It is still wintery in the North but spring is creeping its way slowly from the south.  The geese are back, kind of halted as the reached the edge of winter but spring is here!  Most of the snow is gone but we still have around 2-3 feet of ice.   It is very soft and will go early this year.  This is the time of year that the ice fishing is the best!  We have had tons of sunshine and more calm weather than I can ever remember.  The temperatures have been freezing at night and melting during the day.  Lets hope a nice spring will bring us a great summer!

Spring is also the time of year for me to help my brother cut his wood for the outdoor stove.  It is always a good way to get used to working hard again.  A couple days on a chainsaw, fighting brush, piling 4 foot logs makes you feel alive!  But after a couple days, I am always happy it is over until next year.

The fishing yesterday was pretty good.  In a short time we caught 10 pike measuring 30-35 inches and 3 eater sized walleye.  My brother and I spend almost everyday together during fishing season, we don’t need much of an excuse to go fishing

The 15-17 year olds I coached this year were a great bunch of kids.  This is the first season in my 18 years of coaching that I had no kids on the team but it felt like I did.  Most teams I have coached have ebbs and flows throughout the season as we did again this winter.  In the month of January our record was 0 wins 5 loses and a tie, and then February came and we never lost a game 7 wins and a tie!  When I played we called ourselves The February Falcons because when playoffs came we shined!  That’s what these kids did too!  This year they won the provincial tournament beating out towns much larger than ours with more kids to pick from.  We are a country team which takes 3 towns to get enough players just to ice a team, but heart and believing in the same goal will carry you places.  A real coachable bunch.  We placed 4th of 7 teams in our league and were able to make it through 2 playoff rounds  but ultimately lost in the final series.  Almost a perfect season.  We will be back next year!