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Now that I have your attention.

When I was growing up in northern WI about this time of the year(if my memory serves me) we use to go to the local rivers and streams and catch suckers by hand. You would find a culvert, ones where a bridge ran over it and then use flash lights to see if we could see them in the water. This was a nightly run as one never knew just when they would start "running".

Once they started the idea was to get down next to the water and with your bare hand reach into the cold water and find one then slowly, making believe you were just another fish get you hand up just behind the head a grab. It took a little practice, think of bears getting salmon, but once you had the hang of it you would get a few and retreat to the warm car to thaw out your and and dry off as somehow you always managed to get a little wet.

Being a "ruff" fish you were allowed to take them by hand. Towards the end of the "run" a few walleye would be in the same fish pool. Running your hand up one of those wasn't as much fun as they have a sharp dorsal fin.

So why am I thinking of this? Watching the eagle camera I noticed that they were having suckers as a regular meal. Suckers were fish and free but not something I crave but I wouldn't mind giving one a grab again to see if I still have it.

Smelt on the other hand, we use to go up to Lake Superior and it was also a hit and miss situation but much farther to go so a trip or two was about all you could muster. You used a net and waded in in hip boots..... almost lost one of my friends that way, he was smart enough to hold on to the net so we cold drag him out. Water was so cold he would have never made it otherwise. Anyway unless we were skunked we would bring our tub back and divide it up so we all got our share. I'd get in at sometime 3:00 in the morning and my Mom would get up and fry us all up smelt and some eggs and toast....... now that is a meal I miss.

OK that enough of that.

Ed

Kincheloe AFB, MI 1975-77. Halfway between the Mackinac bridge and Sault Ste. Marie. I got home many a time at 3AM and then spent till the sun came up cleaning them. We used to have smelt fries at the shop on base after work on Friday's.

Bar/tavern I would stop in for a burger and beer after hunting up around Waupon, WI, the owner would trap suckers and carp, in the streams during the winter and early spring when there flesh was nice and firm and pickle and smoke them, served them up at the bar on occasion, excellent.
Too many Smelt night catching stories to tell.

I had a good friend whose dad worked at K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base (it is now decommissioned). They owned a resort in my home town so they would spend part of the year there and then winter at Sawyer.

Back in the 50's we use to have jets flying over a lot, training missions and from what we heard our house was a mock target. They would come in from the south pretty low, we heard 500 feet but it looked lower then that. For a while they were allowed to go supersonic in our area but got so many complaints that they stopped it. Lots of other stories, don't know how many were true but it was fun to listen to them.

Ed

jsburger wrote:Kincheloe AFB, MI 1975-77. Halfway between the Mackinac bridge and Sault Ste. Marie. I got home many a time at 3AM and then spent till the sun came up cleaning them. We used to have smelt fries at the shop on base after work on Friday's.

@ Reible > I had a good friend whose dad worked at K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base (it is now decommissioned). They owned a resort in my home town so they would spend part of the year there and then winter at Sawyer.
Where did they summer, at the North Pole??? Must have been snow birds that would winter north?

So in the late 70s and early 80s used to a fly in Canadian fishing trip on some lakes on Islands on the Canadian North Shore, not the Apostles, if you take a line from Milwaukee, threw Green Bay north they are in line with that on that line on L Superiors north shore. So we fly in to one, and there is a cabin log book, to add comments to, I took my nay sayer/hater bro along and he is reading through it and a comment about a F16 doing verticals in sight of them, bro sez ya, how much was he drinking. So a day later or 2 there they were, flat and fast and then vertical, then the loop over, so mid week are outfitter out of Thunder Bay flies in to drop off gas and see if all is well, bro sez what is going on with the Tomcats, sez KI Sawyer/US and Canadian Air Force out of Thunder Bay, mutual training air space.

Back when I remember they were F-89 Scorpions and F-101 Voodoos. I had to ask as I'm not much of an airplane guy. I thought they might have been sabers but I guess not.

Both of my surviving brothers were air force, one a radar operator the other a radar repairman. The one has always built model airplanes, still does now in his eighty's.

I guess the base closed about 1995, they were a base for B52's at that point.

Ed