Bob

Not only do they survive our winters, they grow to quite a size in the wild. They are in the carp family and classified as minnows. Imagine a 30 lb carp classed as a minnow? It's true.

I have the best job in the world. I drink, I sing, I dance and party with a great bunch of people and at the end of the night I get paid. Three nights a week for five hours a night, I'm a karaoke jockey. It's my retirement thing. In the past, I've been in trucking, logging, mining, road and bridge construction, house construction, roofing and a few other things. Been interesting and I've enjoyed almost all as long as I didn't stay long enough to get bored. Always hated office work.

How did I miss this when it was first posted? Must have been busy I guess. It's all already been said and it's truly appreciated. What more can one say? FABULOUS!!! Does this hold some kind of record for most replies?

Apparently there were four in total, Polar bears drowned that is, got caught offshore in the same storm. There are nearly five times as many polar bears today as there were sixty years ago or so. Global warming stopped a decade ago and climate changes. Always has, always will. Some of you older fellas here must remember the headlines and magazine articles from the early seventies that tried to scare us all to death with a new ice age coming? In the twenties it was global cooling and in the thirties the Arctic was melting, the seals were disappearing and all the polar bears and eskimos would starve. Seems they made it ok. It's a crock of crap!!!

A good sized white bucktail tipped with a minnow works real well in this neck o' the woods too.

I used to fish the mouth of Duffin's Creek in the 60s. Don't remember any 75 lb pulls but 15 or 20 lbs in a net was not unusual and fish over 12 inches were fairly common. They're gatting small and scarce in this neck o' the woods lately.

I guess I must be about the only one that yells "Bingo" when a big one hits. I don't play bingo but still use the word to indicate a winner.

I saw one once near Pontypool about 40 years ago and there was a black one spotted several times in this area a number of years ago. The one in this area was seen crossing the tote road north of Massey and a couple of days later, it was seen crossing hwy 108 north of Elliot Lake. They say that they don't come in black but the witnesses say that's what they saw. Dan C. I agree, Bear, moose, cats, no big deal, just another part of nature.

I stand corrected. Been years since I've used one. In this neck o' the woods, I've always had better luck with body baits. Mostly trout here with a few places for pike and bass. Never even thought of hooking up with a tandem rig, might be worth a shot.

Isn't the whitefish the one with double hooks on the sides of the spoon? If so, you'd best remove those too or you could be running too many hooks on your line. I take it the idea of removing the back hook was to keep the hook count legal so if you leave two hooks on the plug and have three on the spoon, it's still too many.

We see bears all over town here. They especially like the dumpsters behind Timmie's, Rotten Ronnie's and colonel Chicken. Just another form of entertainment here. One day I was taking some pictures of a momma and 3 cubs about a hundred yards or so from my back door and a couple of young ladies came up behind me. One asked me what I'd do if momma came after me? I told her that wasn't likely as I didn't constitute any kind of threat to her or the young'uns. Next question of course was "Yeah but what if?" I said I'd run like hell. "But you can't outrun a bear!" Of course my answer was "I only have to outrun you." Young ladies took a head start and I continued taking pictures for another half hour.

I find that as I get older, I get more careful. The reason for this is the fact that I'm looking at more life behind me and less of it ahead so every day is precious. The fact is, though, that everything you do carries a certain amount of risk so all you can do is minimize the risk as much as possible. Will I stop doing things I enjoy because there's risk involved? Never!!!

Doesn't it strike you though, that that rising cost of steel is due to the increase in energy costs to produce the stuff? Then there's transportation cost to get materiel and machinery to the sites, also rising due to the increase in fuel prices. I wonder how much of the production cost on the oil sands is in diesel fuel to run the machines. How much of the profit from these costs goes right back to the oil companies? Sounds like a vicious circle to me. These guys are very creative when it comes to bookkeeping, they can make it look like their profits are actually costs on the deficit side of the ledger. Oil companies have been breaking profit records quarterly for a couple of years now. With price per barrel dropping, steel production costs will drop and eventually the price of steel and so on down the chain. Perhaps they'll have to live with a couple of quarters without breaking records. Personally, I don't think they're losing any money.

They come in to spawn when the dandelions first bloom in the spring. Lots of fun on light gear.

I feel for you guys. I used to drive DVP, 401, 400 to Finch on my way to work. No 407 then and old hwy 7 was slow. I don't suppose there was as much traffic on the 401 in those days but sometimes DVP was a parking lot. Now I see rush minute occasionally and having to wait for 6 cars to go by before I get through an intersection is our version of a traffic jam. Been 35 years since I escaped the rat race and I love it. I can fish and hunt 10 minutes from my door. Am I trying to make you jealous?

Truth? Here are a couple that I found interesting. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=264 The UN has been hungry for a global tax since inception and they figured this global warming scam with carbon tax might work. I had lots of trouble trying to wrap my head around how taxes would cut emissions, especially while exempting developing countries like China and India. (Kyoto) This is a little off the original topic but goes to the same control thing.

I was rather happy today when they predicted a 6 to 9 cent drop on Canada AM. Turns out we saw a 2 cent drop today.

Best time in the world to fish browns. Hint: they'll be looking for worms and other terrestrials that have been washed into the stream and they'll absolutely gorge themselves.

Sturgeon is quite tasty and very non-fishy. Whenever I get the chance, I attend local powwows where they frequently serve up wild game buffets that often include sturgeon. In those cases, a piece of sturgeon is the first thing on my plate. Commercial fishermen count themselves lucky to catch a big hen sturgeon, even though they can damage nets. The eggs are worth their weight in gold.

Seems I've been sorely misunderstood. I wasn't complaining and I wasn't denigrating anyone. I never suggested that the fish was lined either. There were questions asked and I merely offered some biological information and suggested reasons why fish will bite even when they're incapable of digesting anything. I also never suggested that folks should only fish for hungry fish, that's beyond silly. Since no one cut the fish open to see if it had eggs or milt, the discussion about male female could go on forever. The length of the jawline, eye position and lack of a pot belly also indicate male to me, even looking at it the other way up.

The reason that Pacific salmon die after spawning is that their digestive system completely shuts down before they stage at the river mouth. They'll still hit a lure from reflex or anger or whatever but they're incapable of really eating anything. They'll attack a spawn sack and crush it but the thought on that is that they're killing another fish's offspring to give their own more of a chance. Have you ever pulled in a spawn sack that was still intact but empty and you didn't feel the hit? The fish has merely crushed it and let go. Sometimes you get lucky and the mesh gets caught on the teeth and the hook happens to turn the right way. If they're actually on the nest and actively spawning, they'll attack anything that moves too close to the nest and if something actually drifts into the nest, they'll pick it up to move it away. Bottom line is they're not eating anything. Open one up and see what's in the stomach, you won't find a thing. The reason that fish doesn't have a prounounced kype or hook on the jaw is that it's not ripe yet. Give it a week. Those teeth are a dead giveaway for a male fish. They'll get bigger in the next week too.

I stopped by Algoma Mills this afternoon and there wasn't a thing moving as far out as I could see. Not a splash or a roll. I did hear that pinks were in the Mississaugi by the hundreds but I didn't feel like going over to Blind River for pinks. Most years you can manage a couple at Algoma Mills before Labour Day. They are smaller and fewer the last several years and I think it's because there have been too many salmon and they've cleaned up their food supply. Smelt runs are poor and I don't know how long it's been since I've seen an alewife. They'll cycle back just like they did in Lake O. some years ago. I remember all the talk about how few and small the salmon were in Lake O. then and it was attributed to lack of feed. There was lots of talk on both sides of the border about cutting back on the salmon stocking programs.

Nice fish but it doesn't look like a hen to me. Those fighting teeth in the front of the jaws are only grown by the males and only at spawning time. Sometimes they get that big that they look like a dog's canine teeth. If you saw any eggs falling out of that fish, then it would be some kind of genetic deviant.

You can also look at a scenario where you catch a fish in a WMU where the season is open and then to get home, you must drive through a WMU where the season is closed. Not too often that the ministry would get a DNA test done to try to prove you caught them illegally as long as you're within the legal limit. What about a limit from one area transported through an area where the limit is lower? Legal nightmare for the COs and they know it.

I've been watching that for several years now. The old camera was higher definition and easier to look at, don't know what happened there. Got a surprise the other day though, I just happened to look in right before they yanked the camera to clean the lens and I was looking at clouds and a cleaner brush for a couple of minutes.