It's deep into February and I am sure looking forward to the open water
fishing season. I don't mind ice fishing, but I am definitely an open water
guy. I am sure I will be out on the ice a couple more times this winter.
There are still fish to be caught and I figure it will be about a month
before I will be out in a boat again.



Terry

Yes, this year is winding down. This has been quite a year in the Bitz
household. Lots of things have happened..some good, some not so good.



I was able to get out to do some brown trout fishing yesterday on a boat in
the Milwaukee Harbor. It is an amazing trout fishery there.



Just being able to get out in a boat again made me feel good. It was a
little bumpy out there with big rollers bouncing off the break walls, but we
caught fish. The story about that outing should be in the Kenosha News in
two weeks, then posted on my website a short time later.



Terry

Oh boy are people ticked off at the DNR right now. After what many deer
hunters considered the worst gun hunt in decades, people are looking for
heads to roll. That includes some of the state legislators. State Senator
Russ Decker is calling for people to be fired. While I doubt that will
happen, it's a rare thing for the DNR to escape unscathed when legislators
start getting this vocal.



I think the DNR will have hard time convincing people that there needs to
be any antlerless-only hunts. They can probably kiss extending the regular
season goodbye. They were lobbying hunters to extend the gun hunt to 16
days.



Personally, this was one of the worst hunts I had in regards to seeing deer.
Between me and my youngest son, we saw one deer in the woods. Yep, just one.
I cannot recall a season where I only saw one.



I will have an article in two weeks discussing this very issue.

Those who read my Kenosha News columns may recall that I and Motorola parted ways back in the spring. After 17 years they decided that they no longer wanted to pay me for my services....aka I got laid-off along with about 25 percent of their workforce in my location. They have since gone on to eliminate even more jobs to cut cost and try save their wireless business.

I am not bitter about getting axed. I am certainly not happy to have left in such a matter, but I did get a severance package...Plus it gave me the chance to reconnect with myself, my family and my faith. I wish Motorola and all my friends that still work there the best, but overall I am happy that I got a chance to move on.

Today marked the end of my lay-off. I officially started work at a cool company called Rath Microtech. They design/produce emergency telephones and I am very excited to be working for them as a Technical Support/ Product Manager.

Of course today also marked the end of my 3 weeks of pounding the water to try and make up for lost fishing time. The fishing was mostly mediocre, but I did manage to catch - and lose - a few. The highlight was a 38.5 inch musky that I caught on the Chain O'Lakes down in Flatland USA....that being Illinois. I was fishing with my best friend Bill Pocius and Doug Kloet.

So now it's back to life in the real world and I am ready.

Terry

I have been spending more and more time on the water recently. I am not exactly living on the water, but I have fished 5 times in the last 7 days. Its almost like the old days for me when I spent 4 days on the water almost every week from June through September.

In the last week, I have fished Lake Mendota in Madison 3 times. Silver Lake in Kenosha Cty once and just today I was on the Chain of Lake in Illinois.

Today was a very good day. My good friend Capt Doug Kloet landed a 47.5" muskie on a Double Cowgirl. I had a very small muskie take a swipe at a Topraider. But, it was Doug's fish that made the day. A muskie measuring almost 48" is a nice fish no matter where you are at. High fives were given after the successful release.

Stay tuned for an article on today's outing to be in the Kenosha News in 2 weeks. I should then have it posted online a few days later.

Terry

Ouch!

Like many others in Southeast Wisconsin, we were hit hard by the heavy rain/storms that came in last Friday. Our basement ended up with about 16 inches of sewer water in it when the sewer system backed up. What a mess!

Right now we are in the midst of a massive cleanup effort. The water heater had to be replaced, the furnace cleaned and inspected, and the whole basement disinfected. We have been working non-stop, approximately 14 hours a day since Friday night. The basement is almost cleaned and now we are starting to clean up what items we were able to salvage. We lost a ton of valuables, collectibles, keepsakes, furniture, books, etc. This has been a heartbreaking event.

Unfortunately, this has also meant my fishing plans for this week had to be canceled. I was looking forward to some fishing on Delavan Lake in Walworth County. Maybe next week.

Terry

Maybe just maybe I will someday be a true blogger i.e someone who actually blogs on a regular basis.

In the late winter, I really had intended to start blogging more to let people know what I was up to, upcoming articles, events, etc. However, in the spring I joined thousands of other people from my company in the unemployment line. While that would seem to open the door to being able to spend more time maintaining my website, the opposite was true. I found myself spending a huge amount of time working on getting my resume in tip-top shape, working on the job search, calling people, meeting with people, etc.

What I found was that I did not have the energy on the evenings and weekends to sit and write blog material or to keep my site maintained as well as I intended. In addition, while I would love to say that I spent the last few months getting in a lot of outdoor activity, the opposite was also true. I was really burning the candle on the job hunting process and it did not allow me a lot of free time.

However, as much as it is a bit of a downer to be unemployed, I have learned a lot during this process. Certainly, I have learned the power of networking. But, more importantly, I learned more about myself and have had a chance to step back and reevaluate my life and my career choices. I have also met a lot of interesting people and developed some friendships with people I would have never met if I had not been unemployed.

At this stage, after having gone through the personal reevaluation, I know myself a bit better. That does not mean I am finished figuring myself out....I think that is a lifelong process.

FYI. For those who get the Kenosha News, look for my article in this Saturday's paper. It's a piece that is tied to Father's Day.

Terry

What's the use of having a blog, if you actually don't blog?  Good question...
It's been a while since I sat down to write much and this probably will not be much either. Life has just been busy for me. My full time job and schooling literally eat up almost all of my time. The few moments I have away from those things are spent trying to drum up new stories, write, edit and then get them sent off to the publishers. Once that's done in a given week, it's back to homework.

I have begun to realize that all those people who sit down and blog all the time, they have too much of it...time that is.

I am thankful for one thing, it's winter. If I was stuck in the house this much in the summer or early fall, I would be going stir crazy. Sure, I like to still get outdoors and especially ice fish. But, if I had to give up ice fishing or summer fishing, there would be no contest, ice, ice baby goodbye.

So I am not punching holes in the ice as often as I would like, but considering how cold it has been recently, maybe that's not a bad thing either. My skin is pale white instead of black from frost bite. Plus, I don't have that consistent red glow that comes from being constantly wind burned either. So I guess I will count my blessings.

Take care,
Terry

You can't please everybody, I guess.

I apparently have a few people who are not fans, though I don't think it has anything to do with my writing. There has been somewhat of an ongoing debate about the rehabilitation of Eagle Lake in Racine County. The DNR at behest of the residents and with input from a privately funded study decided that Eagle Lake needed to be rehabbed. The rahab will involve the drawdown of the water and then poison will be applied that will kill off all the fish. Next year the lake will be restocked but there will be special regulations that will limit the number and size of fish that can be harvested. While I am not thrilled that the lake had to be killed off (there are some big bass still left in the lake), based on what I was told by biologist Doug Welch, it had to be done.

Anyway, what has made me unpopular with a few people is that I have defended the plan to rehab the lake. And, I have mostly spoke up when people have made personal attacks on Doug Welch or when they have tried to sway opinion by either the misuse of facts or outright untruths.

One certain individual named Larry, has been an outright vocal opponent of the plan and has been very unprofessional in his comments about Doug Welch. I say unprofessional, because Larry apparently serves as an elected official in a couple fishing organizations. He also claims to be an editor of some fishing or outdoor magazine. His disparaging remarks towards Welch should be an embarrassment for the organizations he serves.

Larry definitely does not care for me either...mostly because I have been willing to challenge his assertions and challenge his facts. Apparently I stung him pretty bad on his last set of comments when I proved his "facts" were all wrong. He said he wasn't going to post anymore because I had become the "self appointed owner of the forum". Me thinks I just made Larry look bad in front of all the other posters. I can't help it...I blame my mother for my willingness to argue.

Anway, Larry has a history of historonics and the DNR is well aware of his points of new. Larry thinks he is a defender of the "common man" and stands as a bulwark against the PETA policies of the DNR. However a source in the DNR said that they believe Larry has his own agenda...he fights any special regulations because he likes to fill his freezer with fish...basically Larry is not a fan of catch-and-release fishing.

Larry a couple years ago sent me a message saying he would sue me for libel. Can you believe that?  An editor of a magazine who constantly disparages Doug Welch and the DNR, threatened to sue me. That was funny. I should have kept that message and showed that to his editors.

One more interesting note about Larry. We were once both members of an organization called Pikemasters (though he didn't know I was a member). Pikemasters was a conservation group that was concerned with promoting northern pike and raising public awareness of how special the fish is. The group was heavily involved with trying to improve pike regulations to protect fish in certain lakes so they could grow to large proportions. I am not sure how long Larry was a member, but he fell on the opposite side of the spectrum of what the group was trying to accomplish (Remember what I said about the DNR believes he just wants to fill his freezer?) and did not believe we should persue special regulations. The leaders were puzzled at why he was a member though some speculated he just wanted access to try and influence another fishing organization.

Larry is an interesting person; however, he definitely does not speak for the "common man" nor for the average fisherman. 

Terry

 

What is it with poor service at restaurants recently?  It seems like everytime I go out for a nice dinner the last few weeks I have had to deal with poor service i.e. Inattentive wait staff and slow food service.

I know that if I was willing to drop a hundo on every meal, maybe I would get better service. But, unless I get promoted to an executive rank or some paper or magazine decides to pay me what I am really worth  ..I am going to stick with the typical Chile's, Applebees, etc. level of restaurants for most of my outside the home dining.

I am not expecting much. If I am eating a known spicey dish, it would be nice if I wasn't sitting staring at an empty glass for 15 minutes, praying the waitress will see my sweaty brow and refill my drink so I can put out the fire.

Last night was another example. We went to a restaurant after seeing the new Batman movie (an excellent film, but depressing knowing Heath Ledger is gone). We, being non-smokers, asked to sit in the non-smoking section. So they took us to a booth right next to the bar. When I asked the hostess if she heard us ask for the non-smoking section, she said this was the non-smoking section. Huh? Well, oaky we will see.

Well sure enough the two people who were sitting close enough that I could reach over and touch them, lit up some cigs...you can guess where the smoke was going. So when our waitress came over, I say, "Can we move?" When she asked why, I said we would prefer a non-smoking section where there wasn't people smoking aka not right next to the bar. Her reply "I just work here, it's not my fault. Management decide this was non-smoking". Okaaayyy,  nice attitude.

She took us to another section where we were smoke free but still received mediocre service....and of course slow food delivery.

Someday, I may just make a running list of the restaurants I have visited and either praise or complain about my recent experience. It probably will not make a difference, but it will make me feel better.

Terry