The wonderful weather of April continues…with a very recent iceout on area lakes, it would have been nice to spend today visiting one.  But instead it’s cold, rainy, and well, ducky.

The neighborhood ducks came by to visit my plastic decoys:

Finally, some genius has come up with a bacon-scented perfume. Read all about it:

Time article on bacon-scented perfume

I wrap my appetizers in bacon; why not wrap my loving wife in that scintillating scent?

Unfortunately, because of the aforementioned story, I also discovered the bacon gun, the bacon bikini, and the bacon apple pie.  God bless America! I have now lost the better part of an evening to my obsession with bacon.  I may have to visit a facility to deal with my bacon addiction soon.  I hope they have a breakfast bar.

I found this video on Fox News.  Apparently, American Idol judge and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has inspired feathery hairstyles for women that are sending beauticians to the fly shop for hackle.  Maybe next pheasant season I should weave some downed birds into my hair and wear my prey in a celebration of the hunt.  I could be a trendsetter.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Where I would like to be in a couple of weeks (actually, I’d like to be there right now, but I’m being realistic since the doors are still probably frozen shut on the place I store my boat).

Muskie opener in Minnesota is still a couple of months away. Sigh.  At least in North Dakota I can be hunting pike after ice-out and shake off the cobwebs and make sure the gear all works.

The pictured setup is my newly put-together low-budget light muskie / northern pike setup.   $45 Ambassadeur 6600 BCX (on clearance at Walmart), Shimano Beastmaster rod that I picked up from a friend for a song, and $1.99 Cabelas muskie bucktail (I bought a half dozen of those that day for that price!).  If the reel lasts, it will be well worth it, but it is kind of sad that there is now a classic Ambassadeur round reel that’s made in China and not Sweden.  I guess that’s the way of the world.

Wholesale Sports is one of my favorite stores in Fargo because it’s not the over-inflated ego of our local sporting goods titan’s statues of U.S. Presidents or ferris wheels inside the building, and it’s not the cheap tackle of Walmart.

From this weekend’s pass through the aisles, my haul looks something like this:

2 Plano Pro Latch 3650 tackle boxes, $2.66 on sale and part of a buy one get one free special, reg. $4.59 apiece,
1 Bianchi Accumold holster for 1911, $19.99, on sale from $29.99,
and 2 20 ct. bags of root beer 4″ Yamamoto grubs, on sale for $4.00 each from $6.00.

Let’s see, do the math and I paid roughly 31 dollars for 51 dollars worth of stuff. Not bad for a 20 minute pass through the store.

Tipped off by Buster Wants to Fish, I link to the following video which you must watch if you own a retriever, or even if  you don’t:

So Utah has become the first state to have a state firearm, in addition to a state flower, state bird, etc.  It’s actually surprising to me that it hasn’t happened before.  Utah’s choice, the Browning 1911 design is very appropriate considering its role in the freedom of our country.

The full CNN article can be found here.

There is a fair amount of chatter from liberal anti-gun pundits whining about it.  I hope the idea takes hold.  I would like to see the Winchester 1895 in .405 become the North Dakota state firearm in honor of Teddy Roosevelt.

Every once in a while while I’m putting in or taking out at the lake, someone asks me about the splashguards on the back of my Lund Explorer. I always take the time to tell them I got mine from Whitecap Manufacturing. I have six seasons on mine now, and I can’t say I’ve ever been disappointed. They fit perfectly, were easy to install, and give me another surface to stick decals on!  They were also significantly cheaper than their more heavily-promoted competition. Since my boat is not as deep as, say, a Lund Tyee, I think they also give the kids a little bit of a feeling of security and allow them to feel “enclosed.” I love ‘em because I can backtroll in some vicious chop and they keep my bilge pump from working overtime. I may be a little bit crazy, but I’m also considering them for my 14′ Sea Nymph with its 16″ transom.  I just haven’t finalized what motor/trolling motor combo will end up on that boat yet.

If you like to backtroll and you’re used to taking a bath, do something nice for yourself this season and install some Whitecaps.

Like the looks of the boat?  Check out my last post on the Lund Explorer series.

I’ll admit right up front that this first post–in what will be a series of profiles of fishing boats–is biased. I own a 2004 Lund 1800 Explorer and it fits my multispecies fishing needs perfectly.

For 2011, Lund has updated the Explorer series. From what I can tell in comparing the features to my boat, the two changes that stand out are a center rod locker up the middle and a baitwell insert in the front livewell. I’m sure there are some other minor changes (such as changing the name to 1825 Explorer), but the white boat in the following video with dual consoles could be easily mistaken for mine.

What I love about the Explorer series is wide open layouts and windshield options. They are also not an extremely high-sided boat, as with the Fisherman and Tyee series, so they do not get pushed around as much in the wind. For a multispecies fisherman, they are ideal because they have plenty of room to work from the bow, stern, or in between, and they have lots of mounting options for accessories with the Sport-Trak rail system. My only criticism of my 2004 is that the driver’s console could use a little bit more room for mounting multiple displays (such as a full size fishfinder + a full size GPS/chartplotter (I like to be able to see my screens from the back of the boat, since I run a Yamaha T8 kicker with tiller steering).

I had the fortune of seeing one of the first 20′ Explorers when they came out (I was having a custom cover built for my boat when a prototype came in to the tarp company for measurement). For anyone who fishes big water or needs a huge amount of space in the boat, they are one of the roomiest, nicest laid-out boats I have been around. For most purposes, I prefer my 18′ rigged with a 150, and chose it over a 17 footer because the extra foot lies precisely in between the first and second row of seats. I consider my Explorer to be a practical man’s Pro-V. Rigged with some splashguards and a kicker motor I’m sure a lot of walleye tournament fisherman could use it every bit as effectively as boats that cost half again to twice as much.

At any rate, check out the Lund video below, and if you would like to see how my boat has been rigged, there are some pictures on one of my other posts.