lew

Your baits look excellent BassAsin Colorado & Fluted blades are good but they hold the bait higher in the water column, whereas the Willowleaf will allow your bait to run at at deeper level and that's often what your looking for. I carry alot of bucktails with willowleafs in my boat and their excllent for when you want the bait to run deeper. The smaller profile of the blade doesn't hold the bait up high like the other styles of blades. Folks that stick with only one style of blade miss out on alot of fish.

Dirk, congratulations to you and your wife on the birth of your 1st child, she's beautiful. You've just started on the greatest journey of your lives !!

You'll like that new motor Mike, those Merc 4 strokes are excellent engines !!

Sorry for bringing the curse down on ya Brian, it wasn't my intention, but I've got a couple snow shovels sittin in the basement all clean & shiny if you need to borrow them

Nuthin worse than snow in April, specially when you've had a taste of spring Cold & windy down here today, but at least none of the white stuff is left.

Thanks for your responses everyone.

I spend alot of time fishing at night and often have many miles to run back to the dock in total darkness after midnight, so rather than holding a million candle power flashlight all the time like I do now to watch for other boaters who don't like to use lights I thought I'd permanentely mount a floodlight on the bow of my boat, with a dash mounted switch, to make things easier. I know it's legal to have bow lights for when your coming into the dock after dark, but someone told me it's against the law to use them while travelling out on the main lake because they can make it difficult for oncoming boats to see your red/green marker lights on your bow. Anybody know for sure if were allowed to use headlights while underway ?? I'm thinking something like this, but it may have to be elevated somehow to shine over top of the troll motor when it's stowed.

Your 100% correct boatman. I've posted this picture before but it illustrates exactly what your talking about. This is my dad in his 15' cedarstrip about 1955 and not only is the steering wheel on the port side, it was also located in the back seat of the boat which was quite common back then. The motor was a 25 HP Johnson Seahorse ....that was actually green but came out brown when the picture was colored....but you can see the controls were actually 2 different levers. One was for F-N-R and the other was the throttle. You can also see the pully on the bottom of the steering shaft and the steel clothes line wire that connected it to the motor. Gotta luv the good ole days

Good that you were able to attend Joe, and sadly, this is something that's happening far too often lately.

The dealers paying for the 1st tank for me Glen and then it's my $$$$ after that, but I'm old school and still work in feet, pounds & gallons, and it definetely sounds cheaper when you only need 33 gallons compared to 152 litres Thanks for those other links fellers, some useful stuff there.

Thanks Cliff, I figured I was pretty close.

It's funny cause I really enjoy eating fish, specially a shore lunch, but I just don't have the heart to kill anything, so I seldom have any. I don't mind going out and doing all the catching, and as long as someone else does the killing I can totally pig out on fresh caught & fried pickeral. hmmmm, now that were on the subject, how many days left before Tombstone Rock in June ??

My new boat holds 40 U.S. gallons & I'm thinking that is equal to roughly 32 gallons Canadian. Am I correct ??

Last trip across the border for me was 13 years ago and I won't be bothering with a passport. Still got waaaaaaaaaay too many corners of Canada to explore yet

So if you CAN keep fish in a livewell and NOT stress them, what's the point of your entire thread, cause I thought you were concerned about stressing them by keeping them for the picture taking ??

I find it interesting that you twice mentioned concern about stressing fish, yet as a fisherman your obviously not concerned about the stress your putting on a fish by jamming a bunch of hooks in his face and yanking him outta the water I'm sure that's more stressful than sitting in a livewell or having a quick picture taken.

Just because someones holding up 2 fish, why does that mean he slaughtered them ??

I've been fishing for about 55 years and in all that time I spent the most hours in a boat with my brother Ed, and have absolutely no idea how many fish we boated together, but it sure was alot over the decades, but one fish will always stick in my mind the most. Apart from all the normal times we spent fishing together every year, we always took off the day after Labor Day for a week long trip after everybody had gone back to work after the summer and every year we went to a different place. In September 06 we went to Lakair on the West Arm of Nippissing for the week and had an excellent time, and on our last day there we decided to head out for one last time before we headed home the next morning. We ran down the lake to a favorite spot of mine and within 10 minutes I got this musky and Ed netted it and took this picture. A big electrical storm was moving in, so about an hour after this fish was caught, we headed in to avoid the lightening. My brother died a few months later and this turned out to be the last of our camping trips and also the very last fish we ever caught together after 55 years as a team. Every time I look at this picture I think of Ed and all the great fishing trips we had together, and I spose if I could ever have one moment in time back, this would probably be it. Ed was also an OFNer and went by eddyk

Happy B-Day my friend and all the best to you !!

You really DO need help

You can rent the saw for a few $$$$, build a stand with some scrap 2 x 4, and a torque shouldn't be needed. It's a lot simpler job than you think unless you want it welded. Just a thought

Happy B-Day young feller, and nice to hear it was a goodun.

Navy 1964 - 1967 HMCS Annapolis

Signed sealed & delivered Ron

Bald Eagles are one of the most beautiful birds anywhere and it's great to see them making their way into the Kawartha region and every year there seems to be more of them. Here's 2 different birds I was able to get pictures of last summer near Peterboro. There were a couple others there too but I wasn't able to get pictures of them. They were both large & brown but I don't know if they were young birds or females