Big tide, backwards wind, & a fair day on the water...

Beggars can't be choosers, and I've been begging mother nature to throw me a weekend without wind.  The forecast was supposed to be northerly 5-10 turning westerly 5-10 by morning and a bit of flood tide made for a potentially good day.  Things went well but not quite as planned.

The temperature was a wet 45 degrees at 5:15 a.m. this morning and the wind, non-existent.  I was quite pleased with the motor which had been suffering from a long illness of algae in the carburetors.  A thorough cleaning and a new carb kit seemed to be the cure as I gradually opened up the Mercury en route to our gunning hole.

Then the wind picked up slightly from the southeast which didn't hamper our early gunning, but would put us into a more tedious position later as the tide would turn.  Matt dropped an early old squaw as I connected on two early eiders.  My father dropped a couple eiders as well before the tide turned ebb.

Several things turned a promising hunt into an average run.  First, the wind was not ideal and the high tide stood us alone with no structure to funnel the ducks into range.  In addition, high tide in mid-morning offers no feeding opportunities for sea ducks.

Nevertheless, we scored seven sea ducks and quit around ten o'clock.  A highlight of the morning was a banded drake eider tagged in Nova Scotia in 2007 by my father.  For someone who hasn't been chasing sea ducks nearly as much as I'd like, I'll take this day as a success and run with it.

The Duckforce has been covered for the upcoming storm scheduled to drop several inches of snow early this week and I'm hoping for some black duck action in that storm.

Until next time,

DEDH