Bill and Linda with their winning catch.I’m convinced the couples that fish and hunt together, stay together — in addition to having more fun.
It just makes sense that sharing each other’s passions is a great glue for any relationship.
This week I talked to two couples who prove my point.
Walleye anglers
I wrote about Bill and Linda Greczyn last year and their successes on the competitive New Eastern Walleye Circuit.
Last weekend, the Tully couple kicked off the circuit’s schedule by besting 34 other teams in the season opener on Mosquito Lake, near Youngstown, Ohio. They took home the $2,500 winner’s check.
The couple, who have been fishing together competitively since 2001, said the win was a godsend after having a disappointing effort on the circuit last year.
“We didn’t catch fish, had mechanical problems. ... it was just a bad year,” Bill said.
Over the winter, though, the couple decided to take on a different attitude, and it seems to be paying off.
“We’re just going to have fun with it. It doesn’t matter if we win,” he said. The husband said that win or lose, the competitions amount to “little vacations.”
“We go out to dinner. We get to see more of the country and meet a lot of real nice people,” he said.
Linda, 55, said she started fishing with her husband to “support him in his effort to be a good fisherman. It’s his love, his passion. Now it’s become mine.”
Bill, 60, added: “She’s my best friend and we enjoy each other’s company. It’s a lot easier to come up with the expenses to fish and to buy equipment. In fact, a lot of the time she’s telling me that I should buy certain stuff.”
The New Eastern Walleye Circuit features five competitions, including one on Oneida Lake, set for June 26.
Hunting in Argentina
Rich AndersonI met Nancy Canavan, of Syracuse, last weekend at the Women in Nature program at the Bridgeport Rod and Gun Club. She was the co-chair for the event.
She said she and her boyfriend, Rich Anderson, 67, of Cazenovia, do a lot of hunting together and recently made a hunting outing part of their vacation to Argentina.
“Actually, we hunt and fish together,” Canavan, 68, said. “We hunt turkey, deer, duck, goose and pheasant. As for fishing, it’s lake fishing — primarily bass.”
As for the Argentina outing, Canavan told me they visited the country for 45 days, renting an apartment in Buenos Aires. They managed a side trip to the Estancia Los Chanares, a 9,000-acre dove hunting resort near Cordova, in the northern part of the country.
The resort specializes in hunting for golden-eared doves, which live in great numbers and are a blight on that country’s agriculture, Canavan said.
“It’s essentially Argentina’s pigeon or starling,” she said. “What we’re really doing (by shooting them) is helping out the farmers because they’re so prolific.”
The dove hunting resort featured 2½ hours of straight shooting in the morning, followed by a 4½-hour gourmet lunch and wine, followed by another 2½ hours of shooting.
Nancy takes aimFor those who don’t want to hunt, she said, the place features an outdoor pool and spa. The price was about $1,000 a day per person, with gun shells costing extra.
Anderson said he shot through 41 boxes of shells, downing a total of 629 birds. Canavan shot through 21 boxes, hitting only 20 birds.
“I was tired,” Canavan said.
David Figura can be reached at dfigura@syracuse.com, by calling 470-6066, on Twitter at Psoutdoors and on Facebook through The Post-Standard’s outdoors group.