Well Rounded Outing

So the first part of my blog title... "Connecticut". I wouldn't be doing my home state justice if I didn't occasionally talk history here every now and then. First, today's fishing... I went to the kettle lake to see if I could get some bass in the cold and windy bluebird conditions. I probably would have had a few to hand had I not been a goober and left my 0x spool at home. I dropped one fish that felt like a decent bass and had another big one rap my on a branch and break my tippet off. I didn't feel like trying to get picky bass to eat flies tied on a five foot 20lb leader... so I gave up and went about the other adventures on my agenda for the day.

After packing up gear and getting over the fact that today was a skunk that shouldn't have been I headed north to do some surveying. I am a contributor for the worlds largest mineralogical database, and on today's agenda was photographing one quarry and surveying another to see if doing drone photography there would be possible. I visited the closer of the two first.

There was a point in time, not even that long ago, when a type of course grained granitic rock called pegmatite was of substantial value. Quarry's, prospects, and even underground mines explored pegmatite dikes  all over central CT from Haddam to Glastonbury. Their value came from "spar" or feldspar, a mineral used widely in ceramics and glass making; muscovite mica, used in construction materials and electronics; and even gem minerals including elbaite and beryl.  One of the most famed of the CT pegmatite quarries is the Strickland Quarry. The reason for its fame is the plethora of rare minerals that were produced in its heyday. A couple days ago a fellow CT mineralologist sent me a message letting me know that the water level in the quarry was extremely low (no surprise this year) and that if I could get a drone in there, some important photos of historical value could be taken. My visit there today was just to see how that would work out. As long as the rain does not fill it back up before late December I might be able to get some very valuable photographs.