Garcia Mitchell 300

Just wanted to flash my newly acquired pride & joy... The Garcia Mitchell 300 spinning reel. This is a NICE piece! I started looking into vintage reels after realizing most of the inexpensive reels nowadays are mostly made of plastic and look more like pieces of a UFO crash than something that would land dinner.

I like an all purpose reel. Something I can use for panfish, all the way up to nice size channel. I have always been a fan of the Zebco 33, so I was looking for something similar in size and capability.

One afternoon Curtis called me and said he received a boxed, mint condition Garcia Mitchell 300 on accident after he had ordered his Berkley. He showed me how nice it was the next time I was at his house and I fell in love. The mechanics of the GM300 are sound. Time doesn't seem to effect the craftsmanship of this old timer. Both cringing at the fact we knew he needed to send this beauty back to the rightful owner just lead to his search for a replacement.

Well... Curtis is a good man and somehow managed to find 2 reels for a good price. Guess who got one of those?! Thanks Curt, I owe you one. Cheers!

Read all about these classics:
Mitchell Fishing Reel Museum
Mitchell Homepage
Abu Garcia on Wikipedia
Abu Garcia Homepage

Mountain Lions in Kansas!

The KDWP finally has what they consider to be official proof that Mountain Lions do exist is Kansas. I guess it was photographed by a hunter in his tree stand northwest of WaKeeney. You can read the full article by clicking here.

Grouse Creek

If you enjoy paddling and have never been to Grouse Creek, you should probably check it out. The public section, located within the Kaw Wildlife Area near Ark City is 4 1/2 miles of nice water, minimal portages, beautiful scenery and good fishing.

A hotspot for local floaters, you will most likely pass a couple people enjoying the cool water on a hot summer day. There are 4 access points available, which allow for short, medium or day length trips. This is a creek that is suitable for Canoes, Rafts, Tubes and Kayaks.

I have been out there several times and most of the portages are in between the 2nd and 3rd bridges where there are larger rocks in the shallow water. For the most part, the creek is consistently a smooth ride.

After passing the last bridge the creek gets a lot deeper, which might slow you down(not recommended for tube-type craft), this is because of the confluence with the Arkansas River. I'd say a casual float will take somewhere between 3-5 hours to course.

Distances:
Silverdale Boat Ramp to 2nd Bridge = 1.5 miles
2nd Bridge to 3rd Bridge = 1.25 miles
3rd Bridge to Lower Grouse Creek = 1.75 miles


Need directions? Click Here

Some things I've learned...

Well, we've been posting for a few months now and during this time I have learned some things about our blogging platform and thought I'd share them with our readers...

1. The search bar in the upper left corner does not seem to work too great. I'd say it works some of the time, but most of my searches do not seem to yield results, even when I know there should be working keywords for the search engine to find. Oh well... Please fix this google!

2. Our Konzascope! photos get automatically re-sized to a width of 1600 pixels, which can drastically cut down on the quality of the image. If I can find a free image host that won't delete or re-size images, eventually I plan on including links to our high-res photos for our readers to download.

3. Our categories are somewhat in a dazed state. Basically, categories = labels, which are tags on our posts. I have tried to keep Konza Life easy to read and well organized, trying to avoid too many links that our readers will get lost in. But... Unfortunately there are only so many things I can do at the moment to organize our posts. I imagine a category list with sub-categories, so that readers could click Rivers for an example and have a list of rivers we've covered in posts appear. The only way I know how to do this so far, would be to create a tag for each place we discuss, which would lead to our category list constantly getting longer and more unorganized. So... Until I figure out a better way or google decides to add subs as a label option, the categories might not be of much use.

Overall, I am very happy with our blog and hope that our readers are as well. Our goal has been to create a Kansas blog that we as outdoor enthusiasts would like to read. With time, I think we will achieve this.

Thanks for stopping by!