Tale of two days at 64t St.

Here's a story about how weather conditions are so dependent on waterfowling.

Saturday at Boundary Bay:

Weather: After a week of snow. Overcast. Ground is crunchy. Cloud level fairly low. Scattered snow flakes. Some wind but not much. Tide rising. There is lots of light mainly reflected in the ice and against the clouds. The channel is crunchy with ice patches.

Saturday results: Oh my. Birds are everywhere. They are active, flying here and there. And they are responding to decoys. In the cold air, they are cupping and coming straight in. Limit minus one. Could have had the limit if I had stayed out the entire day and been less picky. Superb action throughout the morning. My buddies got four each. Even new guy got four.

Sunday at Boundary Bay:

Weather: Let the sunshine in. Gorgeous day. Warm. Ice is melting and cracking everywhere. Mostly clear skies with gauzy cloud. Stuff that is melting is throwing off moisture. No wind. Tide rising.

Sunday results: snoozeville! Same set up, but stale day. Great day to soak up some rays. Great day to take the gloves off. Lots of ducks .. nowhere near the shore. They were all feeding in farms or loafing in the nursery pond. No teal, no pinnies skimming the coast. High flying wigeon and mallard. Take home for the three dudes. One buffie and one wigeon hen! Only real excitement was a flight of Canadas who didn't come down lower than skybusting height and all the wigeon scattered from the nursery ponds one time.

What a difference a day makes!

When the inland under ice and snow most of ducks are out in bay. I haven't shot or hunted since end of Nov. I done shooting ducks and geese just waiting till weather warms up before heading out to Vedder river to fished for chrome ghosts. But still have friends continues hunting ducks.

Saturday was a crazy one allright .Went out at 3 was finished in 40 minutes and back at the truck,quick hitter on the big Widgeon flocks https://i.imgur.com/0gs1omE.jpg?1

Good haul Dutch. That's a nice-looking O/U. Can you tell me about it? I imagine I'll eventually pick up an O/U for hunting.

I had a similar experience on Saturday. Busted hundreds of mallards off the water when I walked in.

My experience was different than yours on Sunday though. What ducks were flying decoyed readily, too bad they were all GWT and wigeon, not what I was looking for…
There were a boat load of vehicles at the parking lot though! I’d never seen it so busy - there were even folks walking the foreshore where I had initially planned to hunt:-x

Glad to hear there's open water. I remember going there during a cold snap once hoping to catch some birds on water and when I walked over the dike at daybreak and looked out all I saw was sheets of ice. It looked like the Arctic ocean.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MichelD

Glad to hear there's open water. I remember going there during a cold snap once hoping to catch some birds on water and when I walked over the dike at daybreak and looked out all I saw was sheets of ice. It looked like the Arctic ocean.

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There were pockets of water. On Saturday some mallards were hold up in the grass!

I've noticed in flooding if you give it time the ducks will come back in those ponds that develop just inside legal distance. I have to remind myself if I'm not seeing any action on the shoreline to look back to see if any ducks came in behind me.

Was out last night 8 in an hour they are really moving around.That is a Browning Cynergy wicked wing 3.5" .Like it for being reliable in adverse weather and it also spent couple hours in salt water no worse for wear.Has manual trigger so does not need the first shell to go off to reset it, like that.

Looked like great conditions yesterday. Too bad I was sick. Would have loved to go out. Or right now with the newest 'atmospheric rivers' upon us.

Thanks for the id on the gun. One day ...