grt1

When the Red Lake Fall Classic was first announced I wanted to participate in some way, so I joined the organizing committee. I spent 5 years on that and it was extremely rewarding and frustrating. It was rewarding by getting to meet a pile of new anglers and learning some of their secrets to catching big fish and it was frustrating in the way the local business community would not support it .

After the time on the organizing committee, I started fishing the tournament and have had a number of partners. I have had a great time fishing with new friends and my family members during the tournament. I have a competition for bragging rights with my oldest son as to who finishes the highest in the standings (I've never beat him) and the whole season leading up to the tournament every guy you meet on the lake one of the questions asked is "are you doing the tournament this year?"

Even though it costs $350 to enter and probably another equal amount for gas and minnows on the tournament days, I find it a relatively cheap ways to meet and make fishing friends.

good one

Four Mexican big-game hunters were fined a total of $80,000 today after they were caught at a local airstrip trying to export three polar bear hides and skulls and narwhal tusks without proper permits.

The four men pleaded guilty this morning and paid their fines in cash.

Defense lawyer Evan Roitenberg, who represented three of the men — a 67-year-old man and his two adult sons — described his clients as "gentlemen of means," who had simply made a mistake by trusting an outfitter who promised to provide all necessary permits.

The four men came to Canada March 15 from Monterey, Mexico aboard a private jet, after paying $35,000 each to participate in an Arctic big-game hunt.

The four were arrested in Winnipeg March 31 when their jet was refueling en route back to Monterey.

Environment Canada wildlife officers had been tipped that the men were removing polar bear hides without the proper export permits and were waiting for them at the airport.

Hector Martinez, Sr., 67, is a property developer in Monterey, Mexico, where he also owns 26 ranches. Court was told that he is an enthusiastic hunter who travels the world in search of big game.

The other three men charged were Martinez’s two sons, Hector Armando Martinez, 38, and Alejandro Martinez, 35 — also from Monterey and who work for their father’s property development firm — and Martinez’s godson, Gerardo Rodriguez, described as a small-business man in Monterey who is also a silent partner in a Vancouver restaurant.

Federal prosecutor Erin Magas told court that the polar bear hunt was legal. Local hunters in Nunavut are issued tags annually to allow them to hunt polar bears, which they can hunt themselves or sell the tags to big-game hunters who travel to the north from all over the world.

However, a separate export permit is needed to take polar bear hides out of the country, which Magas said involved an international convention designed to monitor the polar bear population and determine how many should be culled every year.

Rodriguez, the senior Martinez and his son Alejandro had gone to Resolute Bay, Nunavut, to hunt polar bears, while Hector Armando Martinez and two other Mexican men had gone to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut to hunt musk ox.

The three men each shot and killed a polar bear and had been provided a territorial export license to take the hides to Edmonton to a taxidermist. Court was told that they believed the taxidermy fees were too high and changed their plans to take the hides directly to Mexico, flying to Winnipeg where Hector Armando Martinez was waiting for them after he had finished hunting musk ox.

The Environment Canada wildlife officers, along with officers from the Canada Border Services Agency, searched the jet and found the polar bear hides and narwhal tusks. Without the proper export permits, all the items were seized.

Magas told the court that even with proper export permits, the Mexican government does not allow the importation of mammals or mammal hides into its country and the four men would not have been legally allowed to bring them into the country.

Magas said that Martinez Sr. had a 1994 conviction in the U.S. for trying to smuggle wild exotic animals into Mexico, including an African lion, three tigers, a bobcat, three black bears, two jaguars and a leopard. He pleaded guilty to that offence and was fined $10,000.

Roitenberg said the men relied on the outfitter who provided them with an export permit to take the hides to Edmonton, but they also believed that was sufficient to get the hides out of Canada. He said what they did was wrong but not intentional.

Roitenberg said the senior Martinez is an advocate of animal and wildlife protection, adding that among his 26 ranches in Mexico, some were dedicated as game preserves.

The four men paid their fine in cash and left the courthouse early this afternoon, heading to the airport where the private jet was waiting to take them back to Monterey.

The court was told that the $80,000 in fines would be directed to a federal program, the Environmental Defence Fund, which allocates money to environmental groups around the country.

The polar bear hides and narwhal tusks were forfeited.

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we still have around forty inches of ice beside my house, so our ice out may be the second week in may (if we are lucky)

when the ice goes, the first thing i go for is northerns, got to sit on the shore and try to get them when they come in to the warm water bay for spawning.

if that is what is going on your tshirts, i need a few.

i will NEVER buy another boat with CARPET , it is a really dirty way to go. it never comes completely clean and grows mold if left wet. Vinyl is definately the way to go.

looks like it was designed for the wild rogue camoflaged pike

just checked the weather forcast, they are calling for another 10-25 cm of snow tonight and again tomorrow, just gotta love this March Madness.

doing a couple trips to Eagle Lake this year to join my buddy from Calgary at his camp. It's kind of the dead sea compared to the red lake area but if we get a fish or two it's worth the companionship.

when i was lookiing for a depthfinder i checked all the big stores (cabelas, bass pro, wholesale sports) and they all told me, without exception that they sell humminbirds, ten to one over lowrance. they say they get better service and the humminbird has more features for your hard earned dollar.

I reallly had my heart set on an HD7 but after listening to these guys i went to humminbird and it had the side scan on it. to be truthfull , i was disappointed in the side scan and use it seldom but when i get on a reef, i give it a try to see if it is showing where the outcroppings of rocks extend. that hasn't worked very well but i keep trying it (maybe i'm just a litlle slow on the uptake).

the unit i bought, i got at a small mom and pop tackle shop in winnipeg that regularly beats the prices of the bigger store and it was in the $1300 range.

good fish, we need all the inches we can get.

i have carpet in my boat and i would never,never,never buy another boat with carpet . it is really hard to keep clean and gets mouldy fairly quickly, go the with the vinyl

we don't have fedex up here but we face the same problems with purolator, they will not deliver to any address that isn't in a town or not on the main highway. they will not go down sideroads so when i get something shipped i have to get it delivered toeither a gas station in town or wait for them to finish their daily delivery and then they drop off the undeliverable packages to their agent in town.

kinda pisses me off considering you are paying for door to door delivery.

the boat and fishing show for our area is at the end of the month in Winnipeg, good for me that i'm scheduled to work that weekend. the wife would probably be p.o.'d at me if i decided to go and spend money on more fishing tackle. she says i don't use the stuff i have downstairs in the basement so why would i want more. she doesn't realize you just cant have enough tackle.

I did get a good deal on my boat lift at one of the boat shows a few years ago, so if you want to really spend lots of bucks the boat shows are definately the place to go

i've got a wood stove downstairs that i use when the temp is above -10 to heat the house. i have a forced air oil furnace for the lower temp days and when we go away, i also have a zero clearance wood fireplace in the living room that we use occasionally. i also have electric baseboard units in alll the rooms but haven';t used them in 15 years,

the oil furnace cost are fairly heavy since we seem to be paying over 1.20 per litre of oil up here. 1/2 a tank is over 700 bucks and i use about that amount every month in the coldest part of the winter.

my neighbours have propane heat and they whine about their costs too, i guess we are never satisfied .

but i have to agree, carrying, splitting, then carrying again the wood gets old in a hurry and harder as i age.

I watch this show and sometimes he has pretty good tips on it, but i agree, he is a running commercial about everything he uses. this gets a little old real quick.

well, i finally got to the point where the smokes didn't taste good so i had my last cigar on the way home from work on Jan 16 at 1am. so tonight it has been 9 days without smoking and it really wasn't too bad, just the odd twinge and i have put away 10 dollars a day for every day i havent bought any. tonight i come home from work and my neighbour who just came home from mexico had come over and brought me a package with 5 cuban cigars and one that has 4 cigars from mexico. what a bummer, i just know i'm going to get into them it will just be a matter of time. hopefully it won't put me back in the smoking trend again.

I was looking at a news article on the winnipeg free press site and when i wanted to forward it to a buddy i hit the email button and did the process for that.

But i noticed all the other buttons on the top of the article, Twitter, facebook were there and i'm familiar with them but what is redditt and tumblr. What do they do and are they really different,

if any of you computer gurus out there can fill me in, i'd be gratefull.

i also went with go-daddy when i did a web site for our unincorporated association and got the domain name registered too. i was quite surprised when they (go-daddy ) called me and offered all the help in the world for free if i was having problems getting things up and running. It was really inexpensive too.

well i haven't read all the posts in this thread i feel that i could respond to some of what i have read.

one poster stated the mayors of most towns make $87,000 a year. in Northwestern Ontario, the only mayor that MIGHT make that would be the mayor of Thunder Bay. As a former municipal councillor, I can tell you the time involved in representing your constituents and various committee meetings easily take up 25 hours a week. A mayor up in our area makes under 15,000 and a councillor makes under 10,000.

What the chief of Attiwapiskat makes is sickening when you look at the size of the community and the number of people on the municipal payroll, (and yes, i have been to Attawapiskat, I was the telephone guy along the James Bay coast for 2 years).

As far as the Idle no more movement, If we attempted to block a driveway let alone a major highway, international port of entry, or mail line we would have our asses hauled off to jail so fast you'd be stunned.

I got some more 3 word slogans for the people doing the blockades, "get a job" "no more handouts" "start paying taxes" maybe this would make the majority of Canadians be more sympathetic to the cause.

i've been looking for an ice auger and today i stopped at one of the sporting shops in town and the gas ones were around 469 to 549 and they had an ice auger that had a battery that was supposed to be good for 40 8" holes on 1 charge, it was the brand name of ION. never heard of this brand and it was 569. anyone out there have any experience with this brand, or electric augers and should i look at one or stay with the gas models?

i'm in for next year

when i do the midnight shift i come home and go straight to bed, sleep till 12-1230 then i';m up until 530 then back to bed until 1030. it seem to be the only way that found that works for me. the only thing is that my midnight shifts go for 5 days then i have 5 off. it seems that it takes 2 days for me to get back to normal and for my eyes to stop burning. BUT, i'm 66 and old bodies don't seem to adapt well as younger ones do.

my dad once told me that quitting smoking was easy, he'd done it hundreds of times.

I'm in the same boat as you I should quit as the drs have told me i got copd. but it is going to take a lot of will power and perserverance.

i quit many years ago and all i did was put away the cost of 1 pack of smokes a day, that was abot 5 bucks, at today's rate, i would be putting away 10 bucks a day and watch my money grow.

I think this is the route i'll be taking, at least this way i can put money away for next season's minnows and boat gas.