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I have not been on Loughborough Lake the last 2 winters, even though it is only half an hour from my home in Kingston. The ice has been sketchy, and I am not religious enough to walk on water............ This winter we have good ice, probably on all of Loughborough, but certainly on one of the spots we fish on the south shore. A buddy of mine has been out a few times, and caught some nice lakers, and he invited me to join him a couple days ago. We had 8 or 9 inches of good ice, with maybe five inches of snow on top, but no slush. We were in 65 FOW according to his graph. I used to own a Vex, did not care for it too much and gave it away, then bought a Marcum LX7, which was a very nice unit but fairly heavy, and I rarely used it, so I gave that graph to a younger fellow who I figured would get more use out of it. So even though it would have been useful to watch a graph whilst jigging for greys, I did not have one. I watched my rod tip instead of a screen........ Going back quite a number of years, I would fish a large dead bait (especially smelts!) on bottom with one rig, and jig a white tube jig on my second rig. Both produced lakers, and it varied by outing whether the fish preferred the meat on bottom or the imitation up higher. Often enough we would see a streak coming up off bottom, reel the bait away, and WHAM! a laker would take the fleeing bait. My buddy reported that white tubes were not getting any interest at all this winter. SO>>>>>> I set up a line with a small Williams Whitefish in silver with a red slash on it and a live minnow, about a foot off bottom, and started jigging with a heavy Hopkins Shorty, silver with a dressed treble. Up and down the water column, banging bottom etc etc, nothing. I switched to a small gold Mister Champ, same thing, no hits. OK maybe they want something different - and I tried a larger Rapala Jigging Rap in electric blue with chrome belly, nada. Then a medium sized Williams Whitefish, with the crinkly half gold/half silver finish. No dice. OK, I switched that up for a medium Buckshot in fire tiger colours with the fluorescent chartreuse back. Nope. In the meantime, my buddy was washing a bunch of his tackle, and the only interest he got was on a small black tube about a foot off bottom. The fish would come up and look, maybe hang around for a minute or so, but no hits. It was a cold day with a brisk wind, and not terribly comfortable, holes kept freezing over, etc etc, and I was thinking it might be time to throw in the towel. So I looked again in my boxes of tackle - I am betting most ice anglers, like me, take a hundred or more lures out with them even though we will NEVER use some of them (like that 2 ounce Swedish Pimple we used in the late 80s for Quinte walleye 🙂) Anyways, I spotted a Sutton West River spoon with the silver back and copper inside, and put it on my snap swivel. I was letting it flutter slowly down to the bottom, when I had quite a vicious strike down maybe fifteen feet. And the fight was on, yeehaw! Because the fish had hit so close to the surface, I had it up to the hole fairly quickly. All I could see was a very thick back and broad tail, and away it went, sounding for the bottom... .....and at that moment, for reasons I cannot fathom, my fairly new, decent quality reel decided to loosen off the drag. By several full revolutions of the dial, what the hell??? The laker was now really screaming to the bottom, while I feverishly tightened the drag back up. Fortunately, it was going down not up, and did not get any slack! Anyways, after several attempts to bring it up to the hole, I finally got it out onto the ice. My lure was JUST hanging from its lower jaw. Weighed on a digital scale, it was 12.64 pounds, and my best trout from Loughborough. And yes, I KEPT it, to EAT!!! The flesh was a beautiful orange, and it had a bunch of smelts in the mouth and belly. That was our only fish. We stayed until 1:00, with no more action. But that one fish sure made my day! 🙂 Doug

Mine was a '65 Pontiac convertible identical to the one pictured 'cept mine was dark green with white converible top and white interior. Riding in this beauty was like driving your living room couch. To this day I wish I'd never sold it.

Well.... go big or go home... I built a smoker capable of holding about 300lbs of meat. The last few weekends, my nephew and I got into processing our wild game as well as pork and beef. Over the 2 long weekends we did up 110lbs of summer sausage, 15lbs pepperoni, 5lbs fresh Chorizo, 12.5 lbs dried Chorizo (7 week wait), 50lbs Willie's pepperettes, 12.5lbs Maple Habinero pepperettes, 12.5lbs Teriyaki pepperettes, 25lbs Homey BBQ, 30lbs moose sausage in hot Italian, mild Italian, and a new one to us, Philly cheese steak (will do this one again). To top it off, about 50lbs of brats. After all the processing we had 9lbs of cubed bacon left over. It got a 7 day cure and double smoked.

First and only brand new vehicle I ever bought for myself. Wish I still had it.

Ever since I was young I was always a fan of driving big boats as opposed to some of my buddies who were into muscle cars. With 3 kids I mostly owned 4 door Buicks, probably more LeSabres than any other model but the nicest one I had was a Park Avenue Ultra. Some of them were strictly summer cars while having a winter beater and always a 4x4 pickup year round. Nicest car I ever had by far though that I bought from a mechanic buddy in the late 80's's was a '73 Cadillac Coupe DeVille with a Fleetwood Brougham d'Elegance package. Barry had completely redone the interior in a brushed velour that drew constant comments from onlookers, sitting in those front Captain's seats was more comfy than any furniture I had ever sat on. With a 502 engine it had tons of power and just about every option available including auto dimming headlights and coil over airbags in the rear. Even though I never drove it in the winter eventually the frame in spots got past the point of doing any more repairs on it and I had to scrap it even though the body was till pretty good. Similar to this photo with the same wheel covers but with the super wide whitewalls, that car was a real looker that I loved driving for the dozen or so years I had it. Even drove it to Kipawa one year and rented a boat from Alwaki lodge. Got stopped by the QPP about 5 miles from Kipawa, I was barely speeding but the cop told me he really just wanted to take a good look at the car lol. For years every time I went up there Mary the lodge owner's wife would comment on it as it was parked in their lot for the week.

A 1969 Firebird, dark blue, white interior/convertible. Loved that car until family came and had to sell it.

I had 2 favorite cars. First was a 73 Cutlas with the 350 Rocket for a motor. A lot of high school memories with that car. One story, working at a gas station, I got to know the OPP guys quite well as they always got gas here. Working midnights, one buddy cop came in with a couple spray bombs of green paint. He told me to get the rear quarter panels painted as there was an APB on my car. After high school, I owned a 1981 Subaru Brat. That thing was bomb proof! I raced it on weekends, spent Monday getting it back together so I could get to work, only to race it again the following weekend. I even made Petersons Offroad Magazine with it! (these are just images off the net).

Beautiful ride for sure smitty, they sure don't make cars now the way they used to.

Good to see.. meanwhile idiots like me drive 19 hours for a shot at one.. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6642147

Wow !!! I wouldn't know where to start...eating that is..

That cold snap turned everything upside down!

Well I'm torn as to my favourite as there were a few but these two are the standouts. I learned to drive in my Uncles fully loaded 1976 Grand Prix, man this car could move. This is not the car but it was exactly the same colour scheme that he owned, T roof and all. Once I was a licensed driver my Mom gave me the keys to my late father's 1972 Ford Torino that as a high schooler I pimped out as best I could including L-50 slicks on Baby Moon rims. Man I loved that car! This is not the actual car but it was much the same as this one, right down to the colour. I'll leave my 1978 Olds Delta 88 for another day, but boy she not only floated down the highways and biways, she could also accelerate like a rocket.

One of many favourites. About 12L per 100. Parked it and the gas savings paid for my next car The black bullet. 2005 Buick Allure cxs. 3.6l. If you punched it at 50k it would walk sideways.

2 things 1. i owned one of those premiere ice rods and hooked into a big trout and the lack of butt end nearly broke my arm after fighting it through multiple runs. I said "never again" and literally bought a new laketrout ice rod on the drive home. 2. Trout are the worst for deciding to but their heads against the ice. Its almost like they know they can knock the lure out of their face. I keep my drag stupidly loose when i get them up top. The buggers can be a handful to land. Heck last weekend I had one roll itself up in my line to the point that I could no longer land it head up, so i tail grabbed the thing to bring it up backwards, once i got it up on the ice I began to try unwind the frigging knot it had tied itself into and sure enough the thing went nuts and somehow managed to find the hole and take off again before it was unhooked. I got two fights out of one fish 😄

So I get lots of recipes through email and I save the ones that look interesting and I might want to check out in the future, the folder is quite large lol. In the last couple of months I've signed up for A Southern Soul and get almost daily emails. This one recipe caught my eye right away so I printed it out and made it the next day. I've now made it 3 times in the last couple of months and it's gone over great with family and friends. I mentioned to my daughter early last week that I was making another batch up and before I could finish my sentence she was going yes please, yes please, when can I come over to get some lol. "Soup was sooooooooo goood!!!!!" was the message she sent me on FB. Of course I've dressed it up a bit each time. I just happened to have some frozen smoked pork hocks I did up way back so one of them went in each of the three batches I've done so far. Once the soup was about done I removed them and put the meat back in. I've also added some bacon to each batch along with at least the half pound of ham called for. One batch I fried up all the cubed potatoes and ham in bacon grease before adding to the soup. I've also added at least a tbsp of thyme to each batch. I've also added extra stock on top of the 900ml carton each time that I just made up with the powder, last batch was an extra 2 cups. I add extra onion and chop the carrots and celery somewhat finer, it mixes in better that way. Extra fresh garlic too of course.The recipe isn't completely clear on step 3, I remove a cup of stock and a cup of potatoes from the soup to mash up in a 4 cup measuring cup and I mix the flour with the half and half before adding it and the sour cream to the mash mix and mixing well before adding back to the pot. At the table I add shredded cheddar and my own smoked paprika to the bowl. The soup turns out great, nice and thick and with bread it's a meal on it's own. It's real thick cold. I use a 6l crockpot and it's at least 3/4 full. Highly recommended and great for feeding a crowd. Cheers https://www.asouthernsoul.com/crock-pot-ham-and-potato-soup/