All the fishing reports said today (Friday) was a one fish day. But we never let that stop us before and we didn't today. I don't know if it has ever been done before but we got 4 guys who are all members of the Fishing Stage and we took a 5th member who is staying in South-Texas for the winter on his first beach fishing trip. Now I can't say we really killed it, but we beat the odds by a bunch. We had Brownsville Tony, PadreBino, Eddie Rodriguez and his brother Hector and new guy Andy Nudelman out on the sands of South Padre Island for a beautiful, calm and nearly warm day. PadreBino took lots of pictures so you can bug him for them, I just took this one. Anyway, we had a good time and nobody drowned, and I think we probably got Andy hooked on beach fishing.

An Answered Prayer, or Coincidence?

On last Saturday, December 18th last, I drove my wife to the supermarket, HEB in Round Rock to pick up some things. I remained in the car, parked in a handicapped parking space and about thirty yard or so, from the front entrance. As usual I am a people watcher. One thing that immediately caught my attention was the demanding work done by a teenage boy and girl who were hustling to collect and return shopping carts to the store from where they had left in the parking lot where the temperature was as low as 40 degrees.

On each trip, both kids hauled 10 to 12 shopping carts that belonged to the supermarket back to their proper location in the store. I began to think about things that would make their jobs a little easier. What I immediately realized was shoppers were parking all around the parking lot where these shopping carts were. So, if each arriving shopper would simply pick up one cart and take it in with them, it would lighten the load for the kids by half of their labor. It would not eliminate it but would reduce the total load!

I do not know what prompted me to do this, but I said a short prayer. I prayed that folks would be more considerate and would simply take a cart nearby where they parked and push it in to the supermarket. They were going to use one in any case, so why not take one from the parking lot?

Well, my vehicle is parked in a handicapped parking slot right near the front door of the market. Someone had also left a shopping cart in the walkway right in front of my vehicle. After I had finished my prayer, a shopper, a man I would assume to be between 40 and 50 years old, ordinarily dressed in Levi’s and a shirt and cap came walking right by my car, passed the shopping cart and was about one-third the way across the street to the market. There he stopped, turned and came back and picked up the shopping cart! I was absolutely amazed to observe this happening. Right there, in front of my eyes was the reason for my prayer answered. Could it have been an honest to goodness answer to prayer? Or was it coincidence? It could have been either. I was shocked, and personally believe that it was an answer to prayer, just to show me God is and will always be in control! Just Sayin…RJS

Ten days of camping, hiking, exploring and fishing in Michigan's Upper Peninsula between Munising and Grand Marais. The fishing objective was to try several brand new water bodies that I usually pass by in favor of going to places where I already know what to expect. The targets were mostly small inland lakes, without any development other than a few hunting cabins, that have a connection to Lake Superior in some way. In general, I found a few "gems", but others were pretty lackluster in terms of fish size and population. The fish in these lakes tend to grow very slowly, and are often the victims of "Winterkill" when the ice freezes right to the bottom, leaving only a few random deep areas for the fish to attempt survival. Had to turn back on a few access roads now and then because the truck was too wide to navigate what had become overgrown logging roads and fire break trails from days gone by! I am working on fabricating an overhead kayak yoke for the ATV so that problem should go away by my next visit! Just need to keep the center of gravity "low" to avoid rolling over!

Here is a sampling of snaphots taken during the outings via kayak, some stream wading and a few general scenery photos along the way. Also caught some decent LM and SM bass, but since the photo limit per posting is ten I decided to edit those out in favor of what follows....