Monday, October 8, 2012

Potosi, WI to Warrens Cranberry Festival, Part 3

After a leisurely drive north on first Hwy 133, then Hwy 35, we arrived Blackhawk Park COE Campground (in center of image below) just 3 miles north of DeSoto, WI.

Blackhawk park1

To access Blackhawk Park, exit west from Hwy 35 onto Co. RD BI fir .7 mile to park entrance. Blackhawk Park offers a mix of shaded, open, waterfront and tent sites as well as day use areas for picnicking and boat launches. The park is only about 20 miles south of La Crosse, WI.

  We found an open site. As it had been chilly and we thought the sun would be nice.  The long spaces can easily accommodate any size rig.  P1030801

The park has created a numbered list of trees indigenous to the area with numbered examples throughout the park, as well as an information sheet for geocachers.

But the main pastime at this park is fishing.  I must say, from what I observed, the fishing was good.  Folks would take their boats out in the morning and return in the late afternoon with a 5 gallon bucket of fish.  Then the whirring would begin.  What was this sound?  Electric knives. In the past, when we actually kept the fish we caught, Tom would use a (manual) fillet knife, so this was new to us.  Of course we never caught fish in the quantities these folks had. 

One day the man across from us wore his knife battery down carving up his catch and had to borrow another from a friend.  He had quite the setup for filleting.  He devised a board mounted to the boat trailer frame.  This board had a whole on one end, under which he would hang a bucket for the bad parts.  On the other side of the board he had a dishpan with water for the good parts.  The middle section was his workspace.  Very efficient. The catches included crappie, sunfish and bass.  No catfish as we would have expected.

No comments:

Post a Comment