Finally something to post about.

The universe has conspired against me lately, seemingly finding endless obstacles in my personal life to sidetrack me from doing anything outdoorsy.

The only thing I've done since my last post is show Clif from Lunker hunt my local go-to pond.  As you can see in the comments of that post, the only thing I accomplished that night was falling on my ass and missing a few fish.  Didn't think it warranted a post with my version of events.

(Although, I can speak to the effectiveness of Owl Jones' flies that Clif was using.  After Clif pulled in about a half dozen fish and I had no bites, I borrowed the other one he had and started getting hits.  You should check out Owl's site and have him make you some.  They caught fish when nothing else did.)

After fishing with Clif, a mixture of personal health, the weather and my job kept me from doing anything else until yesterday when I went out to the shooting range with my buddy Jason.  I brought along a generic version of a Flip Camera that I won recently at work, hoping to get some bitchin' video of milk jugs exploding and such.  Sadly, the camera personifies why the word "generic" has negative connotations.  Nothing on it worked.

So, instead of bitchin' footage of explosions, I'm left with a blurry image of explosion aftermath.

The middle one got it good. 12 gauge slug from about 15 yards away.

I'm going to try to work in some more shooting posts as we go along.  This is the first time I'd been shooting since last fall I believe so I haven't had alot to post about really.   Hopefully I can get some fun footage and info up soon.

Also, the RNG picked me to review some Sufix fishing line in the recent "Loser's only" OBN review opportunity so as soon as I receive it I'll post some impressions and I'm going to try something I haven't really seen done before as far as a fishing product review goes so be on the lookout.

Oh by the way, a few of you noticed I started following you on Twitter.  It's my personal account, nothing strictly related to the blog or anything.  I usually just use it to keep tabs on sports news and my favorite poker players, figured I should start following some of my favorite blog buddies.  (I was feeling left out after Clif and Mike from Troutrageous! posted about it this week.)  Feel free to follow me if you want (@themarkvivian), just don't expect alot of blog related stuff up there (or even many tweets at all).  At least not right away.  I have a hard enough time posting here and on Facebook more than once a month as it is.  :)

Here's to the sun staying out for awhile, hope you all are getting more time outdoors than I have been lately.

Charter Oak North 5/1/11

Made it out to chase after some bass today, inspired by so many other bloggers who have found the hot bite recently.

I didn't have much time so I tied on one of the poppers Clif made and put up for a contest.  Mike won these poppers, and since he doesn't do much bass fishing, passed them on to me.

I had a couple small splashes next to the popper, I'm guessing little bluegills that couldn't get the whole thing in their mouths.  When I can afford it I'm planning on buying some wet flies to set up a popper-dropper rig and see if that brings a few more sunfish to hand.

After a dozen or so casts, there was a little "bloop!" a couple seconds after the popper hit the water and popper disappeared.  Kind of a sluggish fight but better than no fight at all.  

Sorry to interrupt your meal Ms. Bass.

She was about 10 inches long and pretty chunky.  The popper was halfway to her stomach by the time I got her in.

A couple casts and another likely-bluegill strike later, I switched up to a black senko and casted around a bit, not getting any bites.  I thought it might still be a little chilly, when it gets a little warmer I'm gonna take an expedition out to a bigger body of water and and do some wandering, really try to get into some fish.

Thanks to Clif for making the popper and Mike for passing it on to me, I'm glad it was able to catch me a fish.  

Hope you all have a good week.