Jon’s Outdoors Fishing & Hunting News

August Newsletter

Hey Everyone,

How is your summer going? It has been a good summer here at the Ball family house. As most of you know, I have a grandson that just turned 4 years old and he is very good at it. He sure put a hurt on the shad this year. It is so fun taking kids fishing however I don’t think this kid has a chance. Already he wants to shoot an antelope. He just loves getting in the boat but it is fun to watch him get his camo on and sneak around the house with his little gun and shoot the deer and antelope off the wall. Those animals won’t have a chance here in a few years.
I sure like this time of the year. Football is starting up, getting out and Scouting for that big animal to hunt in the fall and the rivers are full of fish. This is when a guy has to get his priorities in order. Which reminds me of a joke.

A Denver Broncos’ fan was enjoying himself at the game in a packed Mile High Stadium, until he noticed an empty seat down in front. He went down and asked the guy next to it if he knew whose seat it was.
The guy said, “Yes, that’s my wife’s seat. We have never missed a game since the Craig Morton days, but now my wife is dead.”
The fan offered his sympathy and said it was really too bad that he couldn’t find some relative to give the ticket to and enjoy the game together.
“Oh no.” the guy said. “They’re all at the funeral.”
Okay, that was a groaner but it does remind us to keep things in order. ( I am in trouble for this one). We better talk some hunting and fishing.
Wyoming Hunting
Stacy and I just got back the other day from our place in Wyoming. We went over there to do some work on the bunkhouse and to touch base with the landowners to see how the animals are doing. Everything went pretty good. Our bunkhouse is only a couple years old and when we bought it the flooring hadn’t been put down yet so that is what we went and did. We also had some trouble with the electrical breakers when all the grills were put to use in the kitchen. We won’t have that problem anymore. But, more importantly we saw a lot of good animals. Wyoming got a lot of rain this year and everything was green. There was grass waist high and that sure made for some good horn growth. We saw so many more antelope then last year with many bucks with cutters above the ears. The whitetails were incredible. Lots of real nice bucks were all over. Another great thing we saw was all the fawns. There were so many twins and triplets you couldn’t believe it. There will be good animals for a lot of years. I had one rancher tell me that the last two years were the lowest numbers they seen for years and now the cycle will go back up for a good number of years. I thought if the last couple years were low numbers I can’t wait to see what good numbers will be. We saw animals all over the last couple years so this will be exciting.

I picked up another good lease and had a meeting with another rancher for another good lease. I will know more about that one this September. We had a shooter mule deer come right down to the bunkhouse one night. It had a very tall rack. We didn’t see a lot of big mule deer because the big bucks we still up in the high country. One of my ranchers told me that there is so much green grass up there that the big bucks will probably not come down until the end of August to the first part of September when the grass dies out. I was told an interesting thing by a biologist. He said that when everything is healthy for a mule deer buck, they get all the water they need and the minerals are there for them that you will seldom see a spike or a three-point buck. That when everything is right the first year will be a two point and the second a small four-point and then grow each year from there. I believe this now because I saw so many young bucks with very deep 2-points on them. We never seen this the last couple years but everywhere you went there was a two-point with 8 inch and better forks. The horn growth on everything was good enough for Stacy and I to buy a couple whitetail deer licenses.
We still have room for about 6 or so antelope hunters for this year. We have lots of leftover licenses available. My deer hunts always book up so I don’t have room for anymore this year but I am booking for next year now. I didn’t do it this year because I do not want to over hunt my leases, but I am going to book 2-3 archery deer hunts for next year. Then the rifle deer/antelope combo hunts will be the first 10 days of October. Then I will do a few combo whitetail/antelope combo hunts the first week of November. If you are interested in booking an antelope hunt for this year or any hunting for next year please give us a call. I will be leaving for Wyoming around the 13th of September. My wife, Stacy will be here but here is my bunkhouse phone number in case you need to get a hold of me over there. It is 307-758-4626.
Salmon Fishing
I will be around for some fall salmon fishing. Guys this is usually always a very good run of fish. I will start this the last of August and will fish through the second week of September. I expect it to be pretty good this year due to all the water we got. The biggest thing for catching these fall salmon is the water temperature. You can have a million salmon going under the boat but if the water is too warm those fish will not bite. If you have a cooler water temperature then you can get by with less of a fish run because they will be biters. The way we fish these fall salmon is easy for everyone. If you know me then you know I like easy for my customers. We sit on anchor on some strategic spots that we know salmon are going to come through. Depending on the type of water we are fishing we will use either a wobbler or a wrapped Qwik-Fish. We use the wobblers in the slower water like the mouth of the Sandy River and Quik-Fish up around the Bonneville Dam area. The Columbia River offers a lot of different type of water, which makes for some different style of fishing. We need at least 4 people for a full boat but I can fish up to 6 people. A full day is around 8 hours and then I will be doing some half-day trips after the full day. Give us a call if you are interested in doing any salmon fishing with us. It will fill up so you do not want to wait to the last minute.
I am also still fishing right now up around the Bonneville area for trophy sturgeon and steelhead. The sanctuary opened up August 1st so there is some good trophy sturgeon fishing going on. These fish have not been messed with for 3 months so a nice shad dropped down in front of their noses will surely get a fight going. Like I said earlier, we just got back from Wyoming so I haven’t been out fishing for a couple weeks but I hear that the steelhead are doing very well. These will be the “B” run which are the bigger steelhead making their way to the Snake River. These are fun combo trips.
This is for you local guys. August 9th we are having Boyd Iverson come to our club and talk to us about blacktail deer hunting. This guy is great. He has a few books out on trophy blacktail deer tactics and the proof is on his wall. You don’t want to miss this. We will have a dinner for you and Boyd Iverson talking about hunting can it get better then that? Give me a call if you want some info. I will give you directions of where it is at. You can also go to the web site www.crosstrackers.com for more info.
Anyway, thanks again for your business and I hope to fish and/or hunt with you soon. Be safe and remember to take a kid in the outdoors with you your next time out.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Fishing News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Oregon Sturgeon and Salmon Fishing in the Columbia River Gorge

August Newsletter