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Hmmmmm, I thought you were gonna be 22 this year Joey. Oh well, whichever it is, Happy Birthday to ya Kiddo and all the best in the future Your one of the folks that make this board what it is !!!!

Happy B-Day Art and all the best to ya !!

Thanks for the well wishes folks & I'll pass them on when I get down to the hospital. I'm gonna be taking Mom for a jog around the corridors in her wheelchair today

Have a great summer up north Wayne, and then lemme know if you need some ballast in your boat again once the snow starts blowin on GBay. I'll bring the samiches I'll be solo at Lakair in June Wayne, so if you decide to drop in and want to get out on the water for awhile, I've got a seat for you plus an extra musky pole & all the baits.

4 weeks ago today my 85 year old mom had a "relatively" mild heart attack and was taken to hospital by ambulance. It wasn't real serious as far heart attacks go, but at her age they wanted to be sure and cover all the bases. She spent 24 hours in emergency at Toronto East General and then the next 2 weeks in ICU while they did different tests and stabilized everything. It was determined she had a valve that wasn't working properly, plus one of the large arteries leading into her heart was 80% blocked, so she was transferred down to the heart experts at Toronto General. We had a long meeting with the surgeon who explained everything in great detail and answered every laymens questions we had. As with any operation on older folks there's always the chance things can turn bad in a hurry, but Mom decided she wanted to risk it in order to try and get back to a somewhat normal life, which wouldn't happen without this procedure. Things went well with the valve, but when they tried to repair the blocked artery, it "blew completely apart"......surgeons own words.....and she immediately lost 3 pints of blood thru the ruptured vessel, her heart stopped, and so did her breathing. Only by the unbelievable skill of the 2 surgeons and their nurses, they were able to stop the bleeding and repair the vessel, and with the use of CPR and whatever else, they restarted her heart and kept her with us. Several very long hours later we were able to have another long talk with the surgeons who explained everything that happened and how they fixed it. He has hi hopes that things will turn out good for her and she'll be able to return to a normal life in the near future. If you haven't gone thru watching a parent in such serious jeopardy it's hard to explain the feeling, but it's been a pretty tough time on all of us. I couldn't even count all the wires, needles and tubes that she had sticking in her, plus 2 breathing tubes in her throat. They've been gradually removing everything from her in the last few days and yesterday they took her from ICU and transferred her to a regular room. Today we went to visit her like we have everyday for a month and I got the best surprise of my life. She was actually sitting at the table reading a book when we walked in. It's hard to believe that only a few days ago she was so sick, and then today she's sitting in a chair and nearly every tube, needle and other ugly device has been removed from her. What a wonderful feeling for me to see her like that. It may be Mothers Day, but I think really it was MY day. She's still got a long way to go, but to progress so far in a week and then get outta bed and into a chair is one HUGE step in the right direction. I couldn't possibly find all the words it would take to describe what a fabulous place Toronto General Hospital is. Absolutely every thing about that place is 110% and I've never seen a group of people more dedicated to healing a patient than I have in the last 2 weeks. Every single person from the bottom of the rung, to the surgeon at the top treated my mom as if she were the most important person in their own lives. Anyways folks, sorry for the long winded post, but I'm just feeling in a very happy mood right now and wanted to share my good news. ........now I just keep my fingers crossed.

Steve, there's a flagpole just before the causeway crossing Chemong Lake and the Canadian flag flying there was in the same disgraceful condition as the one you've posted here, so I contacted the municipal office for that area and lodged a complaint and the tattered flag was removed the next day, but strangely enough, they didn't raise a new one.

A little dab of vaseline on each tab and your good to go for the whole summer. You'll be surprised what a difference it'll make.

Good having folks like you around Pete !! Oh yes, brings back wonderful memories from the 60's ......and a few bad ones too

This is a great discussion but I'd like to ask my question one more time if I may. Most seem to think she did nothing wrong by giving away ONE small item, but when would you draw the line and fire an employee for taking something that belongs to whatever company you work for ?? Is $10 too much, or is it $100, or would you wait till the employee steals $1000 If you work for BPS and a kid sees a small $5 fishing lure that he likes, is it OK for you to just give it to him ?? What about working in Sears and someone sees a nice $30 shirt but says they can't really afford it, would that be OK to give away too ?? Crazy examples I know, but somewhere along the way a line has to be drawn in the sand as to what an employee is allowed to help himself to and in this case the line seems to have been drawn at ZERO tolerance.

Might be closer that you think Holdfast, I saw deisel in Toronto the other day for $1.37 while gasoline was going for $1.22

Yup and they certainly must have appreciated my $$$$ cause I get flyers and small books practically weekly plus I also get email flyers quite often too. I like the fact that they appreciate customers and keep them up to date on deals. Funny thing too, I was in the local Dominion store recentely looking over the magazine section and saw a BPS catalogue on sale for $5.....why would anybody spend money to buy a catalogue to decide what they want to spend money on ??

Garry, where'd you ever get the impression crime stops when you leave the big city ?? I had a brand new boat stolen from me in the "country" back in 86 and 2 years later my buddy had 2 almost new snowmobiles stolen in the "country". My buddies brother was with the OPP for decades and spend a great deal of his time going after country folk who broke into every cottage they could lay their grimy thieving hands on. Another friends son and his buddies were camping in the woods one night and were attacked by some country folks and he had his hand chopped off with an axe. I've got a few more too but you get my drift. Things are definetely better in the country but you sometimes need rose colored glasses to see it all.

I got home yesterday to find a package on the front porch containing the latest Cabellas book. A hard covered catalogue with 1510 pages of products and although I haven't had a chance to go thru it too thoroughly yet, I'm thinking it may contain about everything sold by Cabellas. It's called the Limited Spring Edition 2008 and should make for some very expensive reading Anyone else receive one ??

The actual name of the affliction is onefootitis and there's no cure for it

It's an interesting predicament for sure Cliff, but at what point do you stop promoting and giving raises to folks who steal from you and start cracking down on thievery and call in the coppers. Granted it was only a Timbit......which I luv BTW.......but at what point does it go from giving away freebees and become employee theft ?? Do you get fired after giving away a single Boston Cream, or does it take a box full, or maybe grabbing a toonie from the till to give to the homeless dude in the parking lot ?? Employee theft is HUGE business that we ALL pay for in the end and I have no problems with a company cracking down on it. I may not have fired her for this one incident, but I would certainly make sure that she paid for the theft and that the penalty was worth far more than .16¢ And just because they give goodies to the dog in the Drive-Thru, doesn't make it right, it's still stealing from your employer as far as I'm concerned. Course this is only my opinion.

Maybe if we had a justice system that actually came down hard on thieves it may just deter some of these punks from walking off with everything that's not nailed down. Wouldn't bother me in the least to see a guy do 10 years for helping himself to my gear.

You'll do just fine with that C3, it's not as smooth or sophisticated as many other musky reels but it's tough and will give you alot of years of service. I keep one in the boat for guests and it works well even after quite a few years of service. Reel size is a personal choice but the 6500 is a good choice and it's nice to have the extra line if you need it for any reason. All my reels are either 6500 or 7000 size and I have no problem whatsoever casting with them all day long. Your also right about the longer rod being best for figure 8's and an 8 footer makes it much easier than a short rod as you often need to change up the depth of your bait to trigger the fish to bite. The length of rod for jerkbaits is also a personal choice and varies greatly between anglers and you'll just have to experiment and see what works best for you. I use jerkbaits about 1/2 the time and find a 6' 6" Premium suits me best, but I have friends who prefer 8 footers for the same job. The ideal thing is to have several rods on board with each one being used for a different situation, but that's expensive and sometimes takes awhile to put together. The Compre musky series is an excellent rod and will make a very good set-up when matched with the C-3. I have several Compres myself and like them every bit as much as my Premiers, infact I just bought another new one to use with a new Calcutta TE for my bucktail rod. You may want to try that 65 pound line or go up to 80, but 65 is all I use for casting and have never had a line snap on me yet, but you'll find the 80 will cast pretty well as easy as 65. I might suggest you up your fluoro leaders to 130 pound though. They take quite a beating, specially if your casting shallow water around rocks and stumps and you'll find they get cut up quite often in that situation. Only cost a few $$$$ more but will be worth it in the end. As far as left hand versus right hand retrieve on your baitcast reels, DON'T listen to anyone else cause you'll get a 1000 different opinions. Pick out what feels best to YOU and buy it. You're the one that's using it and only YOU know what'll work best. Best of luck this year and hopefully you'll get yerself a couple bigguns with your new gear

Great day on the water Sugarpacket & congrats on the new PB !! Real good of you to give those boyz a fishing lesson too

Great stuff Mike and good to see you boyz got into some nice fish on the Bay. See you in 10 1/2 days.....but who's counting

Some of us have been wearing that old OFC logo for quite a few years now, no sense in changing a good thing just for the sake of change.

If you need to store your boat outside for the winter, alot of the marinas will shrinkwrap it for you and it could save alot of worry over the downtime it's sitting under the snow. I don't know the prices but a couple years back Bridgenorth Tackle (in Bridgenorth) told me he'd do a 16 footer for $150 but that could ceretainly have changed since then. Another good option for winter storage is barns. I keep my boat safe & dry in a barn north of Peterboro and only pay $150 for the whole winter. There's no heat of course, but it's nice to know it's not sitting under 3' of snow. There's not nearly as much space between the wall boards as appears in the picture, it's just the way the light is shining thru, but it gives an idea of some very cheap storage options that are available.

Thanks for that excellent post Sean and really good to see you & Paul did so well on the weekend. Hay Bay is one of my all-time favorite fish'n holes anywhere in Ontario and you've got me pumped now...only 10 more days to go before I'm there myself on our annual pickeral hunt.

Thanks Jamie, that's interesting, I wouldn't have thought a fish as big & aggressive as a 100+ pound tarpon would be leader shy.

sheesh, I thought someone was giving away free eavestrough spikes Maybe I'm just gettin old

Jamie, every report I ever read about huge tarpon talks about them wearing thru the fluoro with their rough mouths, so is there any reason nobody ever seems to use wire leaders ?? I also watch that Pro Tarpon show on the tube the odd time and they lose quite a few in the same way it seems