JohnF

Awright awready. JF

It's easy to stop smokers. Offgassers on the other hand are sneaky. JF

I assumed human offgassing had something to do with the pic of you in the old gas mask. JF

Yup. It died of sunburn. It's easy for us to laugh off the concerns but who really knows if there isn't a solution within our grasp. I'd hate to think that the planet imploded before my great great grandchildren had a chance at living. I'm not so sure my great great great grandchildren will be my kind of folks so I can't be worried about them. JF

I volunteer to help you quarter the pond any day before season's end. I'm an hour away and have hard baits and plastic squealing for more water before season's end. JF

It's not just cows that produce methane as Irishfield should attest, and it's not just humans who expel CO2 that's polluting our atmosphere. The gases corrupting the ozone layer are a whole nuther story but that's for another day. There's enough proof that our environment, including the climate, is changing to give short shrift to the conspiracy theorists in our midst. They can throw whatever spin they want at it, and cast all the silly aspersions they want, but I'm here to tell you, and I'm sure a few others here as well, that the world is different today then in my youth. I can still remember the frontyard rink in the early 50's being ready to skate on before Christmas, and even once in a while before my birthday at the end of November. There was snow for months. Christmas was always white, and it stayed that way until spring. I have no idea what any of that means in the context of today's climate, but there's no question in my mind that the world's a different place today. JF

Seems to me the best idea would be to figure out some kind of containment device that would also serve as a carrier for dry stuff you are hauling to the holes or to carry the fish out. That part is pretty easy - a pail of some sort. The flu is a whole nuther issue. There must be some data available somewhere as to optimal diameter to get the right draw off a certain volume of burning vessel without creating a blast furnace or a CO maker. Ideally something of an accordian nature or something rigid that will double as a travois frame for the hike out onto the ice. The latter might be easier. The insulating collar shouldn't be too difficult to come up with or too heavy to carry. Two flat pieces of light metal which will form into a pair of concentric cirlces with enough space between to house some kind of insulation. Dunno what's best for that but I'd be checking out what's in the insulated steel stove pipes commercially available. A little fabricating work should result in a notched flanged rig that can be flattened out and will fit a hole in the hut roof and kept in place by gravity(???) or duct tape if the flanges are sufficently long. The heat output from the pipe shouldn't be too extreme with a small firebox. That's a fun little project. If I wasn't living in a damned condo apartment I'd be doing some experimenting myself. I'm afraid some of my neighbours might get a tad testy if I start burning minilogs on my balcony here. It's not like I'm doing something socially acceptable like smoking rank tobacco that rises to all the open windows above. Let us know if you come up with a solution. The DIY ice fishermen of the worl will love you. JF

He knows the deer carcass is too heavy to hang from the shower curtain rod whilst bleeding out. JF

Spent a few hours letting a tube lay on the bottom of the Thames near here (Stratford) yesterday. Nada. Where do the smallmouths go when the weather turns cold and there's no water deeper than 4' to be found? I doubt they all emigrate to Erie, if they can even get there. Do they just find a comfy spot between two rocks and hunker down or do they really travel around looking for hidy oles? Enquiring minds and all that. JF

Buy her a Kitchenaid, ya cheapskate. You'd only resent it every time you saw her making some culinary delight with the trolling motor when what you really knew it should be doing is powering the front end of yer boat. And besides, a MinnKota looks dumb on the kitchen counter, unless it's at a fishing camp. Have you bought the stove yet? And the mixmaster? What's holding you up? JF

Deep in yer heart you really know she deserves a new appliance. The extra money on the offer is probably due to her meticulous housekeeping and extraordinary decorating skills. Yer fishability had nothing at all to do with the price on the house. Give credit where credit is due, and then put the trolling motor on that credit card she doesn't know about. We all have them, don't we? That's the win win solution. JF

He could either supply gas masks and ear plugs or limit it to couples if he doesn't know the folks, something like that. I'm sure lots of women ice fish too. The folks who run B&Bull here develop some very nice friendships with guests who return every year. In some cases they get to trust them so well that they even let them use the place when the owner has to be away. The guests just leave the money in the desk and lock the door when they leave, and no gas masks needed. JF

You're right, of course. It's always better to anticipate the worst and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't come to be. My town is pretty small, under 30k, and perhaps has more B&Bull for the number of dwellings than any place in Ontario. We've got the theatre here and it attracts a lot of visitors. Those folks pay as much as $250 for the better B&B rooms but I would guess the average is something like $125-$145/night. Interestingly the B&Bull tend to be located in some of the more expensive neighbourhoods, generally R1 zoning which doesn't allow anything but single family detached, yet for some reason the neighbours tolerate the whole thing. I have to think it's because the operators tend to use some discretion in how they run things. I'll send Cliff a list of things he should consider. The nice thing about what he's proposing is that he doesn't have to invest a lot of money. He can start operation and if he runs afoul of the law (that sounds worse than it really is) he just shuts it down or makes some adjustments. It's kind of a no harm, no foul thang. I've never heard of anyone getting anything worse than a polite cease and desist letter from the town for it. JF

Small B&B's often fly under the radar as long as the operator is smart enuf to be low key. Garish signs, too many cars and noise are the biggest attention getters. Not many municipalities have gotten around to licencing B&B's yet, so at worst you might need to be sure your zoning allows boarders. Even that is often overlooked as long as the operator isn't flaunting things otherwise. The other major complaint is from motel/hotel owners if they think they're losing business. They pay business taxes etc and have a legitimate beef. I'm not sure how many places operate seasonally in Cliff's area but I bet it's quite a few so there's not as much chance of a complaint from that quarter. A small quiet B&B can usually escape attention with a little good judgement. JF

I've heard they like silk sheets and goose down comforters. JF

One of my salespeople used to run a successful B&B here. It's a big deal in Stratford because of all the theatre goers. I'm sure he and his wife would be pleased to share some ideas with you if I ask him nicely. If you want me to have him email you I can talk to him in the morning. I've also got some notes I've been compiling for a B&B course for realtors. Mostly it's stuff to watch out for with gst, income tax pros & cons, zoning compliance, municipal permits, Privacy Act, etc. Probably not anything that will affect you seriously with only one room rented seasonally. Let me know. JF

I suspect that if our govt thought this was a cash cow they'd have created one CO for every fisherman and hunter by now. JF

You could always let Buck take the helm whilst you splash into the water and paddle around with yer nose unerwater looking for the last bass Buck CPRed. Or swim to shore for a little poop 'n run exercise like Buck does. JF

When my wife had some surgery a few years ago the doc showed me how to remove the staples at home using a special tool. He actually suggested doing it at home. I was too squeamish to do it for her but I watched him do it later and it was actually pretty easy looking. I'd be game to do it on myself after seeing it done (as long as my right hand was free), but not on someone else. JF

http://afsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1577/154...PT%3E2.3.CO%3B2 http://www.americaoutdoors.com/fishing/fea...reestyle_2.html http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/243844.pdf I'm no expert, but this topic caught my attention a while back and I started looking into it. As a trained scuba diver I already knew about decompression and barotrauma etc, so I started there. In a nutshell what I learned is that fish don't suffer exactly the same adverse effects of rapid decompression as we humans. Humans have nitrogen bubbles dissolved in their blood under pressure which continue to accumulate the longer we stay at depth (under pressure) and if we ascend too quickly they expand and fizz our blood effectively cutting off blood flow through the body (brain & lungs), and we die if we don't get those bubbles squeezed back down to size quickly. That's what hyperbaric chambers (decompression chambers) are for. We divers can offset the effect of expanding gases by slowing our ascent and even making stops at certain depths for certain lengths of time to allow the offgassing to happen. For most shallow water (rec) divers it's called a safety stop, a few minutes at 15'. In my reading I've discovered that fish apparently do not suffer the same effect of blood fizzing as we humans. The problem for the fish is that the swim bladder becomes inflated as the water pressure is reduced and they can't vent it quickly enough so they suffer the squeeze from within while under reduced pressure, plus they may not be able to properly control their buoyancy once returned to the water so will float up unless they are strong enough to swim against the buoyancy. Even though they are trying to get back down to depth they may not be able to do it. Evidently this overinflation can last for quite a while. It can be offset by piercing the bladder with a needle and releasing the pressure before returning them to the water. The hole should heal. Some fish are less susceptible to the problem than others and if returned immediately (CP&R) to depth should be fine. Others aren't so lucky and thought they appear healthy as they leave the boat may well succumb later. Simply putting fish into a live well doesn't help them at all in this because it doesn't replicate the pressure of the depth they were caught at. The links above explain it better but I've given you a synopsis of what I've learned. Of course I may well be totally wrong. There are probably some fishy biologist types who can explain it correctly. JF

260!!! I'm impressed. Tricky as in you had to suck it back 40 yds with a sand wedge??? JF

Never get in front of 6 cameras then!!!! Like I should talk. More like 8 or 9 cameras for me. JF

Yeah. but what about the fish? It's pretty grungy too. JF

You've probably drained longer approach shots. But there's just something about an ace, isn't there? My son's been a pro since age 18 and in 14 years has never had one. Congratulations. JF

We're not still talking about the Walleye now, are we? JF