OhioFisherman

You have to consider some of the challenges brick and mortar stores face? The bigger the box? Location, staffing? http://www.chroniclet.com/news/2015/08/14/Cabela-s-Avon-land-deal-exceeds-3M.html It cost the Cabela's store in our area 3 mill just for the land, prices have to go up for them to build and maintain a shoppers paradise? An ebay store may be the way to go? How much of that tackle sold in those big box stores is actually made in North America?

My son said gas went up 20 cents a gallon for Harvey and another 10 cents a gallon for Labor Day weekend, and now Irma is on the way!

No idea if people still use them, but I made my own pony head jigs and sassy shads worked well on them, for bass or crappie. Their hog frog made a good trailer on a spinner or buzz bait.

One of the Amish sawmills near me used wood that wasn't high quality to make wood pallets, another place near me ground up wood pallets to make mulch, they even dyed some of it. Some of those sawmills had mountains of sawdust, now it gets loaded into big dumpsters and is used to make wood pellets for pellet stoves? Some now do the same with their slab wood. http://www.woodpellets.com/heating-fuels/pellet-processing.aspx

For the most part you have to go to the lower half of the state here where muskie lakes are more common to find really big suckers or chubs for sale, most of those lakes also have a lot bigger catfish. The sucker spawn and walleye spawn are pretty close together here, I think they adapt to eating them.

Suckers will work for walleye in the summer here on Lake Erie, walleye seemed to be all I could catch on them, the smallies had a preference for golden shiners or emerald shiners, but the emeralds sold here were usually too small. I have never seen a bait store near the lakefront here selling suckers, it was catch your own.

Well I would call that a good trip! Nice work!

You're probably right on the zinc phosphate screws Dave, I bought whatever Home Depot was recommending at the time. Last time I was able to do anything like that they seemed to be pushing stainless steel deck screws. Since my deck was around my pool I cut deck boards and spaced them to use for balusters for a little more privacy.

No idea how your lumber prices compare with ours stateside, but there was an article in the news here about lumber prices being high before Harvey hit because of all the new construction. Years ago I built a deck around my pool, i used 4x4's with 2x8's to attach the deck boards to, with a lot of people and stuff on it at times I didn't want issues. Back the galvanized deck screws were the norm, after 15 years or so taking it down? They all snapped off from corrosion.

Condolences.

I don't think you could squeeze a cord of wood into a pickup truck without some pretty high ad on sides on it.

http://www.cleveland19.com/story/35996824/how-to-avoid-buying-a-flood-damaged-car A lot of them flood damaged cars will turn up on the market?

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/08/31/Large-concentrations-of-antidepressants-found-in-the-brains-of-Great-Lakes-fish/5331504193020/?utm_source=fp&utm_campaign=ts_pi&utm_medium=16

October used to be a good month for me smallie fishing on Lake Erie, getting good enough weather and finding them could be a problem.

Too much risk of running into problems on big water with a canoe for me.

LOL, we always tried to time our September trips to PAB to hit right after the first real cold spell, it seemed to signal the fish to feed, it was almost always mid to late September. This time of year here we are usually still dealing with the dog days of August.

Temps here in tropical Ohio are below 70 for the next few days, well below normal for this time of year here. Just guessing it is cooler up there, will the bite start early?

The last couple of winters here have been very mild, the Amish sawmills in the area are having a glut of slabwood, I got 6 cords delivered a couple of months ago for 425 bucks an early season sale! Never saw it advertised like that before.

That Ash Borer will probably be a problem anywhere there are ash trees, it is sure a problem here in Ohio, you can look at a tree line and spot the Ash trees, they are the ones dead or dying, they have restrictions here on transporting Ash, some counties don't allow it.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/08/29/Houston-mayor-imposes-curfew-to-prevent-looting/6931504054085/?utm_source=fp&utm_campaign=mp&utm_medium=1 Up to 20 years in prison for looters in Texas.

Old, really no idea, but if business and industry stops investing in that area they will have to go somewhere? This is really nothing new? http://www.wxresearch.com/almanac/houflood.html By my count over 100 flooding events in that area since 1954? doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity? Grant the scale is different, but suppose Global Warming is the new reality? Any area of our countries can have a national disaster, but why put millions of people in an area known for them? and it would seem a lot of them don't even have flood insurance? http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/28/half-houston-homes-businesses-hit-by-flooding-may-be-uninsured.html

I can understand being attached to an area, family ties, work, etc, but this is their 3rd major flooding event since 2015? When do you say enough already? http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/28/news/economy/hurricane-harvey-economy/index.html

https://mffp.gouv.qc.ca/english/publications/online/wildlife/fishing-regulations/general-regulations/catch-possession-limits.asp Evidently you can catch and keep?

One of our local news channels says Houston got more rain in 72 hours than we have received in 9 months! It's hard to imagine that amount of rainfall for me.

Over the years I had a total of 3 GM Astro - Safari vans with a 4.3 v-6 which had similar torque numbers. They were fine for pulling my boat (roughly 1500 lbs total weight, b/m/t and gear). They could handle, barely, pulling my tandem axle utility trailer loaded with a cord and a quarter of fresh cut slabwood ( roughly 5000 lbs ) 20 miles from the sawmill home. To pull a 5500 lb trailer around Canada? you are going to want at least a mid sized v - 8, a diesel might be better. I have a 2500 series GM van with a small v-8, no doubt that it would pull a 5000lb load better, but if I had planned on pulling a weight like that around regularly I would have gone with a bigger motor. Those little motors have to work hard to pull weight.