The Brush & the Bay https://lamedialodge.com/ Two game territories read as places and seasons: the south Texas brush country and the Nushagak and Bristol Bay drainage. How dates and counts are made. en-us Where the flight lines cross the brushhttps://lamedialodge.com/brush-country/flight-lines/https://lamedialodge.com/brush-country/flight-lines/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000A dove flight line is not random. It is the shortest safe route between roost, feed, grit and water, bent by wind and by the shape of the brush. Quail coveys and the cover they holdhttps://lamedialodge.com/brush-country/quail-cover/https://lamedialodge.com/brush-country/quail-cover/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000A bobwhite covey needs three kinds of cover within a very short distance: nesting, brood and escape. Where any one of the three is missing, the ground is empty. Why water organises a brush country eveninghttps://lamedialodge.com/brush-country/water-holes/https://lamedialodge.com/brush-country/water-holes/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000In semi arid country water organises the day. Why a bare, trampled tank edge concentrates doves, a brushy one does not, and a wet year scatters everything. Reading the water: how a run is countedhttps://lamedialodge.com/nushagak/reading-the-water/https://lamedialodge.com/nushagak/reading-the-water/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000How the Nushagak sonar site turns sound into a salmon count: two stations, one channel, imaging sonar, and the documents that carry each day’s figures. Five salmon, five timingshttps://lamedialodge.com/nushagak/five-salmon/https://lamedialodge.com/nushagak/five-salmon/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000The five Pacific salmon of the Nushagak differ in body, years at sea and spawning water, and those differences set the order of the run. Tides, currents and the set of the bayhttps://lamedialodge.com/nushagak/tides-and-currents/https://lamedialodge.com/nushagak/tides-and-currents/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000How the moon and the sun raise the tide, why flood and ebb follow a clock, what slack water is, and what the tide does to the lower Nushagak. How the openers get their dateshttps://lamedialodge.com/openers/how-dates-are-set/https://lamedialodge.com/openers/how-dates-are-set/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000A dove season date is not weather. It is the last line of a chain, a 1918 statute, a federal framework, a state rule adopted in public, then the booklet. Opening week, read from the fieldhttps://lamedialodge.com/openers/opening-week/https://lamedialodge.com/openers/opening-week/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000What the first days of a Texas dove season show, what they prove and do not, why week two reads differently, and where the season line is published. How rain becomes a nesting seasonhttps://lamedialodge.com/after-the-rains/nesting-after-rain/https://lamedialodge.com/after-the-rains/nesting-after-rain/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000Rain does not make birds. It makes cover, seed and insects, and those make nests. The chain runs slowly, which is why a season is decided months early. Why boom and bust is the normal statehttps://lamedialodge.com/after-the-rains/boom-and-bust/https://lamedialodge.com/after-the-rains/boom-and-bust/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000Bobwhite are short lived and turn over annually, so the population keeps almost no memory. A good year cannot be banked, and one season judges nothing. What the roadside counts actually measurehttps://lamedialodge.com/after-the-rains/seed-and-counts/https://lamedialodge.com/after-the-rains/seed-and-counts/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000A roadside survey is a real measurement and a narrow one. What a fixed route samples, what it cannot see, and how to read an index rather than a census. The first coming of the kingshttps://lamedialodge.com/the-run/first-coming/https://lamedialodge.com/the-run/first-coming/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000How the Nushagak king run begins, why the sonar index misses the biggest fish, and which documents carry the goals the run is managed to. Peak weeks and what they crowdhttps://lamedialodge.com/the-run/peak-weeks/https://lamedialodge.com/the-run/peak-weeks/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000At the peak of the Bristol Bay sockeye run, openings and closures arrive as numbered announcements, and an escapement goal stands behind every one. The late run and the cold waterhttps://lamedialodge.com/the-run/late-run/https://lamedialodge.com/the-run/late-run/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000Coho, chum and pink reach Bristol Bay after the sonar stops. The profiles and the escapement page say what each document still carries of the late run.