Finally! A little spring trapping.

April 20, 2014: The ice is finally starting to succumb to warmer weather and the ponds are starting to show some open water. It's kind of an ugly time of year, the countryside is still brown and what snow remains is dirty snow, as the wind and coming rains have yet to clean the landscape. Waters are also brown and dirty from the spring runoff. But the ducks and geese are back and soon the amphibians and terrestrials will once again awake from their frozen sleep. It's that time of year where everything begins anew. It's also time to get the traps out and begin to manage the muskrats and beaver for the landowners we trap for.

Dakota and I loaded the truck up with our gear and in a short 45 minutes we were in the County of Lac Ste Anne. This is wet country with a multitude of creeks, ponds and lakes. However, the first thing we noticed was how low the water levels are. Places we couldn't get to last year without hip waders, we were now walking to in our rubber boots. However, to set muskrat floats, you need more water than the tops of your rubber boots, so the hip waders had to be put on. Our objective was to set for muskrats, tomorrow we'd get some beaver sets in. Below is a few photos of the day; Dakota was cameraman, as we forgot to bring the other set of waders.

Setting a #1-1/2 longspring on a muskrat float. The rod goes through the float and into the pond bottom.

Each float holds two #1-1/2 longsprings. Here I'm setting one of them.

Each float gets dressed with plant matter from the pond.

Notice that the top pond is still covered in ice, but only for about half of it. Our float is at the left.

Here I'm setting a Conibear Stick baited with carrot.

One of two funnels we set today.

The other funnel we set is in a culvert, but I'm not too confident on that spot.

We managed to get six muskrat floats up with a total of 11 traps on them, 10 Conibear sticks out and two funnel traps. One of the funnel traps is in a large culvert, so whether or not we got it in the right place is debatable. The one set in the photos above we caught muskrats out of last year, so with a little luck, they'll still be using that run. We'll be back tomorrow night to make a check and see if we can't set for a few beaver.

Until next time!