“Can you believe how quickly fall is coming is?” a friend said, pointing out nearby hardwood trees with a smattering of yellow and orange leaves. Some of the leaves were already down and were littering the marshside track we were walking.

Not only are hardwood leaves tinged with fall colors – usually it’s late August in normal years before this happens – various other plants and trees are way ahead of last year. You’re probably aware that out in farm country, many crops are maturing earlier than average.

The lack of rain until recently may explain the early coloring of the hardwoods, but otherwise nature appears to have changed her schedule somewhat and it’s been a year of early everything. On my favourite brook trout stream, for example, the water on opening day had the appearance and the feel of May. By mid-April, on another local stream, water conditions were much like they usually are in late June.

Again, like the early tingeing of hardwood trees, the advanced condition of these streams might be due to low rainfall. Last fishing season there was too much rain; this season, right from the start, there’s been too little. By mid-June, a friend who pursues sea-run brown trout in the lower Cornwallis was bemoaning the lack of rain and how it reduced angling opportunities. He says he missed the best of the run because everything was so much earlier than usual. This appears to be typical everywhere.

If you fish in salt water for striped bass, or in tidal streams for stripers and trout, low rainfall generally doesn’t affect your angling. Low water on some streams actually is an advantage – in some ways. Low stream levels reveal the trout lies, for example, and you can zero in on areas offering the most potential. This is an advantage if you like to cruise streams with your fly rod, looking for a “hole” where trout could be lurking.

On striped bass, I’ve mentioned before that you should be aware of a possible license for salt water angling. That sometimes reliable grapevine has it that the fisheries people are considering a $20 license.

I heard some hogwash that the license is needed so fisheries can “get a handle” on salt water angling, meaning I suppose so they can count how many people fish for striped bass and flounder; more hogwash is that they require additional money to manage this sport.

I have it from someone in the know – and it’s a reliable source – that if a salt water license becomes a fact, only a tiny portion of the fee would end up in the hands of fisheries. Most of the license fee, $20 or whatever would be eaten up by producing, issuing and monitoring the licensing system and handling the funds collected from salt water anglers.

What’s wrong, by the way, with using the general fishing license to determine how many anglers fish for stripers and flounder. Rather than hit anglers with a totally useless salt water fee, why not make a few changes in the general license?

Or would that be too simple? Isn’t it possible for government departments, whether provincial or federal, to co-operate with one another? Too much to expect, maybe?

Anyway, contact your MLA and tell him or her you’re for or against a salt water angling license. I hope you’re against it. That’s what I plan too tell my MLA.

Occasionally readers tell me they enjoy my history articles, but never read the outdoors column, both of which run in the Kings County Advertiser and Kings County Register. Once in a while I have a crossover piece – an outdoors column that looks at the history of fishing and hunting. This is such an article, a look back at what fishing and the use of natural resources was like many generations ago around Kentville and along the Cornwallis River. Hope you enjoy it.

Starting in 1892, a prominent Kentville magistrate penned a series of articles on early days in the town. On March 19, 1892, E. J. Cogswell’s article in Kentville’s weekly newspaper revealed that the Cornwallis River once was a major salmon stream. All you anglers familiar with the Cornwallis River: Can you picture a time when salmon were so plentiful in the river people harvested them with pitchforks? Read what E. J. Cogswell had to say about this.

“Though salmon are scarcely found there (the Cornwallis) now they were formerly in great plenty. I remember some forty years ago I was with my father at George Webster’s mill at Coldbrook when at a time of freshet the salmon had so many of them come up the brook and had been left by the retreating waters, people had been down and thrown them out with pitch-forks.”

Cogswell writes that as well as the ford where the town bridge now is, the great salmon run in the Cornwallis was another reason “Kentville was a desirable villaging place” for the Mi’kmaq. “Another (reason) was the smelt brook “where in old times the smelts came in such immense quantities, just at springtime, when other food was hardly available.”

Cogswell refers to an area immediately west of Kentville, the Harrington Meadows, as a “great eel ground” of the Mi’kmaq. Natives also speared salmon on the meadow waters and could “often be seen in their canoes at night with torches and bows.” Harrington Meadows was also a “great rendezvous of the returning migrators of the wild ducks and geese,” Cogswell notes; from this I assume Harrington Meadows and today’s federal waterfowl sanctuary are one and the same.

Even in Cogswell’s day people were lamenting the loss of natural resources. The salmon as well as the Mi’kmaq have departed, Cogswell writes. “The screech of the locomotive has scared away what few of the ducks and geese remained unslaughtered by the gun of the sportsman. The salmon and the smelt has been destroyed by indiscriminate slaughter, mill dams and sawdust.”

Cogswell closes off his piece on a melancholy note. The campfires of the Mi’kmaq no longer gleam on the “rising grounds near the smelt brook nor at the old ford,” he writes. “We have killed the (Mi’kmaq’s) fish, shot his moose and caribou, cut down the woods and given him in turn Christianity, rum and the smallpox.”

A while back I devoted a column to what insect experts called a great dog tick migration eastward along the coastline from south-western Nova Scotia. In other words, all those pesky ticks aggravating people in the counties of Queens, Yarmouth and so on were migrating along or near the coast and eventually would establish here in the Annapolis Valley.

Well friends that was decades ago and it’s no news to anyone the migration has been successfully; thanks in part to a moderating climate, say biologists. However they do it, migrate along the coast that is, I suspect ticks had some help from humans and our canine buddies.

At a community supper in Kings County this spring, for example, a friend walked up and showed me a tick he’d just picked off his jacket. “I got several of them on me in Dalhousie this afternoon,” he said. “I’m going outside and get rid of it.”

I complained to the guy that he was helping the spread of ticks but he simply shrugged. “They’re already here,” he said.

He’s right, of course. While not plentiful up and down the entire Valley, they’re now well established and have infesting some areas for decades. Also, I saw a report that wood ticks have been found in Halifax County but that may already be old news.

The Department of Natural Resources say wood or dog ticks are harmless. The Department suggests that to cope with ticks it helps to pull socks up over pant legs and tuck in shirts while in the woods. It also helps to spray clothing and exposed skin with an insect repellent. Outdoor writer Reg Baird of Clementsvale tells me he copes with ticks while fishing by wearing hip boots or chest waders. “This keeps them pretty much in check,” Reg says. He also suggests you examine your clothing and body regularly when fishing in tick country.

Friends who’ve had ticks latch on to various parts of their body tell me they’re the devil to remove. I’ve heard of several weird tick removal methods – dabbing them with kerosene or applying heat, for example – but most sources say it’s best to use tweezers, removing the tick carefully so as not to leave its head embedded in the skin.

I can’t vouch for the following removal method a friend sent me recently, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you have a tick attack. Apply liquid soap to a cotton ball and press it on the embedded tick for 15 to 20 seconds. The tick is supposed to come out on its own and be stuck to the cotton ball.

I like to think of shad angling as an interlude, a pleasant interruption in the serious pursuit of trout, I wrote in this column about a decade ago.

I haven’t changed my mind since then. Shad are a great sports fish and like many anglers I welcome the spring run. Compared to trout, especially brown trout, they’re relatively easy to catch. At most times, I hasten to add. There are periods during the spring run that shad stop hitting and it takes some hard earned expertise to catch them.

Most of the time, however, shad are obliging. You can take someone new to shad angling to the Annapolis River, give them a few shad darts, and they’re on the way. Noting again there are exceptions, catching shad is often as simple as casting out a shad dart and reeling it slowly in. One of the exceptions is fly fishing. Catching shad consistently with flies isn’t easy to learn and I’d say it’s almost an art.

One thing I like about shad – besides the enjoyment of catching them – is that they’re a great starter fish for young anglers. Introducing a young angler to shad fishing is easy. I started a grandson, for example, simply by showing him how to cast out and retrieve a spinning lure. In no time he was catching shad. There’s more to shad fishing than this, of course. The times when the shad are picky and slow hitting require a lot more expertise than what the grandson learned his first day on the Annapolis River.

I’m often amazed when I discovered that some trout and salmon anglers never fish for shad. One of my friends is a dedicated fly fisherman; dedicated that is to pursuing salmon, sea-run brookies and brown trout all over the province with his fly rod. Yet he’s never cast a fly for shad. I often tell him about the challenge and thrill of taking shad with a fly rod but I haven’t been convincing enough. A lot of fishermen are like him and I don’t understand why.

I suspect anglers like the friend look on the shad for what it is, or what they think it is – a brawny, coarse, hardly edible non-game fish that (on salmon rivers especially) gets in the way of “real fishing.” I guarantee a couple of afternoons on the Annapolis River during the shad run will quickly change this trout and salmon fishing only attitude.

And by the way, while June is almost over, along with the peak shad angling period, it isn’t too late to hit the Annapolis River. I’ve caught shad in the Annapolis in early July. The drawback is that late in the run shad are “soft” from being in fresh water and not as edible as the early fish. However, early July angling is different in an interesting way. With spawning over and shad preparing to return to salt water, they often school close to the surface and you can see countless fish as they move in slow circles. A friend called this “shad watching.”

To close off, here’s a shad recipe from a friend. He called to note my column on cooking shad ignored a proven method. After the shad is cleaned and scaled, he said, place it on a cedar shingle in an extremely hot oven. Once the shad is cooked, throw it away and eat the shingle.

“I know I cursed getting them on me, but what’s a few ticks when you’re catching shad,” a friend said after spending an afternoon on the Annapolis River near Middleton.

The friend has been angling for shad over 30 years and only recently started mentioning wood ticks. “I won’t let a little thing like this stop me from fishing when the shad are running good,” he said. “You know how much I like eating shad roe.”

I got the friend hooked (no pun intended) on roe when we first started fly fishing for shad away back in the 1970s. I wish I hadn’t. Once he developed a taste for them I had to fight for my fair share. Pan fried, they’re a delicacy, especially as a side dish along with baked shad.

Oddly, as good as the roe is, I rarely ever hear other anglers mention they eat it. I rarely ever have anglers tell me they like shad either. Most anglers say they’re much too boney and hardly worth all the effort of scaling and cleaning them. They’d change their mind if they tried the stuffed baked shad my wife puts on the table. Sure you have to pick out a few bones but the delicately flavoured flesh of baked shad with a celery based dressing is worth it.

Have you ever tried smoked shad? I have and it’s excellent. At one time a couple of anglers in my neighbourhood experimented with cooking shad by smoking them. I’m not familiar with the process they used but I was given a few samples and as I said, it was good. It’s been a few years since I’ve had smoked shad – the nearest neighbour who smoked them passed on – but I recall the process removed many of those pesky bones; it was a lot like eating properly smoked gaspereaux, another spring delicacy few people are aware of.

Since shad have the reputation of not being good table food – and it’s undeserved as I said – a lot of anglers catch and release them for the sport. Shad are tremendous battlers, especially when taken on a fly rod and a lot of fun to catch, so this is understandable.

However, I hope some of you catch-and-release anglers will forget the mindset that shad are not all that edible. Try one this spring. Take a shad home. Have the chief cook at your house look up shad preparation in one of your cookbooks. Guaranteed you’ll be just as hooked on them at the table as you are on the stream.

The runs of smelts, gaspereaux and shad many anglers look forward to every spring have what biologists call a seasonal calendar. Which to me means the appearance of these fish in tidal streams varies every spring according to several factors, one of them water temperature.

In other words there is no great seasonal calendar that says on given days in April or May, shad, smelts and gaspereaux make a grand entrance into our rivers. Yet when I talked with several anglers on the Annapolis River this spring, on April 30 actually, and asked if the shad were up earlier than usual, I got a surprising reply. “No,” was the consensus. “The shad run was right on schedule.”

I usually wait until mid to late May to fish for shad, figuring this is the best time to fly fish, so I have no idea when the run starts. But I didn’t think shad came up to spawn on any sort of schedule, at least not one that could be counted on.

The shad run may have started earlier this spring but I’m not sure. Nearer to home, everyone was surprised by what seemed to be an earlier than usual run of smelts and gaspereaux. On a stillwater in early April this spring I saw trout rising to what appeared to be Mayflies. And on a warm first day of the angling season, my grandson cast to a number of trout that were feeding sporadically on stoneflies in the Cornwallis River. A few days later, on April 4, I checked water conditions on two local trout brooks, finding they were more May-like than April-like.

So I guess I’m asking, was this is an early spring or what? It certainly seems like it. This spring a plum tree in my backyard blossomed at least two weeks earlier than other years. The gardener in our household keeps meticulous records and year after year, documents the appearance of various perennials and such in our yard. She tells me that everything in her garden is anywhere from 10 to 14 days earlier than last year.

And last, that annual harbinger of spring and the shad runs, the shadbush, bloomed much earlier this year. The shadbush is the first shrub to bloom in the spring; if the legend is true that its bloom heralds the shad run, then some things definitely are early this year. Perhaps the relatively mild winter, a March with a record-breaking rise in temperature, spurred the early arrival of spring-like, early summer weather.

Actually, I’m not sure what an “early spring” really is. Or what it isn’t. Notice that the short spells of fine weather in March and early April were offset by a bunch of cold days late in April? Early spring, in other words, turned into early winter.

The annual report of the Federation of Anglers and Hunters issued in March contains a few items of interest that should please waterfowlers. In the report is news about possible changes in the September goose season, for one thing.

No stats are available to tell us if many hunters participated in the September goose season last year but I suspect the turnout was low. Few, if any, of my waterfowling friends hunted geese during the September season. The big drawback on the September season? Hunting for geese was restricted to farmland only – at a time when most farm fields weren’t harvested and you couldn’t hunt on them. Compared to all the harvested fields you can hunt on in late season, there weren’t many place open in September.

However, the folks at the Canadian Wildlife Service must have listened to feedback from waterfowlers re the farmland restriction. The CWS is proposing a longer September goose season this year and best of all, it also proposes removing the farmland hunting only restriction.

The proposed season (“proposed” to me meaning it might or might not happen) in Hants, Kings and Annapolis County will run from September 4 to September 18 inclusive. I didn’t see anything on bag limit changes for the longer season. But the time you can legally keep possession of the birds you bag in September may be changed. The way I read it, geese bagged in the September 4 to 18 season may be kept in the hunter’s possession until the end of September.

Acting on behalf of waterfowlers, the local wildlife association has pushed for a later (mid-October) opening of the waterfowl season and extending it into mid-January. According to changes proposed by CWA, this may be happening in some areas but not in Hants, Kings and Annapolis County. I repeat, it may not be happening here. This is too bad. Many waterfowlers would like to see the season opening in October two weeks later than usual and running to about mid-January.

I see by the annual report Waterfowl Heritage Day will be held again this year. The date for the day is Saturday, September 15 province wide.

Over 50,000 angling licenses are sold in Nova Scotia every year, said a story in a provincial newspaper on opening day of the fishing season.

I assume that like me, most of those 50,000 anglers were ready to go fishing by the time the first day dawned. There was a problem, however. Some of us couldn’t go fishing on opening day even if we had wanted to; simply because we couldn’t buy a license.

At least I couldn’t without driving some distance, and I assume other anglers were in the same situation. The day before the season opened, I tried to purchase a fishing license at four different vendors in Kings County and was told the same story by all of them – that the Department of Fisheries failed to send them the licenses.

One of the most popular department stores in the Annapolis Valley was sold out of licenses well before the season opened; they told me Fisheries had short-changed them, hadn’t sent the usual quota of fishing licenses and the store couldn’t meet the demand. On top of that, all they received was the licenses and no angling handbooks. Five days after the season opened this store received another package of licenses and again no handbooks accompanied them.

After making a few calls I concluded the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture had somehow slipped up when it came to getting angling licenses out to some areas in a timely manner, either shipping them late to retailers – as was the case with one vendor I called – or neglecting to send them at all. Besides the department store mentioned above, another vendor also said he received far fewer licenses than usual and couldn’t supply the usual demand.

Now, more than a few anglers I talked to were disgruntled with this situation and were quick to blame Fisheries. Three of the stores I contacted, the vendors who hadn’t received their usual supply of fishing licenses, blamed Fisheries also, telling me the Department failed to send them their usual supply.

I commiserate with anglers who couldn’t buy a license and didn’t get out on opening day. I have no idea how many were in this boat, or maybe it should be not in a boat (pardon the levity) because they couldn’t get a license. At least nine vendors in my home county, who usually have fishing licenses for sale, didn’t have them in time for opening day.

However, don’t blame Fisheries entirely if you had a problem getting a license. In some cases a few vendors hadn’t received enough licenses to meet the demand but generally there was no distribution problem. The fact is that Fisheries clamped down on vendors who “might have had a bookkeeping problem” and …. well, this is a delicate situation so I have to be careful how I put it. Someone or somebody had a bookkeeping problem and as a result there were vendors that didn’t receive the fishing licenses. If some of the vendors were responsible for this happening, then they weren’t serving their clientele very well.

Anyway, it appears the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Inland Fisheries, Services Nova Scotia or whatever, definitely had the licenses available. That’s the bottom line. However, neglecting to send out angling handbooks, which are part and parcel of the angling license purchase, can’t be blamed on the vendors. Think Services Nova Scotia maybe?

When Fisheries and Ocean released an advertisement late last year on winter angling, it included a one-month extension of the ice fishing season on two Kings County lakes and on Meadow Pond in Hants County. The handbook you get with your angling license has the winter season on these waters running from January 1 to February 28. The Fisheries and Oceans notice listed the winter season for Silver Lake, Sunken Lake and Meadow Pond running from January 1 until the end of March.

More than a few anglers missed this change and some were miffed by what they say was poor communications by Fisheries and Oceans. “As far as I’m concerned, there was no advance notice the ice fishing season would run in March,” one angler said. “I found out by word of mouth.”

Several anglers told me the same thing. Kentville angler Gord MaGee said he didn’t see any official notice on an extension of the ice fishing season. “I found out about it from other fishermen,” MaGee said, “but one angler did tell me he saw an announcement in the paper.”

I may be wrong about this but apparently the powers that be – read Fisheries and Oceans – may have neglected to pass word down the line on the season extension; and they didn’t get enough publicity out to anglers in Kings and Hants. Also, while fisheries isn’t in their bailiwick, staff of the Kentville branch of Natural Resources should have been aware of the extension. However, they weren’t aware of any changes, Coldbrook angler Jerry Bishop said, and he wasn’t happy about what he experienced when he called them.

Right or not, Bishop figured Natural Resources was the right place to call when he heard rumours the winter season had been extended in Silver Lake. “I was told bluntly there was no ice fishing on silver Lake in March. I was also told that if there was, no one had informed them (Natural Resources) about it.”

Not satisfied with being put off, Bishop said he called Ottawa and was given the provincial number for Fisheries and Oceans. When he reached someone at the provincial level, he was told the winter season had been extended to March 31. “They were surprised,” Bishop said in effect, “that Natural Resources staff weren’t aware of the season extension.”

Bottom line, I’m thinking about putting up an egg on your face award for this tempest in a teapot, winter season fiasco. Who should get it? Fisheries and Oceans for not getting the winter season changes at Sunken Lake, Silver Lake and Meadow Pond in the angling handbook and not publicizing the changes adequately? Natural Resources perhaps, since the fisheries enforcement department works out of their Kentville location?

And maybe I’ve earned the award myself. For not being on the ball and using this column to notify anglers that some waters, those named above, now have a January, February and March winter angling season.

“I was interested in your mention of the ‘lucovie’ in your last column,” writes Reg Baird of Clementsvale. It was called a Lucifee in this area.”

The lucovie or bobcat was referred to in a 1774 report on Nova Scotia wildlife and likely it was a misspelling of Lucifee. I’ve attempted to find the origin of this word and so far no luck. I’ve come across vague mentions of Lucifees several times in my reading; the best I can say is that it is a backwoods term, one used by old-time trappers, and could be a corruption of a British/Scottish word or a native Indian word for bobcat. It may refer to a backwoods demon or spirit or simply be a mispronunciation of Lucifer, the devil.

When he wrote to me, Reg Baird referred to the “legend of the Lucifee in Clementsvale.” Years ago, he said, he wrote a story on the legend for the Voice of the Trapper. In the story, Baird told the tale of Ernest Trimper’s experience with an extremely large cat.

“I listened awestruck as Mr. Trimper related his experiences with the big cat,” Baird wrote. “Bobcat were practically unknown in western Nova Scotia in the 1940s and Trimper dubbed this animal a Lucifee. The name stuck.”

The Lucifee had escaped from one of Trimper’s large traps, simply because it was too big and too strong to be contained by it. “The animal simply overpowered the trap and was gone,” Baird said. “After that the stories of his strength and cunning really mushroomed. I’m sure the cat was blamed for a lot of things he didn’t do.”

Baird says the cat became a legend in his area, lurking around for several years, and there were tales of it following people at night. Adding to the legend were the tracks the cat left; apparently they were monstrous. “The big cat was never caught,” says Baird, “and to my knowledge never seen. But those tracks as big as saucers were very much in evidence for the next few winters.”

In later years when he on his trapline, Baird says he often thought of “the old Lucifee.” I wonder if he or anyone else considered that a wild cat as powerful as it apparently was, and leaving as large a track as it did, might have been something other than a bobcat. I hesitate to mention cougars, knowing many people will laugh, but is this it what it was?

I asked Reg Baird this question and he replied that there wasn’t any talk about cougars at the time. “However,” he said, “the name Lucifee implied something big, vicious and probably with a long tail. I would expect if we could ask Mr. Trimper, he envisioned a long tail as well, although I can’t remember anyone actually saying so.”