kickingfrog

November 10th, 1975.

I have at least one of those somewhere, and at least one single joint one. Those and a frog coloured flatfish used to be my go to smallmouth lure.

Really depends on species and time of year but... Super spook 5.5 inch suspending husky jerk Tennesse shad Hollow body sunfish

That's gotta go on a wall in your home!

Yep. The grouse are safe (from me at least) for a week. Good luck deer hunters.

Generally the farther north/more remote in Ontario you go the less "flushy" the grouse are.

It's close for me. Walleye and grouse are side by each. I think grouse win, only because I don't get them as often.

Not much fishing lately but my brother joined me for a grouse hunt. It was his 3rd day out of 4 hitting the woods for birds (lucky son of a gun). There was more snow on the ground than we expected (3-4 inches). I like a dusting of snow sometimes because I can see what stories have played put in the snow but I was a little disheartened to see that much. We were parked just after sunrise and maybe a hundred metres down the trial a bird flushed unseen form the left. It sounded like it only went up into a nearby tree. As I was trying to work my way through some think stuff I heard it flush again. I brought my gun up but never saw it. Right then a second unknown bird flushed from the ground and I hit it with the bottom barrel. This was after the 1st bird went down. My brother wanted me to pose, I just wanted to get it and find another. Walked a ways and followed a few grouse tracks that crossed the trail but didn't see/hear another for a bit. Second bird was off the trail a ways. I swung on it, used the wrong trigger, but still dropped the second grouse of the day in less than an hour. On the way back we both missed birds that went straight down the trail. A photo of the 2 back at the vehicle. Grey and brown. We drove a short ways and hit another trail. My brother got one but we couldn't find it. With the snow we thought it should have been easy but the wasn't a sign of it, not a feather. Finally I found a fresh track and then a single feather, more tracks and some more feathers, and finally the bird. During the search I flushed a bird but was so focused on looking for the downed bird that I didn't have a chance. I went bushwacking for a bit but didn't see anything. Drove a bit to walk another trail. Another single flush that alerted me and the 2nd bird went down. Photo back at the truck. It was about this point that we realized that just about all the birds had been in pairs. The second bird was S.O.L. after the first alerted us. We saw one more bird, a single of course. It turned out to be Usian Bolt and ran as fast and as long as I've ever seen a healthy grouse go. My brother followed the trail in the snow but it finally flushed and he didn't get a shot. A good day in the bush.

Flipped to the NLCS tonight and it took less than 5 seconds to see the difference in the quality of the production from that junk that we had with tbs.

Not much to do now. Win this game, then worry about the next. Wash. Repeat. Or as Crash would say, "Win one game at a time".

I guess. I buy good cars and treat them right.

Thank you. I wondered if it was hidden under the 'stash.... and now we know the rest of the story.

Classic Lew smile. Congratulations! Ours is tomorrow. Just twelve for us.

An article about cleaning up the locker room after the champagne showers: http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/inside-prep-massive-cleanup-blue-jays-clubhouse-celebrations/

Jays/Rangers is quickly beginning to look like Leafs/Senators.

That was not nice of MLB to not tell the rangers the game was today. Better chance they show tomorrow.

A letter from Johnny Morris: http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CFPageC?storeId=10151&catalogId=10051&langId=-1&appID=87225 In short: Business as usual... for now.

Sail really played right into BPS hand then by building their store in Vaughan minutes down the hwy.

Wonder how things shake out on this side of the border?

Cut and paste from their website: We are sad to announce that after 58 years our Canadian-owned family business will be closing its doors. We want to thank all of our loyal customers for being a huge part of the success of our company. It has truly been an honour and pleasure to bring you great outdoor products at discount prices for all these years. Our old school charm of service and best price will continue until our doors close… so please come in, soak up some history, and pick up a deal on some great gear!

I'll miss them even though I didn't go there more them a few times a year. One less option for us is not better even if you never shopped there. Back when the Sportsman show was a bigger deal a stop at the Le Baron area was a must for me. Pre-internet the catalog was a staple. I always wished for them to upgrade their website...

http://www.nugget.ca/2016/09/19/effort-to-re-establish-sturgeon-spawns-success TIMMINS - It may have taken nearly 15 years, but the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry is reporting that the project to restore the native lake sturgeon population in the region has been a success. “People are catching them on the Mattagami River; it’s restricted to a catch and release, and no catching during spawning, but it’s been a success that way,” said Derrick Romain, the MNRF’s planning biologist for the Northeast Regional Operations Division, who has worked on the Mattagami Sturgeon Restoration Project since its inception in 2002. The project began as a partnership with the MNRF, the Timmins Fur Council and Club Navigateur La Ronde, with financial support from Ontario Power Generation, Lake Shore Gold and Glencore’s Kidd Operations (then Xstrata Copper). They released 52 adult sturgeon from the Little Long Generating Station to locations above and below the Sandy Falls Dam at the start of the initiative. Today, after years of work and monitoring, lake sturgeon have begun to re-spawn, with fish being found in areas of the Mattagami River spanning 340 kilometres, from the Moose River upstream all the way to the Wawaitan Generating System downstream. This is the first successful attempt to restore a sturgeon population by transplanting adult sturgeon from one area to another and then allowing them to spawn naturally. Researchers in other provinces and the United States have attempted, but been unsuccessful, in their efforts to reestablish a sturgeon population using this method. Romain said now that the field work is done in Timmins, Trent University graduate student Maggie Boothroyd is doing her thesis work on the findings in order to further evaluate the project’s success and to determine how the methods used here can be applied in other lakes and regions. “It’s a key research project because it will expand to other segments in the province as this is the only known adult transfer that worked, in the country, the only one,” Romain said. “It particularly pertains to Ontario, because the systems may be different in other provinces, but this one worked. So, the main reason we’re doing this monitoring and research is to determine, why? Why did it work?” He said they are looking at a variety of factors to determine why the project has been so successful so far. One of which is habitat, which will include an examination of the spawning grounds that the sturgeon are utilizing. Questions such as what kind of habitat the sturgeon prefer for spawning and whether they require a single location, or multiple, will be addressed to determine that. Since sturgeon require a large habitat to spawn, Romain said it also important to be sure that any repopulating projects do not isolate the fish, either — or they will not be successful. “These fish used to go hundreds of kilometres, especially when they spawn, the young larvae would drift 100, 200 kilometres downstream,” he explained. “So, if you don’t have the sturgeon going upstream, all the way up, to when they can eventually drift back down, then you’ve isolated the population. Then, once you’ve isolated the population, other things will then come into play like pollution, overfishing, and log drives.” There will also be research into determining if the population is genetically viable and whether there were enough adults transplanted to ensure the population will become self-sustaining. The species, which was once plentiful in the region, began to go into decline sometime in the 1950s. In 2008, it was added to the Species at Risk list as a species of special concern. While there has been no definite determination of what was the main driver for the decline of sturgeon in the region, overfishing, pollution, mining and log drives have been cited as contributing factors. Given the fact that they have only begun disappearing over the last century, Romain said it is imperative this work continues in order to return the species to its natural habitat and improve biodiversity in the area. “They’ve been here since the time of the dinosaurs,” he stressed. “The glaciers and all those historical events happened, but, whenever the glaciers disappeared from here, the sturgeon survived — so they’ve been here for thousands of years. “It’s a species that was present at one point and because of our actions, we’ve pushed them out of certain parts of where they were once quite prominent. Some people think it was bound to happen anyway but in my mind, if we’ve done something to cause that and it’s not a natural extinction, lets say, then it’s our duty to try to rectify what we’ve done.”

An estimated 1,500 Americans illegally and unexpectedly washed up in Canada late Sunday after strong winds blew them across the St. Clair River near Sarnia, Ont. They were participating in the annual Port Huron Float Down, during which people simply float down the river on rafts, inner tubes and other flotation devices from Port Huron, Mich. High winds pushed them to a number of points along the Canadian shore. They had to be rescued by Sarnia police, the OPP, the Canadian Coast Guard, Canada Border Service Agency and employees from a nearby chemical company Lanxess Canada. In the Canadian Coast Guard video below, you can hear thankful Americans praising Canada for its rescue efforts. Link has more info: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/floatdown-sarnia-americans-wash-ashore-1.3730792

Better than the other way around.

Just received two outdoor magazine's hunting annuals today in the mail. September 15th-ish grouse trip north for me.