I had out of state relatives last weekend. The plan was to chase white bass and walleye up one of the rivers, but the day dawned windy, cold, and a high chance of rain. Not a good day for a long rough boat ride with young kids.
A quick change of plans. A few miles from the house is a old mill house on the War Eagle river. We hiked around that area for a couple of hours.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10125/DSC_2030.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1646966362)
Next stop was the visitor center at Hobbs State Park just a few more miles down the road. Hobbs State Park was originally a sawmill and at one time the largest producer of railroad ties in the US. Thanks to a lot of people the state acquired the 12,000 acre property and now I think it is a great resource that we can all enjoy.
Ranger Chris conducted a class so we could learn all about frogs, toads, and salamanders. After class we went to the ponds to catch a few frogs for further study.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10125/DSC_2079.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1646966440)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10125/DSC_2088.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1646966441)
No cooperation from the frogs but the kids still had a ball.
Almost forgot, we also worked in a class that taught us about the different blue birds that call Arkansas home.
I should add that the total cost of our day outing was fuel for the van and lunch at the mill. :) Kids went home very tired and happy.
Looks and sounds like a great day the kids and parents will remember a long time.
When my kids were little I lived near Lake Worth near Albany Ga on the Flint River and I'd take them fishing and if the fish weren't biting we'd ride up into the cattails and catch green frogs or dragonflies or such off them or ride around and look for bird nests in the hypericum bushes growing out of the stumps in the lakes or go up to a sandbar and look for mussel shells or such. I suspect they have much better memories of that than the days when the fish were biting.
Lessons??
I learned all that stuff right by the brook. :D
Kids don't get to enjoy throwing a bottle in the brook than throwing rocks at it to break it. :o :(
Sounds like a nice time Larry!
Man, if you ever want to increase your fuel costs, come on up, I will all but guarantee you can catch some frogs in the pond or creek here. We have the tiny, little peepers in the pond (they just started up again last week) but the thousands and they are so small but so loud! We also have the neat green speckled kind that are kind of big. I love to see them but they are also too easy to run over with the mower.
I have a low spot under a power line in my pasture near the gate to my neighbors property. A couple weeks ago I got some spruce and walnut logs from my neighbor the tree service had cut. While I was out there with my blade on my tractor I went ahead and scraped out the center of the low spot maybe a foot deeper in hopes to create a frog pond for my 3 y/o gd and 5 y/o gs to play in when they come visit.
My wife was a local HS teacher and when the kids in school used to say they were bored she'd tell them she did not see how kids in the country could ever be bored. There was always a tree to climb, a wild grapevine to swing on, rocks to turn over in the creeks to look for crayfish and such.
The ol' swinging grapevine!
I was a kid that spent a lot of time in the woods and around creeks. We had our usual spots where we'd hang out and play around and one of them was near my buddies house in the wood where there was a dryish creek that was usually about 3 feet lower than the surrounding ground, like it'd carved out its channel to run in. The creek had water, but I don't recall ever seeing it when it had more than some puddles connected by small streams. Anyway, grapevines like crazy and we found one that we could swing on over the creek, it felt, back then, like it was probably 10 feet across, from high side to high side. So swing we did, many times back and forth until the time that the vine either let loose or I slipped off it and did a pretty nice belly flop into one of the puddles in the creek. I think I was a good 15 minute walk or so, soaking wet, back to the house.
Knowing how to play in a creek or catch fogs in a frog pond is an art, a dying art!
Good for you for showing the kids how!
Next day I took the kids down to the crick (we don't have brooks or creeks here :D) and they found tadpoles. They also got their second pair of shoes wet along with muddy pants. Mom was not amused. :D :D :D
The crick is in my back.
We have a "Creek" in our suburban back yard. But you might want more than a tadpole net to fish there. Looking in there you don't see much happening, but throw in some bacon or chicken scraps and 3-4 foot long eels appear from wherever they hide. Water is only 6" deep, less in places so you hear them splashing up the shallows.
NZ freshwater eel. - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AemLVOLYqbc)
Not sure about your fish species, but a lot of the smaller ones here are nocturnal. So some torches at night shows up a lot more activity.
Ian,
I think it was Bear Grylls on a survival show, and maybe others, who showed how to catch eels like you show there using a wool sock and a piece of rancid meat or such. Evidently the eels smelled the meat and came out and when they bit the sock they got their teeth hung in it and they snatched them out with a string or vine they had tied to the sock.
(I have heard there are old FF Noggies living in NY who do not need to even use rancid meat because their socks smell bad enough already. Then again, maybe they just curl up and float to the surface when he puts them in the deep pools.)