Rod Caster

Nice smelt feed! Did you get a couple pails worth it just enough for a couple meals?

Awesome! There is no better way to spend your time

Must have been a good spot. Now I want it

Nice to change things up. Catching a feed of perch has never let to regret

That's a great return for 46 taps. I'm at 20 for 34 so far. Im not sure if the trees still have any sap left in them. Will find out later today

My second batch, was very light, much lighter than the 5 previous batches. ...???

A tug is a tug! You sound happy about the warm weather... How odd

Haha goofball. I'd be right there behind you doing the same thing! Looks like a blast for sure

I'm gonna go collect this morning to boil down what's left of approx. 220L ( I par-boiled some the other day). There is still a lot snow in the bush, and some trees are really pushing out the sap still. My goal was 15-20 L of syrup, I'm at 11, and should get at least 5-6L from this boil, so I'm in the wheelhouse and very happy with be season and how much I've learned. Everyone says it's been a great year for syrup, so hurray for that. Funny though, some trees actually stopped running on the first real nice day, even with -2 at night. They just shut down and I don't get it. With the crazy nice temps, I feel like the trees should be winding down as of today, but I would never have thought, that with perfect temperature swings, and 2 feet of snow in places in the bush, that the trees would be shutting down. Especially with the southern guys just finishing up now, I should be 1 or 2 weeks behind. Some of my trees were tapped before March 15th, has anyone experienced trees self-healing?? I feel like if I drill a new hole, the tree will start running again, but then again I don't want to drill a hole for nothing or risk injuring the tree. The first year I did this, I drilled the trees in early march, and when the run started, the trees were seemingly choked back, so I re-drilled a few, and pow! the sap flowed great. Any thoughts on this?

Ha! That's crazy! I'll pot an update tomorrow, no time right now

Fan-flippin-tastic as always. Check yourself for GPS trackers, guys are chasing you around the lakes!

Yep, started up again today as well. Hoping for a flood over next week

Your report makes me think I need to fence up my property and start raising some game. Was the farm, fenced all around?? I guess the escaped birds just end up as wildlife food?

I think Sportspal makes a similar model.

I just googled birds and bees. Graphic

My lawn is a dandelion haven in the early spring, I love seeing tons of yellow for a few weeks. I only cut when the dandelions have turned to seed. I can't believe there are municipal laws against growth of 'weeds' like wildflowers. I just shake my head at the pointless vanity Once my wife stops getting pregnant we'll raise our own bees too.

Ha!! Don't get all tree-hugger on us The end of my driveway is actually the worst spot to sell anything, I get one or two cars per month driving by house

Even with the cold my trees are weeping. I'm thinking next week, when it warms up, I'll be scrambling to keep up

I didnt' watch the vids yet, but this is a great post. Whitefish are a bit of an anomaly for me, but I know there are lots of great opportunities to catch them, I just need to learn and try. Plus I love eating whitefish as much if not move that walleye.

Filtering is starting to be an issue for me, only because I'm getting better at this and clarity is starting to matter for me. I use the woven with paper pre-filters and try to pass the sap through it as many times as possible throughout the boiling stages. I didn't know about the 'hot' filtering issue, so that's great info! I'll use that. The best way I found for removing the sediment, is to leave the batch sit overnight, then decant off. Wow, does that eliminate a lot of impurities and it's super simple. I transfered very clean sap (from 220L boiled to 10L) into my finishing pot after an overnight sit and the batch turned out very clear, but I still found some white/foggy deposit , different than the grey/brown sand I normally get. I suppose I should have cold filtered before I transfered to my finishing pot. Can you filter the syrup just before or just after it's complete, or will it just stick to the filter?? For boiling, I have a 50L stock pot and a 65,000BTU banjo style burner. I find it uses too much propane, but I need to do calculations to find the optimum fill level, otherwise I overfill it and it slows down the rate. It's all about air-surface area ratio, so I've read. I'll sometimes use a second turkey boiler and a 20L pot if I want to double my rate. Also...I've been playing with a rocket stove I built last summer. Take a look at the pics. After a couple adjustments, it easily boils the 20L stock pot and I feed it with small sticks. Nice and easy and cheap! I hope to eventually boil everything down using rocket stoves First batch on the right, it never settled. The second batch on the left settled very nicely the next day. I can't figure out why the earlier batch is darker!?

20l/hr. That's a good boil down rate. I was getting closer to 10. For the next boil I'm going get my rocket stove up and running, and double boil. I use a hydrometer with the Baume and Brix reading. Last year I estimated/calculated I was getting close to 35:1 ratio. Maybe some trees have better concentrations of sugar???

I just finished 7L of fairly light coloured syrup, down from approx 220L of sap. I'm very pleased and surprised at that ratio. I wonder if my de-icing of the buckets helped

Do you guys ask restaurants to save pails for you? One of the country styles puts their buckets beside their dumpster and I pick 'em up. All food grade and free. Dumpster diving isn't just for raccoons. So far they've given me nearly 30 pails

Cool. I like the harvesting portion of it. Clearly you like the outdoors haha

I'm boiling today. Looking for another 3 or 4 litres of syrup ...total should be around 7 litres so far this year. It's running good but the rain and upcoming cold will once again slow things down... I'm pretty such the peak of the run hasn't started yet here