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3. Spring finally found its way up here to the north country

Since I haven't heard any fellow Michiganders posting on here lately, I thought I should. After all, I did my very first day of trout fishing today, about time with all of the cold, rainy, windy weather we have been having. I took the kayak out for its first voyage of the year, too, on a trip to [REDACTED] Pond to see if the perch and/or brookies were awake yet. Well, not very much, but a few were awake enough to hit a dark brown mottled WB with black bead-chain eyes, standard fly there at this time of the year. After what seemed like a long time of searching, I finally got a couple of brookies, including the handsome one above, and then a very slow perch bite with a few hitting 10" or so. There was enough wind to be annoying, with occasional insects that could be midges or small caddis with a random fish here or there feeding on them. Other than that, sunny and very clear water, might have slowed them down a bit, next trip will be towards evening.

Thank goodness some trout fishing at last! Though I have been panfishing plenty of times, both here and downstate. The bluegill in Clark's Marsh are now regularly hitting 9 inches, due apparently to catch and release as they are contaminated and folks are heeding the warning signs. Possible state record here in a few more years??

Also, some wildflowers, extremely welcome after another dreary winter.

Jonathon

I imagine most of your mushroom books also say of the false morel, "But some people eat them anyway." I know I've read that often. I guess there is something individualized about their toxicity. But why take a chance?

I've read that the toxins bioaccumulate. So you could eat them without problems for 20+ years and then drop dead the next time that you eat them. Also a good percentage of the poisoning cases from beefsteaks are fatal. I found a bunch up in Michigan last week. No morels though.

I have probably 20 or so mushroom books (no kidding) and every single one of them says that this species of mushroom is deadly poisonous. However, one book states that the toxin present in this species, monomethylhydrazine (which happens to be a carcinogenic relative to storable rocket fuel!), boils at a lower point (87.6 C) than water, and so it is possible to cook out the toxin...but how do you know if you've gotten rid of it ALL? Also, there are many instances of several people eating this mushroom with only the COOK getting sick - because they inhaled the toxin as they cooked the mushrooms...if you really want to play Russian Roulette, I have many nice Smith & Wesson revolvers you can borrow, I'm certain that death would be much less painful than total liver failure...

The real morels are coming up around here, already had some with bacon last week! With them soon are the mosquitos, blackflies, ticks...yep, its spring for real now! Gotta go find some Hendricksons on a local river one of these days...

Jonathon

I ate some beefsteaks once and while they were tasty my wifes uncle got very sick that night. I blamed it on the old Milwaukee but really I never wanted to eat another beefsteak after that.

Just got a new mushroom book that says:

"Despite being poisonous, in parts of Europe it is eaten after careful drying or repeated boiling in fresh water."

Well, I don't know how drying would eliminate the toxin unless it's done at a high enough temperature (like around 200 F) to drive the toxin out, but boiling in several changes of water would probably do the trick. But what would a mushroom boiled several times taste like, much of anything??

No thanks, I'll stick to the true and safe kind that I don't need to detoxify, they are popping up now and we have had plenty of rain with more on the way.

Jonathon

P.S. New book is Mushrooms from the Dorling Kindersley Handbook series, nicely illustrated with color photos, by Thomas Laessoe and Gary Lincoff.