Holy Drought

So I thought we were going to catch sum biggun's this summer while camping along Kansas' many scenic rivers and lakes?!?! Nope. Well to be fair, I have gone out some but not half as much as last summer. This drought/ heat wave totally sucks. I've only caught about 20 fish this year (thankfully I went to a secret spot last week and caught 6 of those then)! Also, for once, I can honestly say I don't want to camp because it's too hot! I normally never "wimp out".

I thought I would look up just how bad the drought is around here. Right now Sedgwick County's western half is rated "Severe" and the eastern half is rated "Extreme". The only rating higher than that is "Exceptional". This is followed by DEATH haha!

Kansas Drought Monitor

US Drought Monitor

Hopefully it will cool down soon. The only thing that seems to be loving this heat is my sunflowers. The tallest one is about 13'6"!!!

Son, that's a big fish! (part 2)

My brother sent me this info a few days ago and I thought I'd share it with all you fishermen and women out there:

80 lb Flathead at El Dorado Lake

I would think the biologists would have had more sense than to pull a flattie that size out of the water and pose for multiple pictures with it, as it had to have been extremely stressful for such a huge fish.

It's a big flattie and I've seen my share of them, though maybe not quite that big! One morning at Chase county Jer and I saw a huge flathead lazily swimming in a few feet of water in the small creek that feeds into the lake. I had my pole in my hands, (my fishing pole, heh) and looked at the fish, looked at my rod and the 8 pound test on the crappy plastic WalMart Diawa reel and quickly decided it would be futile to even attempt to cast out to it.

An interesting tale about the world record flathead mentioned in the article. A relative who knows the guy who was fishing with the man who supposedly caught it at Elk City lake told him the true story was different than the one told to the public. He claims the flathead had grabbed a 10 or 12 pound carp that had became lodged in the fish's mouth which prevented it from breathing. In other words... the big fish was dying. The man saw the fish, dropped his rod, grabbed the fish and dragged it up into the rocks where he then stuck the crappie jig in its mouth and contacted a warden. This makes more sense to me than the tall tale told to the world, that he was crappie fishing with a Zebco 33 reel with 12 lb test, hooked this behemoth and fought it for 15 minutes before finally getting it on the bank. Pfffttt. Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

So anyway, how did I get so off topic?

Bottom line, big flats are everywhere in the eastern half of the state, not just at El Dorado lake. They are eating machines and grow quickly into huge fish, gaining as much as 10 lbs in a season. If it'd ever cool off and rain we might even catch a few!

Elk City Lake

I've always heard about the awesome trails at Elk City Lake in SE Kansas. The Kansas Wildlife and Parks website lists 8 trails plus the Corps of Engineers manages land featuring camping and trails so we had to decide where to go. We settled on the Elk River Trail in the Corps area. In addition to being very scenic you can backpack on this trail. We wanted to camp along the shore of the lake in a secluded area. We set out around 3 pm and began hiking. Right away this trail becomes very strenuous. It was around 100 degrees so I was glad we brought a lot of water but feared we didn't bring enough. There are cave like rock formations, crevasses and steep bluffs overlooking the lake. After about 3 miles we stopped and found an awesome spot to camp under a willow tree next to the lake. It was very cool! Growing next to the willow was the largest Button Bush I've ever seen COVERED with various species of butterflies. I can't wait to go back there but would like it to cool down a little first. Taking the kayaks would also be a great way to reach these remote spots where privacy is at it's best!!

Here is a map showing some of the various trail heads.

Here are some photos I took along the way:


The sunrise was amazing


A Kansas jungle


The trail is rugged and interesting

No Morels (this year)

I spent countless hours traipsing through brush and woods looking for morels this April with no luck whatsoever. It's been incredibly dry here since last July so I'm sure that had something to do with it. We were working in Rose Hill the first week of May when I happened to look down at the ground and discovered a half-free morel growing out of a neatly trimmed lawn. At first I thought it was a ceramic doo-dad, that is until I reached down and picked it. It was small, it was half rotten, but it was a morel.

The very next day my brother called and said he'd discovered one growing in his lawn, and in a very similar condition to the one I'd discovered. A few days after that I found a picture on Google earth of morels growing near Cheney lake.

I'll be looking again next year, and hopefully we'll have a little rain so the picking will be better. Jer's uncle told us he'd picked bags full near his house in years past, so that gives me some hope. :)

Update

Well, I figured I should write and let our readers know what's been happening lately...

Water levels have been LOW! But... I don't feel like complaining right now, so onto the good news...

We have begun redesigning Konza Life to hopefully improve it quite drastically. I don't fancy myself a web designer, so these things take a lot of time for me to get up to my standards. As long as we've had this site running via Blogspot, there have been things I'd like to improve on, but limited to the tools Google provides.

I have decided to start building a custom theme using Wordpress, which will allow for a far greater range of design possibilities. My first attempts have lead to roadblocks(of course), but haven't discouraged me from continuing my quest to provide an A+ Kansas outdoors blog for interested readers.

Some of the things I am working on are...

-Dropdown menus for things such as Streamflow Conditions, Rivers, Lakes and other places

-Individual pages for places we visit (which will include things such as maps, photos and info)

-A separate blog area for us to rant and rave

-Better organization for finding the info you want to read (won't be as much sifting through posts)

-Ad free and non-profit (the way a Kansas outdoor blog should be)

If all goes as planned, I think everyone will appreciate the new design a lot. Part of our mission for creating a site such as this, is making a site we would like to visit ourselves for information.

I like the idea of being able to come to this site and have everything I want to see visible and not-intimidating. Wonder what that Fall river access looks like? Just click Rivers/Fall River and you will be sent to a page with directions, map, photos and info.

That's what I have in mind... Now I just need to finish another website I have been working on, so I can crank this one out!

Please be patient and check this site often, we do have a couple authors besides me(nudge), so sometimes things just seem to pop up!

I'd like to thank everyone that enjoys the Kansas outdoors and takes care of our wonderful state.

Stay tuned! Cheers