End of the year Review

I didn't let the cold and snow keep me inside
last winter

I love doing my end of the year posts. I enjoy looking back at the memories I made in the last three
hundred and sixty or so days. I found a website that will print 4x6 photos for nine cents each. I just finished putting together an album of my favorite photos of the year. This will be my first "year album" since I went digital in 2009. I am pretty excited to have made an album of my favorite pictures of the year. I spent the better part of last night going through pictures in my 2015 folder. I consider it time well spent.

As I have previously stated, every year takes on its own theme. It happens organically. The year I caught my first legal sized striper, it was love at first sight. I pretty much lived at the Cape Cod Canal and Narragansett all summer. Another year my son and I went to New Hampshire almost every single summer weekend. One year I spent 250 plus days fishing.

Many of you would guess that my theme this year based on my posts would be"birding" but the truth is, it was really daytrips. Of course, many of those daytrips were spent with binoculars around my neck. However, many days were spent doing an absolute variety of things.

This spring, one of our managers left the company. Because of this, I had less free time ( but a larger check because of overtime). Because I worked six days a week a lot, I took advantage of every single day off from work I had. Whether I had one or two days off a week,  I did adventures every single day off from April until December 11. The only exception was Friday July 31. It was almost 100 degrees that day. I fished close to home in the morning until about noon, then went to an air conditioned movie .Friday December 18, I had to stop putting off Christmas shopping, so I bought presents and finally put up a Christmas tree, ending my streak of day off from work fun.

View from Lonesome Lake Hut

My friend Dave, who is retired, fishes almost every single day of the year. When it is really cold, he skis. Without exaggeration, he is outside 350 days a year. The only time he isn't fishing or skiing are blizzards and when he has family obligations. Because I have to work, I certainly can not match him day to day. I'm out most every day, but I don't count local fishing trips or short hikes after work as day trips.

I ended the year taking a total of 67 day trips. Yes, I keep track. I write down my experiences so I do not forget them. By far that is the most I have ever taken in a year. I broke them into categories. If you add up all the categories it adds up to more than 67. That is because some days I did more than one thing. An example would be on May 1 I went birding up at  Plum Island all morning, on my way home I fished at Wachusett Reservoir for four hours. So that day I did two different things.

Birding                              21
      Plum Island                  6

I love albies

      Charlestown Mudflat     3

Fishing                               18
         Eric's boat                  2
Concerts/ Plays                   4
New Hampshire                   4
Prudence Island (snorkeling) 2
Outdoor Shows                    2
Exploration Hikes                6
Old Sturbridge Village          2

All others below once

Wareham Baseball        
Museum of Fine Art
Outer Cape overnight
        including a whale watch, P Town
          and bike ride in the dunes
Rockport/ Gloucester Exploration

Shorebirds at Plum

So, needless to say, I did a lot of different things this year. The funnest thing I did this year was the Outer Cape Trip. We did something fun every waking minute that weekend. The craziest thing I did was go snowshoeing in March up in New Hampshire. The temperature was about ten degrees. The night time low was -4, that does not even include the wind chill of the forty mph winds. And I, yes I, thought sleeping in my car would be a good idea. Lets just say it wasn't.

I wish I would have gotten more consecutive days off from work during the summer. I would have gone to New Hampshire more often. That is also the reason I got to Plum Island so many times. Only having one day off during the week, I considered Plum to be my best option many times.

Many of the fishing trips were during the fall chasing albies. I caught them on a couple of occasions and had a great September fishing. Other memorable fishing trips include a rainy day down the Cape where I caught about 20 trout. This year I caught my first American Shad in ten years on two enjoyable fishing trips to the Merrimack River. I caught eleven golden trout the first Saturday in May. I think they are probably the prettiest fish in New England.

The craziest fishing has to be when I went with Eric on his boat in Buzzards Bay in June. Both times we caught hundreds of black sea bass. We also caught many giant scup. The action was non stop for the entire five hours we fished. In the mix of sea bass were at least a hundred keepers. We started throwing back fish under seventeen inches.

I got to do four overnight trips to New Hampshire (plus a daytrip to hike Monadnock)
Places that I hiked included
Mt. Tripyramid (two 4000 footers)
Welch Dickey Loop

Jennings Peak, Sandwich Range, NH

Tunnel Brook Ponds
Boulder Loop
Middle Sugarloaf (twice)
East Pond
Jennings Peak
Bridal Veil Falls (snowshoeing)
Lonesome Lake (snowshoeing)
Monadnock







Animal sightings

Spending so much time birding, I saw a lot of  species. I broke my previous mark set in 2010. I am not including species from that year that I saw out west.

Here are how my numbers compare

                                                 2015               2010

Birds                                         143                  127
Mamamals                                   16                    13
Reptiles/Amphibians                      9                      9
Fish                                              25                  14
Total                                           192                  163

Lifebirds                                      16                      13

So, this year, I saw way more species. Honestly, seeing 143 species of birds is a very low number. The leader in Rhode Island has seen 302 species in his state alone. The average expert in MA seems to be between 240-260. So I have a long way to go. This was the first year I seriously birded since 2010, so it is good that I improved on those numbers. Seeing 16 lifebirds is exciting for me. Lifebirds get harder by the year, because it is only a lifebird once. The rarest bird I saw was a Northern Wheatear, a bird that winters in Africa.

I spent much more time this year trying to learn. When I saw a bird I tried to identify field marks.

Red Tailed Hawk

That way next time I see it I won't have to consult my book. If I didn't get a positive ID I didn't count it. Even if someone told me what I just saw. I was mildly successful at learning new things. I hope to be a better birder next year because of it.

The two species that I put a lot of time in for that I did not get are long tailed duck and golden crowned kinglet. I just missed them every time.

I did not see any moose or black bears this year in my limited time in New Hampshire. So to beat my 2010 numbers is surprising. My favorite memories of mammals were two coyotes that I saw. One was at Plum Island, the other on a golf course in Barrington.

I only counted fish I caught in my list (more on that below). I could have counted some baitfish, but chose not to. I would count seeing a salmon swim upstream, but did not take the run to the Chu to see it.  


Fishing

I clearly could not have fished as much as normal if I spent time doing other daytrips. That is obvious. Normally I would do a totally separate post for a breakdown. I didn't fish enough to make that worthwhile and to be honest, I slacked on my record keeping. However, the days I got onto the water were great. On my "all day fishing trips" I truly had some great days. I had at least one day for each of these species that was non stop- bluefish, albies(yes, albies!), trout (including a dozen tigers), black sea bass and scup, and golden trout, and hickory shad.

I also had many memorable days fishing for American shad, carp, and among other things sea robins.

I caught a total of 25 species. I considered trying to catch thirty species again, but my heart wasn't into it. I could not walk away from albies and blues in Narragansett to fish for golden shiners or white catfish.

I feel like I had another great year. I know a lot of crazy stuff happened in the world this year, but for me personally, I had a lot of fun and made a lot of memories. I hope 2016 works out just as well for me and to all of you. I say all the time that we only have one life. We do not get a do over. It is too short. I firmly believe that we owe it to ourselves to enjoy as much of it as we can. 

Happy New Year