JohnF

Real men know who wears the pants in the family. Now, if y'all will excuse me, I gotta go iron another skirt. JF

In my good wife's mind there's a clear distinction between a social gathering for civilized adults and a bunch of beer drinkin' fisherfolk partying in a roadhouse. She has no appreciation for the finer things though. JF

Little bro would freak at the thought of posting pics of his gear on the net. He had one home studio in London cleaned out by thieves years ago and is now very cautious. He said it wasn't so bad replacing most of the gear but a couple of special guitars and some original recordings he had stored were taken, including everything recorded by his first road band and all the personal stuff he'd recorded throughout his career. You musicians will sympathize. He started with audio tape when he was just a young teenager in the 60's and lost it all. Now he has everything digitized and backed up. Be careful out there. JF

Sorry. Was just informed by my good wife that we have a social engagement scheduled which she wants to attend. Since she gets two votes to my none in these matters I guess I won't be in London. Have fun. JF

I've sent this to my bro. He's got a basement full of the latest stuff for digitizing, recording, and mixing. He had (perhaps) the first Roland guitar synth in Canada. I forget the model name but it was the greatest thing since sliced bread when it came out years ago. Even my son the bass player is impressed with the thing.... today. Little bro could make his Strat sound like Jimi Hendrix's Firebird, even changing individual strings for new effects. Or make the same Strat sound like a Martin acoustic, or his old black round bodied Ovation which he still says was the prettiest sounding 12 string ever. It was pretty damned cool, even to a tin ear like mine. He's always replacing stuff in his studio and then selling off the old bits. If Matt (my son) hasn't already grabbed the thingy you want, there's every possibility Litlle Bro has one laying around. JF

A couple of us purchased the green CTC boot foot waders and they certainly are durable. The problem is that neither of us can bend over in them. In my case I'd blame it on my fat butt, but Rob's a scrawny little dude and he has the same problem as me. It's rough trying to step up out of rivers and climb banks when you can't bend yer legs. JF

I think it depends on the time of day. JF

Build the track close enuf to the border/Toronto/Montreal and they'll come. Kaybeckers used to be speed freaks, and probably still are, and I know that Nascar has a huge following here in SWO. I don't understand the economics of running these race venues though, how one or two main event races can give a decent return on investment. Didn't Nascar take over the old Cascar series? Canucks are supporting that to a degree. And we've had decent support for various roadracing events but used too many urban street one shot tracks which were fiscally inefficient leading to the demise of CART racing in Canada. That may have had as much to do with mismanagement as the venue though. I remember being very impressed at the turnout that the Nascar stockers got when they came to Mosport for the first time years ago. They weren't really prepped for a road course but it was funto watch. We were running sports cars and formula cars in those days and spent a lot of time at Mosport, but never with the kind of crowds Mario et al could bring out. Of course none of our cars could get air on the back straight either. Perhaps the Grand Prix was the exception attendance-wise. There were a lot of folks there for that but I'm not sure the numbers matched a typical Nascar race day, even the one in Irish Hills we used to attend. Given the huge popularity of Nascar these days I suspect Canada could support a track/event depending on the proximity to the border. It may work in the west as well. They've always been great supporters of speed events, again as long as the venue was close to the border. JF

We've all had good luck with Bare dive wear but when there is a warranty issue it's not always so easy to get service. Perhaps the fishwear dept is better. JF

I don't get in the water anywhere near as often as you, but I use mine hard when I do get out once a week or so. One of my fave spots requires sliding on my butt down a steep wall for about 10' because of the slippery felt soles on my boots and I usually end up climbing up on my knees to get out. So far the worst the waders have suffered is grass stains. The waders are Hodgman breathables with felt soled Hodgman boots that I picked up on sale at Dick's in the States for well under $100. Kinda baggy but very comfortable and durable. So far so good. JF

D'ya s'pose in the pursuit of fiscal responsibility they pay extra to have balloting pencils custom made. I've never seen such scrawny little units. JF

I'm often tempted to ignore elections as an exercise in futility but then I have to remind myself of something obvious. It won't get better if we all just give up. If you feel deeply that the top three have dropped the ball, then vote for one of the others. That vote will be a statement, hopefully that's all, and sooner or later the real leaders will get the message and step up, at least for a while. Guiding a country these days is a pretty complex undertaking calling for broad knowledge and impressive diplomatic skills. Unfortunately the void created by the lack of those abilities has been filled with deceit and skulduggery. Perhaps an obvious swing to the fringe parties despite their apparent shortcomings and inexperiece will send a message to the right people to get involved or just to clean up their act. Of course one can only hope the right people come to their collective senses before we have a repeat of the NDP fiasco of a few years ago, but I'm sure they all remember that time, too. In fairness to them, they tried, but they didn't have the experience or skill to buck the big political machines in the day to day chicanery. And it sent several messages. Unfortunately the wrong one was received. We all decided that it was a mistake to turn away from the red & blue and we bent over and invited them to have their way with once again. We responded to the situation the wrong way. In hindsight we probably should have stuck to our guns until the good people rose to the top again. And I'm sure the "good people" are out there, as dismayed as you and I with what's going on, but feeling powerless to do anything without a show of support, solidarity among the victims of bad governance and sleazy politics. We've all stood back too long letting the politicians have their way with us. What with the folks who ignore the process, those who don't pay attention to the results except to grumble and those who are blindly (dare I say naively) partisan we pretty much deserve what we get. It's time to make your government accountable, not just at election time, but all year long. Call them on it when they make and break impossible promises. Speak up when you see things going astray and if there are enough voices each time, sooner or later the results will show. We can't give them a free hand for several years at a time and then slap them on the wrist at election time. The damage is already done by then and we invariably replace one bad government with another. We need to become a country of watchdogs barking at the first sign of trouble. Start demanding accountability the day after the election and every day until the next election. And don't expect instant results. It took a long time for politicians to screw up the country as thoroughly as they have and it could well take even longer to fix it, but shouldn't we at least try? There's no place left to emigrate to any more. We're the last resort so we'd better get it right, and soon. Get involved!!! It's your country and the legacy that your kids will inherit. Sorry for the diatribe. I just wanted to get that off my chest. Happy Election Day everyone JF

My wife was with me. She hits me when I drool over bikini clad beachbunnies. Normally I just duck and cover, but it's our anniversary. JF

Well, she's been known to refer to me as a big turkey. Is that what you meant? JF

Mother F'n Card Mangler. It was acceptable parlance, even in mixed company, as long as the female contingent (or at least those of tender sensibilities) had experience with said mfcm. JF

Mine still looks frozen. We're doing the family thang tomorrow. I'm doing some of the food prep tonite so I can get out fishing for a few hours in the morning. Got lotsa beer and plenty of veggies to clean. What else does a feller need for a great Saturday nite? - Never mind!!! It's our anniversary today so I'm being nice to her. After all, she's endured me for 40 years. JF

Took a drive up to Goderich & Port Albert today. Not much coming in yet according to the fisherfolk I asked. A few catches out at the mouths but not upstream. As one old feller put it - "Weather's too good. They like it nasty." And good it was. 26 degrees in the sun, girls laying out in the sun, kids swimming at the beach, teeshirts & shorts were the order of the day. JF

Redhorse???? JF

My first job in data processing was feeding cards into a 360/20. Anybody remember what MFCM really stands for, or the agony of having a handful of cards squirt all over the floor, or trying to reconstruct a machine-mangled punch card? Those were the days, my friend ..... NOT! JF

Once I get my thumb in his mouth I run out some line and tuck the rod and reel up under my left armpit so my right hand is free to remove the hook(s) and take a pic. The rod goes for a swim once in a while but I haven't lost one yet. JF

Hey. I'm a realtor. We thrive on rejection. One of the problems with shooting outdoors is bright sun. I can't even begin to see what's in the screen when I shoot on the river, let alone check the focus. With my better cams there are more focus points and better lens elements so it's hard not to get clear pics. I can't help the focus part but I'm interested in hearing how the rest of you display the fishy to best advantage. If I saw that pic with no description I'd guess him to be about one foot long unless I started calculating the length of the leader at 8". Some photos make a 12 incher look about 18" because the fish is held towards the cam. Tricky to do that when standing alone without a tripod. Bring on the critique, and the helpful suggestions. JF

I'm reluctant to take my good cameras on the water. That one was free with an HP printer and is small enuf to hang inside my bib. I suppose I could shut off the date thingy but I like having it there to keep the pics organized. JF

I hate steel leaders normally. I usually wait until after the first pike bites off a lure but that pool under the bridge is a common pike spot. We were only 100 yds below the bridge and with the current & high water I wasn't sure if the pike would be down there too. JF

We headed out yesterday mid-afternoon to the creek, did a little exploring first, then headed for the confluence of the Avon & Thames. I finally got to test the fly rod and Singingdog's flies, but conditions were hardly perfect. The water was still high by at least a foot, and silty. Murky water and very fast flow, more like what I would expect for a trout or salmon hunt, not a bass foray. It was a good chance to work on my casting and mending technique though, and I was having fun. Lost one dry fly, not exactly sure how. It just wasn't there at the end of a retrieve. No noticeable strike and no sign of a slipped knot. I switched to a beadhead and tried letting it drift along the bottom. I had a strike but lost it before I could see what it was. We decided to pack that location in and go on a pike hunt instead. Some of you know the spot and will recognize the pics. Some of you have caught pike there, and some of you, like me, just hear that others have caught pike there. We tossed a variety of stuff in the deep pool with no luck and finally started working our way to the downstream end of the pool. The current was fast and it was hard to find anything that would present naturally. I decided to stick with a white tube with a single split shot (with a leader because of the pike) and hope for the best. A little further downstream we were sharing the shore with a herd of sheep (cuz the water was too fast and deep for us) who had made the shore trekking somewhat tricky with their mucky tracks and their little poop bombs but we made it safely, sort of. Rob fell victim to a grassed over hole and wiped out, twisting a knee. But eventually we made it down to the next pool. The water was running pretty fast there too. We each took a side and started doing our thing. Rob was tossing his faithful Rapala minnow, a larger size than usual so he could get some length to his casts. I stuck with the white weighted tube. I had the fast current side and had no idea how to present the tube so settled on just heaving it as far as possible downstream cross current and letting it find it's own way back to my shore. It worked! A somewhat skinny but feisty 18 incher with a very nice attitude once lipped. He/she was great fun to play with the current and all, not that it was difficult with 14# braid on. Just after he picked up the tube he made a little cross-current run, then somersaulted out of the water right in front of Rob. I had a lot of line out (100'+) and it was all downstream in that current so it was fun bringing him home. We didn't catch a lot of fish. Rob nailed one average little guy at the Avon and I got the feller in the photo below. We both had some strikes but no more hookups. The conditions were tricky and there are carp and suckers in there so you never know if it's just one of them checking out your gear. Here's the pics. Exploring - Pike hole - Moving downstream Bass Pool - The shoal Rob's on is normally high & dry Finally - my bass. I measured him at 18"+ but my photo techniques are obviously wanting. In my defence I was standing in the water holding the fish, my rod and the camera. I'm open to suggestions on in-water photography from those of you more accomplished. JF

I went to Waterloo in 1970 to study computer sciences. I'd been operating a big ole 360/20 for a couple of years and thought it would be smart to get a degree. But it was really seriously boring, so I plotzed along in English and Psych till '73, then did my post grad studying backpacking in Europe. Still defending that thesis to this day. JF