a kid and saw a hot girl acting like a whore, I assume like any red blooded young man, I thought it was cool.
I don't know.

For the most part, I always feel like I'm young for my age. I like crude humor, and political incorrectness is funny to me. I goof around a lot. At work I get along very well with high school and college kids and have great debates about current events. Health wise, I feel exactly like I did at twenty years old. Someone said to me last week "you really don't have any grown up goals" to which I replied "basically I want to catch 30 pound stripers and see exactly how much asparagus it takes to make my pee smell." So I ponder whether or not, five or ten years ago, I would have been grossed out by a tramp grinding her boyfriend, or uncomfortable in a crowd full of pot smoking, tattooed, leather jackets. Or am I just getting old?

p.s. I'm justifying writing this piece in an outdoor blog by considering it a concert review. (at least the top half is)

Old Sturbridge Village

For the first time in ten years I went to Old Sturbridge Village (OSV). If you are not familiar with OSV, it is a living history museum. In the style of Colonial Williamsburg (on a much smaller scale) it is a recreation of a town from the 1830s. There are forty preserved buildings on the 200 hundred acre grounds. The buildings were brought there from other parts of New England, but they are 200 years old and not replicas. There are also many other antiques such as old firearms and farm equipment.
OSV is set up like an actual town. There is a common. There are two churches, a saw mill, grist mill and other businesses such as a bank.

We arrived about 10;30 and stayed until 4:30. There are costumed guides in many of the shops. For instance in the blacksmith shop a blacksmith was making a hot plate of iron. The potter was making small pitchers out of clay. They explain there craft and answer any questions. It is very educational. For a fee of three dollars a person, one can take a short ride on the stage coach or a twenty minute ride on the boat, We took a boat ride. It was nothing special, but it did get us off our feet for a few minutes.

People are allowed to leave the grounds and re-enter with their ticket. We went to the parking lot at

noon and ate our chicken salad sandwiches that we brought. However OSV does have a couple "taverns" and "general stores" that sold food. Before we left  I bought a pint of milk and a cookie. I do believe patrons are allowed to bring food into the village and eat inside.




Here is an amazing thing that shocked me , there was almost no one there today. I'd say there less than 100 paying customers. I couldn't believe how desolate it was. OSV is two hundred acres and we were there six hours. So folks were few and far between. This is a major attraction so I was pleasantly dumbfounded at how few people were there. The only thing I can come up with is that it was sprinkling this morning. Maybe people that planned on going changed their minds because of the rain. However, the forecast was for cloudy to clear skies, so I don't know. I was just happy there wasn't any crowds to deal with.

Anything you would need to know about OSV is on their website, which is easily found with a google search. Admission for an adult was $24.

Riverboat tour

Grist Mill Grinding Stones

Prudence Island!

T-Wharf

After whining about my boredom the last week, I will understand if you never read my blog again. If
your still here, thanks. Well, I had Friday off so I "went big" again. I went to Prudence Island.

Prudence is a large island in Narragansett Bay. It can be reached by the Prudence Island Ferry in Bristol, a mile or so south of Colt State Park on Thames Street.There are no attractions on the island. It is a quiet place to relax. A lot of people rent out houses for the weekend. You can do all the low key outdoor things on the island. Being surrounded by water you can obviously fish, swim, sun bathe, and play on the beaches. There are hiking trails in the center of the island.

I took the 9:45 ferry to the island on Friday. To my surprise the ferry ride cost me only  $8.10 for me and my bike. People do bring cars on the ferry, but I have no idea how much it costs. I would get a reservation if you bring a vehicle. Also note that the ferry has different times of departure during

Ferry Terminal on Prudence

different times of the year ( more round trips during warmer weather), and also during the week. There are more trips during Friday and Saturday than the rest of  the week.

Anyway, I got off the ferry at 10:15. My basic  plan for the day was to circle the island. The ferry terminal is on the east side of the island my plan was to work clockwise. My first stop was at T-wharf. I had planned on fishing there. High tide was at 11 am. However in my rush to get to the ferry, I left my pole in the car. I brought my gear, but left the pole. Not only could I not fish, but was also carrying around wasted useless weight on my back. I still went to the wharf. I hoped others would be fishing and I could at least watch. There was one guy. He was fluke fishing. I sat at a picnic table eating a banana and cookie and staying hydrated.

T-Wharf is exactly what it sounds like. Its a a dock a couple hundred feet long, at the end it makes a T. This one fisherman was casting in the same spot over and over. I could not figure out why he did not work his way up and down the dock and try to find fish. Then I realized, he remembered his fishing pole, so I shouldn't be judging anyone. I actually laughed out loud when I realized, I was the dumbass

Lighthouse on the southeast side

After I left T-Wharf I went northwest. I stopped at a fishy looking rock pier. I took a picture and looked into the clear water.

From there I rode my bike another mile or so and found a trailhead for a hike in the woods. Ten years ago, Prudence was over run with deer. A trip to the island guaranteed seeing at least twenty deer. My high number was 45. Not so anymore. Because of fear of lyme disease, a hunting season was instituted. Sadly, I did not see any deer in my hour in the woods hiking. I certainly understand the reason for wanting to cut down the size of the deer herd, but I do miss those days of seeing and photographing  all those deer.

After I got out of the woods I rode another mile north, I stopped at Pulpit Rock. On this rock Roger Williams preached to the Indians on Prudence. Kind of a cool thought that I stood where someone so famous stood almost 400 years ago.

Low tide was at 4 pm. I planned my favorite part of the day for then. I found a quiet cove on the northwest side of  the island facing Patience Island and went snorkeling. I played in the water for three hours or so. I got into a fight with a frisky crab that would rather fight than swim away. I saw some cool birds and found some quahogs.

A fishy looking spot that I fished. Oh wait, no I didn't because
I left my fishing pole in the car!

I had to catch the 6:30 ferry back to Bristol so I got out of the water and dried off about 5 pm. Back at
the ferry terminal is a convenience store ( the only store on the island that I know of). I bought some cold Gatorade and treated myself to a sweet. I spent six dollars on food and with my eight dollar ferry ticket, I couldn't believe I had that much all day fun for the price of a movie ticket and a soda.

Prudence probably has ten to fifteen miles of roads. I rode on at least 80%. I was passed by a total of one car all day. I was passed by one golf cart, and I rode by three rabbits. It was a very quiet relaxing day.

If you go:

The ferry leaves out of Bristol. Parking is tough. Street parking is not allowed and the ferry lot holds about 40 cars and costs ten dollars. I parked about two miles away and rode my bike to the lot.

The only store is at the ferry terminal. It is expensive, but the drinks are cold.

You can get all ferry info from their website which was very easy to find with a Google search.

Hiking paths are wide and mowed to cut down on chances of lyme disease

Stay hydrated. The air was very humid, the sea does not have much of a cooling effect unless its in your face.

Bring a fishing pole if you plan to fish.

There are ticks on the island! Take all the precautions. Residents have a very high percentage of Lyme Disease (hence the killing of deer). Ten minutes before writing this post, I pulled a Lone Star tick out of my leg.

One of many tree stands I found in the woods

Roger Williams was here

Wow, what are the odds I'd have Tabasco in my backpack?

The ferry coming to pick me up
Mt Hope Bridge in the background

Go Big or Stay Home?

Lately I have been in kind of a funk. I have had to force myself to go outside on weeknights. Normally, I spend most of my work day planning my evening. This is especially true in the spring when there are so many options. However, for the last couple of weeks, unless it is my day off and I have a big plan, I haven't really wanted to do much. 

For the last few weeks I have been working six days, having Fridays off. For the last two Fridays, I have gone on my friend Eric's boat. Fishing was incredible and it was easy for me to get up at ungodly hours to go fishing. This Friday, I think I'm going out on Prudence Island for a day on the water. I can fish, walk in the woods and look for deer, and snorkel. There is a cove that I snorkel in that is loaded with tasty quahogs. Prudence is small enough that I can easily cover the island on my bike. 

The problem I am having is the motivation to do stuff the other six days during a week. I think there are many reasons that accumulate to the point of my laziness.Warning- whining ahead; First off I gained some of the fifty pounds I lost so lately I have been exercising most every night. It gets dark so late, who wants to run at 10 pm after fishing? Two, Tuesday nights I have to go into work for an hour to prep my croissants. Three, I go into work at 5:30 am on Wednesdays and work about 10 hours, so I'm tired. Four, I am on call six days a week right now for work, it is a little hairy knowing I could be an hour from home and a night girl could be throwing up and I have to go in and relieve her.

Lastly and much more importantly than all the above bitching is just that I like my spring hobbies that I can do after work much more than my summer hobbies. I live for Wachusett, trout, big mirror carp, stripers, and watching birds during their northern migration. During the summer those hobbies are replaced by bass fishing, catfishing, much slower carp fishing, and non existent stripers in Narragansett Bay during the summer.

Don't get me wrong, I love summer daytrips. Prudence, Charlestown Breachway and of course New Hampshire are some of my favorite things to do. Finding the motivation after work has been hard. However, I realize on the nights I sit at home, I'm bored and angry with myself for staying in. So even though I really don't want to, I have been going out.

Last night I went to Newport (at a spot that is good at high tide at dark) I ended up catching three stripers and had five other hits. I would however consider a trip to Newport as a big "exotic" trip even if it is only for a few hours. Tonight I forced myself to go bass fishing. There is a lake that can only be fished from shore near my house that has smallmouth. Tonight the fish were not biting, as I only caught one little one. Making it that more difficult to motivate myself to go out tomorrow night. The good news was that I saw the prettiest, longest, sunset I have ever seen.  

Please no hate comments. I completely understand that my life could be a whole lot worse when my biggest problem is that I like catching trout more than largemouth bass. This was just a short vent. I'm sure I'll figure it out. I'll find a new challenge or get into an old hobby hardcore (like I did birding this spring). But I do wonder, are the Albies here yet?

Back in Buzzards Bay

Fishing was so good last week fishing on Eric Meyer's boat in Buzzards Bay, that he decided to go again this week (weather permitting). Of course, I was invited to go again. We started a little later today than last week. We hit the water sometime around 6 am. The weather couldn't have been any better. All day long the water was glass calm. On the water the temperature was around 80 degrees (about ten degrees cooler than the high inland)

To keep this some what short we ended up finding the fish again ( it wasn't difficult). There are so many sea bass in the fishery, it would be almost impossible to not hook some. Last week it was no exaggeration that we each caught 100 fish. Today, it was more like 50-60 a piece. Trust me, it did not feel like fishing was only half as good. The bite did not seem to turn on until about 8 am. Once the fish started hitting it was non stop.

There were two glaring differences today compared to last Friday. Both days one member of our team (last week it was Zach. this week it was Eric's friend Jim Schmidt who is a great guy) was using squid for a few hours on a high/low rig.  That means he had two hook baited with squid. Last week, Zach reeled up at least 40 scup, most over a foot. Today, Jim caught about 6-8 scup. One was huge, but mostly they were of more normal proportions.

The other difference was that the sea bass today were much bigger. It seems sea bass do not school by size. You could catch a five pounder while your buddy reels one up under a foot. Obviously if each member of the boat catches between 50-100 fish,  there are going to be plenty of shorts, an average size, and hopefully a few trophies. I would say that at least 75% of our fish today were over the 14 inch minimum. Of those many were in the 15-17 inch range. We got a half dozen over eighteen inches, and Eric caught the biggest at just under 20 inches. Comparatively, last week we had three or four over seventeen inches ( however plenty in the 14-16 inch range, but percentage wise it was probably two shorts per keeper Keep in mind that means we still let go a hundred keepers last week.). I thought fishing couldn't get any better last week, but I was wrong, I loved catching the big fish today.

If you go:

It won't be hard to find sea bass, but if you can't look for the boats.

We launched out of Wareham, it was a fifteen minute ride to the fish

As I wrote above, one member of our crew was using squid. Last week Eric used a bucktail jig (about 1 1/2 ounces) tipped with squid. I used mostly a bucktail last week sometimes tipped with a curly tail grub or a piece of squid. Today, I used my 3/4 ounce homemade jig exclusively. I never tipped it with bait. Eric started with a piece of squid on his bucktail, but switched half way through. Jigging a Kastmaster XL or a Deadly Dick will get sea bass over the stern also.

The wind with the biggest waves in Buzzards Bay is a southwest. Make sure you check the nautical forecast.

Make sure you bring lures for blues and stripers because they can pop up anytime.

Good luck, and if their are any typos, I admit, I am not proofreading this right now. My baked sea bass is cooked and it looks delicious

Blackstone Gorge- A most Pleasant Surprise

The last week of March I went exploring one day. I decided to go to the Blackstone Gorge in Blackstone, MA just across the Woonsocket line on Route 122. When I went, my area had been snow free for a few days. However, when I pulled into the parking lot, there was a few inches of slush on the ground. I was unprepared for this, and I was wearing sneakers. I didn't go down the short trail, but I did vow to return.

On a whim, Laurie and I decided to go there yesterday. It could not have been a better idea. The weather was comfortable, the trail was dry and the scenery was gorgeous. Right below the parking lot is a dam with a waterfall going over it. Just upstream from the dam is a canoe launch. Just downstream is a trail that runs along the edge of the river for half a mile. The river runs through a small gorge. It narrows and there are cliffs along both sides. The description says the cliffs rise 100 feet. I don't know about that, but I'd say there are spots you can look straight down at the water forty or fifty feet below.

The place reminded me of Purgatory Chasm, except it has a river running through it. I was dam near shocked at how wild the place felt knowing downtown Woonsocket is a mile away. There were some nice seats on top of the cliffs where we could dangle our feet over. The walk is pretty short, but there are some steep pitches and plenty of ups and downs. Because the trail was so short, I'd hesitate to call it strenuous, but in sections it was steep. None the less, the term I'd use for trails that have steep pitches, and smooth rock to climb would be...fun.

Another positive unexpected side note was that the place was full of mountain laurel which was in bloom. With all the eight foot high bushes in full bloom, it felt a lot like a microcosm of Eden. I was amazed by the beauty of this place. If you live within driving distance of the Woonsocket/ Blackstone area this little pocket wilderness is worth the trip.

Blackstone Gorge parking area is at the end of County St, which is off of Route 122 in Blackstone

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Amazing Fishing in Buzzards Bay

    Today I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4 am to fish with my friend Eric Meyer and his son Zach
on Eric's boat boat. Our target was black sea bass in Buzzards Bay. Hopefully scup would be a nice bycatch, and of course any stripers or blues would also be welcome to come aboard the boat. We were in the water by 5:30 am. I was given information on where the fish should be and how to catch them. This info wasn't just helpful pointers. more like a tutorial with all the info we needed to put fish over the boat.  This info was absolutely invaluable. Thanks again!

I brought two rods. One was set up for bait, the other was set up for lures. I never ended up using the bait rod. For lures I used  a three quarter ounce bucktail jig, a 3/4 ounce jig with a 4 inch zoom fluke, and a Kastmaster XL. For the first half of the trip Zach used a bait rod with two hooks. When Eric saw my fish caught on bucktails, he started using them tipped with squid.

To make a long story short, we each caught a hundred fish. While Zach was using the bait he was catching scup after scup with a few sea bass thrown in. When he switched to a bucktail tipped with squid, the percentages flipped to mostly sea bass. However, by that time he had proudly earned the nickname of the "Scup King",

Eric caught almost all his fish on the bucktail. His bucktail was at least an ounce and a half. If you seperated all the big sea bass from the smaller ones we caught today, although we didn't count, I think Eric caught the most over three pounds.

As for me, I had my best luck on the bucktail. I was doing well on the jig/fluke but was going through flukes like crazy due to the pulling nature of the scup and sea bass. The same can also be said of my curly tail grubs I had on to give my lure some action. Scup were chomping the tails to bits.  Sometimes I would also put a small squid strip on any of the three lures I used. I probably caught half my fish with squid tipped hooks and half without. I fished the Kastmaster XL the least, but still caught about five fish on it.

I caught one sea robin. Surprisingly we did not see a any blues or stripers. Most all the scup we caught were over the 10 inch limit. We caught some real monsters at least fifteen inches. I'd say over half the sea bass were keepers. Tons of them were in the 13.5-14.5 inch range (legal to keep is 14 inches and you can keep 8). After the initial few minutes, Eric was only keeping fish over 16 inches. Wanting to go home with fish, I kept a few in the "just over 14 inch mark). I limited out and brought home more scup than I wish I did. Not knowing when I would get back out, I wanted a couple meals
I can honestly say that today was one of the most epic fishing days on my life, but here is the amazing

A typical sea bass for the day by size,
but one of the pretty blue ones

thing; it was just a typical day for Buzzards Bay

photo credits; Me for the pictures of Eric
Eric Meyer for all other photos

One of Zach's huge scup

One of Eric's bigger and prettier fish