Swing & A Miss
Government Nuisance Trapping - Part VI
After getting my traps set out yesterday I was excited for the morning to come... I woke up extra early, got in a great workout, and set out to the dam by around 6:30 am, which was when first light was just starting to hit.
As I pulled up to the fish ladder I wasn’t able to see any disturbances in the water or floating figures. This was the first hint that what I had worked for the day prior may not be perfectly dialed in for catching these critters. Getting out of the truck confirmed my suspicions and three out of my four traps were undisturbed.
But, the first trap that I had set at the bottle neck near the fish ladder had actually been tripped! However, as I threw on my waders and worked my way into the water my heart dropped when I realized that it had been tripped, but had no animal or other debris caught in it. The likely culprit here was a stick or fish that had worked through in the current and set the trap off... I was reluctant to put this trap back out as I considered it low yield and had a high likelihood of falsely firing again, but nonetheless I reset the trap in the freezing cold, kissed the feeling in my hands goodbye, and went about my next task.
Given that I only had one more day to trap, I figured I should work upstream a bit from this site and simultaneously target a known bank den about two hundred yards up river. I figured that the beaver visiting the fish ladder where actually shacked up in this particular den, so putting a few traps in that vicinity could help increase my odds of success with only one more day left to trap this weekend.
