kickingfrog

Boy we sure are a tough bunch aren't we?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nation...article1354885/ Mark Hume Vancouver — From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Nov. 06, 2009 8:05PM EST Last updated on Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009 3:02AM EST .The federal government's fight to save the West Coast's dwindling salmon stocks is run from a glistening 18-storey office tower in the heart of Vancouver's financial district, where, despite a $250-million budget and the best work of more than 2,000 employees, the battle is being lost. On the shores of Vancouver Island's Great Central Lake, in a clearing they hacked out of the forest by hand, Bruce Kenny and Carol Schmitt think they know why British Columbia is losing that fight and is having some of its worst salmon returns in history. And they say they know how to fix it: by adopting a model perfected by the aquaculture industry, which has learned to grow its young fish more slowly during the first year. The approach relies on producing fewer, but healthier, salmon that have a vastly improved chance of surviving in the ocean environment. “We truly believe the first brick in the wall was wrong when DFO built its hatchery program. We should correct this,” said Mr. Kenny, commenting on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans 32-year-old strategy for bringing back salmon runs. DFO's Pacific Region has many responsibilities, but the protection of B.C.'s salmon resource is paramount. In recognition of that, DFO launched a special hatchery-based project in 1977, known as the Salmonid Enhancement Program. SEP's goal: to double B.C.'s salmon stocks. SEP releases more than 400 million juvenile salmon each year, from 23 major and about 300 small hatcheries. It has an annual budget of about $26-million and is supported by 10,000 community volunteers. It has had some tremendous successes (as recently as 1996, SEP helped boost the Skeena River sockeye runs to record levels), but the trend for B.C. has been steadily downward for most of the decade. SIMON HAYTER Carol Schmitt holds a tray of precious salmon eggs at the Omega Pacific Hatchery in Central Lake near Port Alberni. . The crisis was brought into sharp focus on the Fraser River this fall, when the sockeye run collapsed so completely that on Thursday Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a judicial inquiry to find out what went wrong. But the problem is bigger than the Fraser. It is coast-wide and it raises the question: Why has B.C.'s salmon catch fallen from over 30,000 tonnes in 1998 to only 5,000 tonnes last year? Many blame the ocean, saying shifts in temperature and nutrient levels have resulted in extreme mortality rates. But according to Mr. Kenny, who with his business partner, Ms. Schmitt, runs a private hatchery, a big part of the problem is that DFO's enhancement program is out of sync with nature. “Look at it this way,” Ms. Schmitt said as she fussed over trays of salmon eggs at the Omega Pacific Hatchery, near Port Alberni. “When DFO releases its smolts in the spring, 60 per cent will be dead within four months. That's not good.” Mr. Kenny lives over the Omega hatchery incubation room, where he wakes to the sound of 1,200 gallons a minute of cold mountain water running through tanks that contain tens of thousands of tiny chinook salmon eggs. He and Ms. Schmitt, whose home is next door, live and breathe salmon, and they learned the hard way about the challenges fish face. “If there's one thing I don't ever want to see again, it's a dead salmon,” Mr. Kenny said. When he and Ms. Schmitt began their hatchery 30 years ago, growing small salmon for the fish-farming industry then just emerging on the West Coast, they regularly experienced horrific die-offs when smolts were moved from freshwater tanks to ocean pens. They were working with chinook eggs provided by a DFO facility and were producing fish the same way SEP was. They moved the young fish from fresh to saltwater when they were about eight months old – at a stage known as S-0, for smolts-zero. But unlike DFO, which loses track of its smolts once they are released, Omega kept all its fish in pens – and they got to see what happened next. Ms. Schmitt, who keeps the eggs from each female in separate numbered trays, so she can identify the individual mothers, said several months after being transplanted to saltwater, fish began to die. Vibriosis, a prevalent fish disease that causes blood and skin infections and bacterial kidney disease, swept through their crop. They struggled with the problem for years – knowing that if they didn't solve it, their business would be as dead as the fish floating belly up in their pens. Ms. Schmitt says the disease outbreaks were telling them something was wrong with their fish culture methods. But what? “We had to figure this out,” Mr. Kenny said. And eventually they did. “By the late eighties a few of the forward-thinking growers experimented with a concept which turned out to be the biggest single breakthrough for industry to date,” Mr. Kenny said in a letter to the government. “We grew the fish for an additional year in the freshwater hatchery until they reached 50 grams or more. This single change resulted in a more immune-competent, disease-resistant fish; one that is better prepared to adjust from fresh to saltwater, spends less time in the estuary, is less affected by predators such as mackerel, and is large enough to access available feed. This yearling fish is known as an S-1 smolt.” It is a model, he says, that the fish-farming industry quickly adopted. “Had industry not gone from S-0 to S-1, there would be no industry,” he said. “We've spent a lifetime dissecting and analyzing and moving the parts of the puzzle around. And we've learned.” Ms. Schmitt, who has worked in a DFO hatchery, says the government grows its fish too fast. “They bring the eggs into a warm hatchery and they trigger them. A fish that would grow really slowly in nature is doubling in weight every week. … They aren't doing that in nature. It's the increased water temperature, the increased nutrients [in fish food]. It triggers smoltification. It tricks them. They go to the ocean and they aren't ready for it,” she said. Mr. Kenny and Ms. Schmitt say they have been urging DFO to adopt the private-industry approach – which boasts a 96-per-cent survival rate from smolt to adult, compared to DFO's rate of 1 per cent to 10 per cent. Omega has proposed raising S-1 chinook for three river systems on Vancouver Island on a trial basis. It wants to prove its model with a seven-year, $4.6-million project, jointly funded by private and public sources. At DFO headquarters in downtown Vancouver, SEP director Greg Savard, a soft-spoken, silver-haired DFO veteran, says his department is open to new ideas as it struggles to deal with an ocean survival problem that has afflicted both enhanced and wild stocks. But he's not rushing into anything. “We're doing more thinking just on the timing of the release of fish,” he said. “Some people want us to experiment by holding [fish] longer … but some of the data suggests that's not always good. In some places we've done research and it indicates that the fish might be bigger when you hold on them to for a year before release, but they come back earlier.…so you are actually getting fish returning earlier and they are smaller.” But he says poor salmon runs in B.C. reflect a larger ecosystem problem, not a flaw in the SEP approach. He says B.C.'s salmon stocks won't rebound until ocean conditions improve, but SEP is looking for more effective ways to operate. “We are searching for answers,” Mr. Savard said. “If we could do something different that would improve the returns and the productivity of the stocks, we are interested in understanding what that would look like.” What it looks like to Mr. Kenny and Ms. Schmitt is simple – it's the model private enterprise built.

Nice fish!!! Love the fall browns.

Lots of options to buy the additional stuff you'll need/want especially with Cannon. I've been looking on ebay and elsewhere to take advantage of the dollar being up versus the greenback (A strong dollar is not all good, but there are some advantages). I was able to buy a new, brand name flash online from a Canadian seller, paid taxes and all and saved over $300 from what the other retail store had it listed at. Less than 48 hours after buying it, on a Sunday, it was at my front door. Me happy.

No. Remember, this is how the elections are done in Florida.

From the Globe and Mail, the link has some photos as well. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/the-p...article1344673/ Picture Perfect The pictures that changed us A new book edited by Mark Reid of the history magazine The Beaver collects the 100 most important photos in Canadian history and combines them with essays by prominent writers. In this special multimedia version of Picture Perfect, the book's contributors discuss the genesis and impact of some of these transformative images

Just spent some time poking around that site Dan, thanks again. Your photograph had some stiff competition, I'll need to work on my skills, eye and post-processing if I am even going to consider entering a photograph of mine there.

I bet they didn't have enough lifejackets on-board. The question: Why does your car smell like fish? Takes on a whole new meaning.

Nice fish guys. I bet there is a still a little pucker mark on the boat seat.

I have some umbrage with your first sentence, I now have that site saved thank you (Something to do in between arguments here ) I really like your photo. I find some of the HDR stuff a bit overdone, but I think the monochromatic appearance of your photo really works and doesn't come across as over processed.

I knew not takin' piano lessons as a kid was gonna bit me in the butt!

Those are some great shots... the fish aren't bad either.

I can hear the Village People warming up in the background. Now, where is my cheque book?

Cork has always been my preference. However, the quality of cork and the craftsmanship can very quite a bit even in many brand name rods. Cork is becoming harder to come by... just ask the people involved with wine making. Some of the high end rods now have "foam" grips again... lighter, more sensitive blah blah blah... They may be better, but I just don't like 'em.

Oh Oh, it's gonna' cost you big time, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Now to be serious, you can spend a bunch or you can spend a little (don't tell my wife I wrote that). I've used vicegrips to hold dressed hooks, cheap fake feathers from a craft store, sewing thread and nail polish to make flies and such. Cheap way to start to see if you are happy with your results. Don't go whole hog on dressing all of your hooks until you can test some. Sometimes the dressed treble will harm the subtle action of some baits.

Something to read on a Sunday morning.... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/revie...article1335565/ Paul Quarrington Published on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009 3:12PM EDT Last updated on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009 3:29AM EDT My name is Paul, and I'm an Angling Addict. My story proceeds like many another. I began taking little trout from a stream near my parents' house, I ended up spending thousands of dollars battling gear-mangling tarpon off the coast of Cuba. There are many others like me, including, you might be surprised to learn, Ted Hughes, the late former poet laureate of England. I know of Hughes and his angling addiction because his friend – and enabler – Ehor Boyanowsky has written a lovely book about it, Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes. The “silver ghosts” is a reference to their drug of choice, the steelhead. Taxonomically speaking, this species is a bit confusing. It is often referred to as the “anadromous rainbow trout,” that 50-cent word indicating that the fish goes both up and down (and down and up) the river. The fish leaves the stream and enters the ocean, where it gets big. It then comes back upriver, and runs a gauntlet of angling addicts. Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes, by Ehor Boyanowsky, Douglas & McIntyre, 196 pages, $28.95 . Unlike salmon – other salmonids, I should say, as the fish was reclassified into that family 20-odd years ago – the steelhead is not so intent on spawning that it auto-digests. The fish – as silver as chrome metal – remain muscular and acrobatic, indeed, after they've done their procreative business, as they put out to sea once again, there to become even bigger. All of this means, of course, that the steelhead is highly addictive. Boyanowsky – co-author of The Pocket Guide to Fly Fishing for Steelhead, former president of the Steelhead Society of British Columbia, and also a criminal psychologist and professor at Simon Fraser University – details his first meeting with Hughes, at a poetry reading at the University of British Columbia. A discussion of fishing – angling addicts have a way of finding one another – leads to their first expedition on the legendary Dean River. These fishing trips become regular, Hughes finding reasons and chances aplenty to visit British Columbia. Oh, which reminds me: There are, in fact, steelhead in Ontario, plenty of 'em, although some people (and I'm forced to conclude that Boyanowsky is one of them) deny this. The biggest platform for their objection is that a B.C. steelhead “smolts,” which is to say, adjusts its own biochemistry to deal with salt water. Eastern steelhead – which enter the Great Lakes from their home rivers – don't do this, because they have no reason to. The fish are, however, genetically identical. “ Hughes was a private and circumspect man, and Boyanowsky is very respectful of this ” And as long as I'm at it, let me just complain about one other facet of Boyanowsky's, um, snobbery. There, I've said it. He's a very good writer and I'm sure he's an accomplished angler, but from time to time he represents the least attractive of the snooty fly fisherman's biases, that taking a fish on a dry fly is intrinsically superior to any other method. A dry fly sits on top of the water, you see. Other flies sink beneath the surface, and there has been whining and name-calling between the two camps for decades. To me, this is as foolish and wrong-headed as the feuding between Bele and Lokai on Star Trek episode #70. (Both aliens are half-black and half-white, the coloration divided neatly down the middle, but Lokai is white on the right side … well, you get the idea.) Besides, Boyanowsky is not above tying on streamers and chucking them from a rowboat at a moving shoal of coho salmon. Not that I'm criticizing the practice, I'm just pointing out that it goes to show: You do what you gotta do. Mmm. This represents quite a bit of carping on my part, which may just be sour grapes given the wonderful fishing that Hughes and Boyanowsky share. Not to mention the many fine meals and bottles of claret and single malt. One of the most engaging parts of the book deals with the trip to England – fishing the “Major's Pool,” for example – wherein Hughes is more given to considerations of writing, his daily schedule, the essays of Lorca etc. This book is not written for people who are looking for dirt on Ted Hughes. Despite his scholarly and poetic achievements (his Collected Poems runs to 1,333 pages), he is associated mostly with tragedy, in particular the suicide of Sylvia Plath in 1963, to whom he was married at the time. Hughes was a private and circumspect man, and Boyanowsky is very respectful of this. If Ted Hughes mentioned a few things as he sat by the river, his friend, for the most part, allowed things to pass without specific mention and note. This is, after all, a book about fishing, and in detailing this we get a sense of Hughes without any really sharp psychological insight. As I say, I count this as one of the book's charms. However, I found myself wondering, often, what lay behind the Angling Addiction. There is some mention of an older brother, apparently quite an angler and nimrod, and perhaps there is some clue as to his “problem” right there. But toward the end of the book, Hughes opens up, quite wonderfully, about fishing and its rewards. He gives us large dollops of wisdom, in particular this sentence: “Any form of fishing provides that connection with the whole living world.” Paul Quarrington is a novelist, musician and fishing enthusiast whose books include Fishing With My Old Guy and From the Far Side of the River. He will receive the Matt Cohen Award today at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.

Yep, 30 plus years ago. Then when I was 7, I stopped using bait, and started fishing like a man.

I've seen one that goes something like... Women adore me... Fish fear me In my cause I'm not sure if either have ever been true.

Near to hear.... I guess that means it was my falt that we didn't get any (in the boat) when I was out with you?

How about New York city? They take much/most of their garbage and dump it in the Atlantic Ocean. Welcome to the new world.

Different zones in Ontario have different size minimum and/or maximums if they apply.

Um Wayne, about that shirt.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/techno...article1332188/ Richard Blackwell Published on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 11:22AM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 12:01PM EDT .The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will allow internet service providers such as Rogers Communications and Bell Canada to engage in “traffic shaping” to control the amount of Web traffic over their networks, but the practice must be transparent to users and take place only when necessary. In a decision released Tuesday, the CRTC said retail customers must be told in advance what means are being used to control Internet traffic, and how it will affect their service. When the big telecom companies sell their services to smaller Internet providers who piggyback off their networks, there must be no competitive discrimination, the CRTC said. Traffic shaping involves slowing down or “throttling” some kinds of Internet traffic – usually downloads – using a process that is similar to allocating certain lanes on a highway to slow-moving trucks to ease the flow of traffic in other lanes. Internet service providers employ the practice, which slows down service to some users, to manage and prioritize online traffic during high-volume periods. Critics say the practice violates the principal of “net neutrality,” the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. In its ruling the CRTC said home customers will have to be told 30 days in advance if their service provider is going to use some form of traffic management, and how it will affect their service. Wholesale customers – such as smaller service providers – must get 60 days notice. The regulator said preference should be given to “economic” measures, such as charging more for higher bandwidth, or giving discounts in off-peak hours. These are more transparent and allow customers to make informed decisions, the CRTC said. Technical methods, such as traffic shaping to slow downloads, should only be used as a last resort, the commission said. Over all, any traffic management practices should be designed to harm customers as little as possible, and used only when there is no other option, the CRTC said. The commission said the ruling “appropriately balances the freedom of Canadians to use the Internet for various purposes with the legitimate interests of ISPs to manage the traffic thus generated on their networks....” Service providers will be able to put traffic management practices in place on retail services without the commission's approval, but if wholesale customers are treated in a more restrictive way than home clients, the CRTC must be asked in advance. The commission noted that service providers can only block content or slow down time-sensitive traffic, such as video-conferencing, with its approval. Tuesday's decision follows the CRTC's rejection, a year ago, of a complaint from a consortium of independent Internet service companies over how Bell Canada managed Web traffic on the network space it leased to third-party providers. The CRTC denied a request by the Canadian Association of Independent Providers (CAIP) for an order preventing the practice. It did, however, require Bell to notify third-party companies at least 30 days before making changes to the performance of the network space it leases to them. The CRTC followed up with a public hearing this past summer. At the hearing, service providers such as Rogers Communications Inc. acknowledged that they sometimes slows down users who are sharing big files, such as movies, in order to make the network work more efficiently for other subscribers. To do so, the providers have technology that examines the kinds of communications that are going on over the network. Critics said this kind of monitoring is an invasion of privacy, and companies could use technology to favour their own services and sites. Rogers vice-president Ken Engelhart told the hearing that the company has no idea who is doing file sharing, what the files are, and does not manage Internet traffic to benefit its own services.

Really? A vertical hold. Sorry I'm an The soak in milk over night is what we've always done. I might try some of these other ideas as well.

Choir, here is your sermon: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health...article1331430/ Leslie Beck Published on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009 8:05PM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 3:22AM EDT The same advice for a healthy heart – eat fatty fish twice a week – might also keep your vision clear as you age. According to a study soon to be published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, increasing your intake of fish can help lower the odds of developing the advanced form of age related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD affects close to one million Canadians over the age of 50, a number that expected to increase by 50 per cent over the next two decades. It's a chronic disease that attacks the central part of the retina called the macula, which controls fine, detailed vision. The condition results in progressive loss of visual sharpness making it difficult to drive a car, read a book and recognize faces. There are two types of AMD: wet and dry. Dry is more common and occurs when the macula thin gradually with age. Wet AMD is caused when abnormal blood vessels grow under the macula. The exact cause of AMD is unclear, but factors such as genetics, family history, cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, excessive sunlight exposure and a diet low in antioxidants are linked with a greater risk. (Antioxidants are thought to protect cells in the retina from the harmful effects of free radicals, unstable molecules formed from cigarette smoke, pollution and ultraviolet light.) Previous studies have linked higher intakes of fish with a lower risk of developing AMD. Research has also hinted that eating more fish may reduce the likelihood of the disease progressing to an advanced stage. In the current study researchers investigated omega-3 fatty acid intake among 1,837 older adults with AMD who had participated in AREDS (Age-Related Eye Disease Study). (AREDS was a randomized controlled trial that found a daily regimen of antioxidant vitamins and minerals delayed the onset of advanced AMD by 25 per cent.) Those with the highest intake of omega-3 fats from fish and seafood – the equivalent of eating about 3 ounces of Atlantic salmon or 5 ounces of rainbow trout per week – were 30 per cent less likely to progress to advanced AMD over 12 years than their peers who consumed the least (virtually none). Inflammation is thought to play a role in the development of AMD. One omega-3 fatty acid in fish, called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), is concentrated in the retina where it's thought to prevent degenerative changes through its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. AREDS2, a five year randomized trial involving 4,000 people, is now under way to test the effectiveness of supplementing with certain antioxidants and/or omega-3 fatty acids on the progression to advanced AMD. This isn't the first study to suggest certain foods can help preserve your vision. Previous research has revealed that a regular intake of nuts, fruits and vegetables can help prevent AMD, while consuming too much fat, alcohol and refined foods can increase the risk. The following foods and nutrients may help keep your vision sharp as you age. Fish To increase your intake of DHA and EPA, the two omega-3 fatty acids in fish, include fish in your diet twice per week. The best sources include salmon, trout, sardines, herring and Arctic char. If you don't like fish, consider taking a fish-oil capsule once or twice daily. If you're a vegetarian, DHA supplements made from algae are available.