Trout Whisperer: October starts with a single ‘O’

All of nature is starting to hunker down and settle in. Puddles will thicken and ice over. Rain will become snow. Moisture this month is transformed. With less in home humidity, furniture joints can dry out and make stairs squeak. Static electricity revisits us from simply touching the car door to donning a sweater.

Here is a question you probably won’t get asked a lot. Why is a snow shovel a lot like a hydrometer? Wet, heavy snow will carry up to 15-percent moisture content where as dry fluffy flakes contain about 5 percent. That not a huge difference until we start to shovel the stuff but both instruments tell you quickly how heavy and wet the snow flakes truly are. Snow has an “oh” in it.

And just because this month the air is cooler, many folks tend to drink less water and lower their individual moisture content; which leads to headaches and itchy, dry skin. One other early-winter house hibernation effect is in drier homes we get dryer noses. Small children are especially prone to bloody noses. Watch your H2O.

Today is Cross Quarter Day, the halfway mark between autumnal equinox and winter solstice. Oct. 23 also ushers in the Scorpion, one of the 12 signs of the zodiac. As its name implies, it’s not to be taken lightly. In Greek mythology one tale tells of “scorpion” stinging the great hunter Orion to his death. That took the “O” out of Orion.

October in some circles is the month of owls. The owl has always been seen as the bird of wisdom. The mind of an owl is all-knowing, and “all seeing” through the dark of night. What’s interesting to bird watchers in our now bare-leaf woodlands with darker, drearier daytime weather patterns is that owls can be seen more often than any other month.

An owl starts with one O, but hoots with two.

Tags: two harbors, trout whisperer, northland, outdoors, fishing