Down Time

 

 

It's interesting how different one lab can be from the next. My first lab, Chase, would have had a hard time sitting still in a blind. He was a go-getter and more of an upland bird dog. He never wanted to wait for things to come to him but would bust his ass to go find birds if nothing was going on. Cutter is wired much different and is a true duck dog. He can sit still for hours waiting for birds and although he works hard when his number is called, he is also content on chilling out and watching the world go by.

 

Yesterday we did a lot of, "watching the world go by," as the ducks and geese on the river were a bit sparse. It was our first day out and I knew it was probably going to be a bit tough but I had to get him out anyway. I also wanted to get some practice with a new addition to our repertoire; the Mojo Floater.

 

A big key to a successful decoy spread is movement. I usually set my decoys up in some current so that they have a chance to swing back and forth a bit. However, after the local ducks get shot at a couple times, even that isn't enough so I'm going to experiment with the Mojo. I bought the floater with a remote kit so I can flip it on and off. The idea is to give ducks the impression that a sitting duck on the water and is stretching out his wings and then sitting back down. As ducks fly over, they look for that kind of movement and if they don't see it, they move on to a more realistic and safe scenario.

 

Does it work? I really can't tell yet with such a small sample size. Yesterday was windy as heck and only a few birds were moving. I did get a flock of geese to circle over with only a few geese decoys out amongst the duck decoys but the few ducks I did have in sight, didn't want much to do with it. I need to do more research, as we used to say in grad school. Trust me, there will be more research.

 

As for the other activity on the Mo, the wind settled down for a few minutes at around 4:20, which aloud for just enough time to see a pretty significant midge hatch going on. You want to talk movement? There were so many fish eating on top in the middle of my decoys I really didn't have to create any kind of artificial movement. It made me think that I should have brought a rod but then the wind picked back up and I was content with chilling out with Cutter, watching the world go by.

 

Keep 'em where they live...