Moms not fishing

Fishing opener was yesterday, Mothers Day today.  This is a classic Minnesota culture clash.  I went looking for the fishing.

It was pretty dang chilly, I had to revive most of the early winter/late fall costume including tights and jacket but with the sun out it ended up being a pretty nice day for a ride.  North into the cold wind was enough to give me a headache but that is only half the ride, south on the way home ended up being a little towards the warm side of comfortable, but plenty nice indeed.

I rode through the northern lakes from north to south, as is the usual procedure.

Quite a bit to my surprise this was the only actual fishing guy I saw.  He was casting an unbaited big plug, kind of a muskie looking plug but given that there is no history of muskie in this lake I suppose he was thinking bigger northern.

Most likely he was enjoying an afternoon out in the sun and some casting practice.  For sure he wasn't going to catch anything.

Down at Vadnais I reconsidered my recent success at hoodwinking the mallards and decided to find out if I could pull the same trick on the merganser.  I hid behind this tree.

The black dots swimming away that you may be able to spot with an enlargement are the merganser family.

Wildlife he not as stupid as mallard.  He very shy.  Ducky swim away.

According to Wikipedia, the preferred habitat for breeding for hooded mergansers is in swamps and wooded ponds of the northern half of the United States and southern Canada. They prefer to nest in tree cavities near water.

So swamps and wooded pond and tree cavities near water seems unlikely in an intensely urban park like Como.  There are plenty of swamps and wooded ponds and tree cavities near water at Lake Vadnais.

At the bottom of the lake I discovered probably a significant contributing factor for why there was no fishing on the lake.  The southern area of the lake is where most fishing occurred in years past.  The access road to the new southern parking area is still not officially opened.

The gate on the path over to the right of this gate IS OPEN.  And it is easily within the realm of possibility to ride around that gate on the flattish area seen to the left of the gate on this photo.  Automobile traffic is still not happening, lots of folks on bicycles are visiting the new path.

Lots of exciting computer stuff going on here as well.  A five or six year old eMachine stopped recognizing important hardware and has been replaced (don't ask, way more hassle than necessary, but done now) with a new built in wireless, 6g of ram, 500g hard drive, AMD processor, way more machine than we need but pretty cheap all things considered upstairs computer.  That's the one for which TOPWLH is the primary user.  I probably have a full day tomorrow doing the tech support tweaks to get her back to her happy zone.