"Summer" Fun

Ali had some summer fun today. We were outside playing for most of the day. Sawyer tried the sprinkler but just cried. It was too cold for him. What a great outdoor day!

Post sprinkler refreshment...

Sand Friends

This is Ali's buddy from down the street. They love to hang out together.

More from work...

Thought I'd post a few more pictures of some of the field work that fisheries biologists sometimes do. Then I'll promise I'll leave well enough alone for a while and get back to 100% kids! Again, we're on Leesville Lake. This is a shot from the boat launch in the morning right after most of the 'steam' had burned off.
We're still looking for catfish, just like in the previous gill-netting pictures. Now we are running trap-nets. Zooming off to the first net...
This is a trap-net. Hard to describe, so I hoped a picture would help. A lead runs perpendicular out from shore, like a fence of netting material. It funnels fish to the wings, these are the parts stocking out each side in a triangle shape. The fish swim further into this mess and eventually get caught in what basically amounts to a series of large minnow-trap type contraptions...
This is a trap-net getting 'run', as we call it...checking it for fish. We set these traps on a Monday, usually, and then check them each subsequent day until we are done. They are left in the lake the whole time. This is our boat tethered up to a trap net getting ready to take fish out.
This isn't one of the catfish we were looking for, but we got a nice 15.5" black crappie in our nets today. For those who fish, you'll appreciate this. For those who don't, this is a fairly large crappie.

Puppy Play

Our across the street neighbor brought Puppy Nora over to have a play date with Nittany today. They were sooo cute. I think they will both sleep well tonight. They are matching colors and adorable!

The Wagner Repair Shop

Sawyer so wants to help his Daddy!

A wrench for each hand and his mouth

Ali was even trying to do some sweet mods to her bike.

Mom...here is the wreath I made

Sunset

Although night work can be rough when you're rolling into your driveway at 2, 3, or 4 AM, it does have its perks. How many people can say this scenery is part of their job?!

Two basses

This picture is from a few weeks ago. We were electrofishing, again night work, at Berlin Lake. For those from this area, this is the lake that Rout 224 goes over at the Portage Co. line east of Deerfield. In any case, what we have here are two black bass species: a largemouth bass on the left and a smallmouth bass on the right.

Gill-netting Leesville Lake

Most people, when they find out I'm a fisheries biologist, immediately ask, "so, what does a fisheries biologist do?" Well, we do a bunch of stuff and I occasionally post some of the stuff here. This past week we were gill-netting at night. Basically, picture a 6 foot high, few hundred feet long fence of mesh made of fishing line. This is gill-netting. We were looking for catfish, but below I'm holding up one of many saugeye (cross between a walleye and sauger) we sampled, as well as a 32" muskie. Just thought you might be interested...

"Reading"

Ali spotted Curt's current library book on the end table this morning and grabbed it. She asked me the title then started to read it. About 10 seconds later she says to me, "Mommy I don't have a clue what this says". Priceless.