Birdshot and backlashes

They are peeking out from under the green bushes like clumps of turquoise beads. Blueberries. Ripe blueberries. The woods are loaded with them. Not all over the woods, but in those parts of the woods where berry bushes grow thick. Rocky ridges which often have berry plants but in most years are dry and bear meager crops are loaded this year. We have had sufficient rain that even the scrubbiest little blueberry shrubs on the granite ledges are loaded.A week ago about half of them were ripe. Now just about all of them are ripe. In some places a picker can rake them off the branches by the handful. And just in time, too. We had the last of our 2004 blueberries in a pancake breakfast a week ago. Time to gather the new crop. Also, wild strawberries are finishing up. They were at their peak about two weeks ago. The tame ones are ripe now although it is getting toward the end of that harvest, too. The trouble with wild strawberries is their size. You’ve got to pick forever to get a pint or so. Thus we’ve made a habit of heading down to the commercial berry farm at Gilbert where the berries are huge, picking is great and the price is reasonable. The option is to pick your own from their plants or have them pick ’em for you and simply purchase them. They are great berries and make excellent jam, sauce for strawberry shortcake, and strawberry pies.In the meantime, fisherfolk are out gathering the ingredients for a fish fry or two. The warm weather didn’t do anything accept move the fish to their summer haunts on the reefs, on the deep water side of the weedbeds and on rocky dropoffs. Very early morning is an excellent time to crack bass on the surface. With dawn just before five a.m., this means really early. By 9 a.m., surface action is pretty much done although lots of bass can be socked underwater around the boulders and ledges from 12 to 15 feet down.Bass are settling into their summer pattern of nosing out crawfish. The warm water causes the craws to start moulting- shucking out of their old hard shell and growing another. When they have just shed their hard outer coat, they are in the rubbery “soft” phase and much in demand by bass. They will also hit jigs with plastic bodies, crawfish copies or maybe with a piece of nightcrawler covering the point of the hook. Bass are quite partial to leeches right now, too, tipped on a jig or fished with slip bobbers on a very small hook.Walleyes are on a leech and crawler diet, too. A couple of methods working right now are Lindy rigs using tiny hooks on floating jig heads which keep the leech or crawler from getting embedded in bottom structure. On windy days when waves are breaking over the reefs or crashing onto rocky shores, walleyes are prowling the edge, picking up whatever gets shaken loose from the rocks.There is a heck of a baitfish hatch this summer with minnows following their food source to the weeds and rock ledges. Some of the minnows are post-spawn shiners but a lot of them are also perch, bass and walleye fry. It isn’t nice to say, but all those game fish turn into cannibals and do not hesitate to scarf down their own offspring if the opportunity arises. It is not much fun being a baby bass, walleye or northern pike. Home is not a very safe place. Among fish, if your mother calls you for dinner, you had best head the other way. Quick.Panfish are feeding all day long, dawn to dark. It is altogether fitting that kids are on vacation at the same time bluegills and rockbass are active. There is not much more fun than getting kids into a school of panfish via bobbers and worms. This is summer outdoor fun time and it won’t be around for more than a half dozen more weeks. Time to get going.