Dutch01

My favorite kind, but I like them all

one more pic, 22" walleye

We arrived at the lake around 6:30am and paid the launch fee ($10). I don't mind paying to launch if it's a nice launch and has good parking. This place has nice people running it too, I've rented boats from them in past before I got my own. (PM me if you want the name to rent a boat - don't wanna broadcast. This lake, like much of the Kawarthas, gets enough pressure as is!) It was supposed to be sunny and hot, but it was grey and slightly cool - which was fine by me! I had expected to be needing the sunblock right away. We motored out a few hundred meters from the launch and I put out the electric - my new Terrova. This thing is going to save me a ton of gas, I ran it all day and still had 3/4 battery left. GPS spot lock, cruise control and autopilot make life really easy. We had some good action early. Lots of little bass, which are at least fun, and then my buddy caught a nice Largemouth. We trolled along slowly with jigs and plastic and I picked up a few walleye too, which was a little unexpected. I had thought it would mostly bass we caught. All fish were released to be caught another day. After 11:00am the Sun started burning, the PWC crowd came out to play, and the fishing slowed considerably. We decide to call it quits a little after lunch and hit a patio at for some cold beer and scenery - it's right at the locks (lots of nice boats with upstanding young ladies aboard cruising by ). All in all a great day, and looking forward to going back again soon. Dutch

Wow, I've been here longer than I thought! That's me to the left of Spiel. That was a great trip!

Yes, by internet standards that was quite civil! I never shy away from a different viewpoint, it's the only way to broaden your horizons. I'm glad you shared yours. I've never really used spoons except flatlining for trout in gbay years ago. I'm more of a live bait fisherman most of the time (I fish walleye almost exclusively). Good luck with the spoons. I'm off to Restoule on the 26th for a few days of R&R and fishing.. Hopefully I'll have something worth reporting when I get back.

For some reading about a promising alternative to chemical herbicides, Google Paul Stamets, a mycologist who holds a patent that has Monsanto running scared (at least until they buy him out!). He engineered an existing entomopathogenic fungus (fungi that destroys insects) to not produce spores. Insects eat the fungus, and are then turned into fungus from the inside out. I'm not suggesting we run headlong into a new era without significant research, but at first glance this appears to be a better alternative than soaking our fields with an industrial descaling agent (the original patented use for glyphosate).

Now THAT is a response, now we're talking. "My take away is that I would take most of what he says with a large grain of salt when he is either purposefully misleading you or grossly inaccurate when it come to a few basic facts." I take what everyone says with a grain of salt. Monsanto has spent 10's or even 100's of millions of dollars silencing any criticism of their products. They have infiltrated corporate boards and forced researchers to retract unflattering studies. They have used the courts to bully farmers into bankruptcy for the "crime" of having their non-GMO crops pollinated by neighbours growing Monsanto crops. I believe that Monsanto is aware of health risks associated with Glyphosate, and will do anything to silence critics. So forgive me if I put this lecturer a little above Monsanto on the trustworthiness scale. "Rats developed tumors after drinking water containing glysophate. Who ever promoted drinking glysophate? We don't drink water laced with gasoline or anti-freeze of household cleaners, do we? (Yet some of our rivers by big cities have so many hormones or hormone like substances in the waste water from birth control pills and various everyday household products that the that fish are changing sex.)" We already spray glyphosate on food crops multiple times over a growth cycle. These food crops are mostly water. Having rats drink water with glyphosate is intended to stimulate long term accumulation of smaller doses, and is a common and valid research methodology. As an interesting aside, when researchers blocked the endocannabinoid system in rats, the rats developed VERY large tumors, leading researches to conclude that marijuana may have therapeutic value in the treatment of tumors. "He implies that RR crops cause obesity, autism, various cancers and behavioural changes. Because he says so this must be true. After all, it's on the internet." And because Monsanto says the opposite, it must be true right? "Many cancers take years to develop, yet he implies that cancer rates increase at virtually the same rate as the use of RR crops. I thought obesity was caused by the vast amount of processed junk food consumed while sitting on the couch watching TV for hours on end. Weren't vaccines supposed to cause autism? Isn't this why some misguided parents are putting other families at risk by not vaccinating their children because some kook celebrity says so? I'm pretty sure that if your sitting on your couch tonight smoking a joint and eating a bag of Doritos that it's not the corn in the Doritos affecting your behaviour." Yes, many cancers take years to develop. Roundup hit the market in 1970, that's almost 50 years for cancers to develop. I don't eat Doritos, FYI. You are correct that marijuana affects my behavior. In my case I would argue for the better. At least I have the choice to partake or not. Monsanto has spent millions of dollars to prevent labeling that would allow me the choice to consume Roundup or not. "And farmers have been using insecticides and fungicides on seed for decades. And these same crops are routinely sprayed with various herbicides and pesticides. This is nothing new. And many chemicals that were commonplace are no longer available or used in the same way because they were proven carcinogenic or weeds became resistant. Will glysophate share this fate? Time will tell." You may be right. However, I believe that if we continue to allow the lobby industry to dictate our public policy by wielding money as a hammer, we will never know. "I will agree that neonics seem to be a concern and need to be closely looked at. Glysophate resistant weeds are not superweeds. They are simply weeds that are or have become resistant to glysophate. This is not unique to glysophate. This is why most farmers have a cropping program that makes use of crop rotation and the use of different classes of herbicides to employ various modes of action, thereby trying to avoid weed resistance to any certain family of herbicides. It's interesting that in the 90's, corn was genetically modified to be resistant to corn borer. It's called bt corn and most of the corn grown is now bt corn. You could ban all Roundup Ready corn tomorrow and you would still be eating a GMO grain. And yet you hear virtually no one talk about that." If companies like Monsanto have their way, no one will be talking about anything. We will all be silenced. We will all be in the dark. We will not have choices. As a species, we have proven to be remarkably short sighted. If we allow the wholesale commercialization of our food supply based on profit, rather than science and ethics, we risk destroying the biodiversity that makes the Earth function. Monsanto's market capitalization is at +/-$55B and growing. Their only organizational goal is profit. If we don't take a stand now, we are lost. To be fair, I am not just singling out Monsanto. There are many large multinational corporations who are buying favourable public policy all over the world. I don't believe it is an overstatement to say we are allowing these corporations to dictate our future (or lack thereof). I'm not much of an optimist, and I personally believe it is already too late. If true, then all my words amount to nothing more than raging against the machine. I really hope you will look beyond the surface arguments here and think about what motivates these actors. Only then can you understand what their end game is. Dutch Sent from my iPhone

A fair comment. However, we've been fed generations of lies going back to the reefer madness era, and just about every new study out contradicts or disproves the propaganda. When our government is caught lying to us, and continues to insist that they aren't lying, and know better than us what is good for us, they lose all credibility. It makes people wonder "what else are they lying to us about?". Any government driven by reason and logic would have moderated their position in light of new information and growing public sentiment on the issue. This government is driven by ideology and simply doubles down on prohibition every chance they get. I believe it's time for a change. Unfortunately I'm not sold on the alternatives, so I will still be holding my nose while I vote. It just won't be for Harper anymore.

Dr. Donald Tashkin M.D. (Professor of Medicine at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine and a Pulmonologist) disagrees with you: "UCLA's Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, but the results proved otherwise."What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted."

That's your take away from that video? I don't even know what to say....

By mixed, I was talking about both chemicals being applied to the same fields. Did you even watch the video?

"In fact, every glyphosate-based herbicide on the market meets the rigorous standards set by regulatory and health authorities to protect human health. Standards that we paid good money to your politicians to set for us" Fixed that for Monsanto..... For those that really want to know why Glyphosate doesn't belong in our food I highly recommend this short video: Engineered food and your health: the nutritional status of GMOs

I could be wrong, but I don't believe I have ever proclaimed marijuana as harmless. I've put forth the argument that regardless of if it is harmless or not, I don't believe the government has the right to restrict my use. I have only argued the relative safety of marijuana in response to those attempting to use that argument as a justification for prohibition. Also, please note that the following people used marijuana (some long term), and seem to have and avoided becoming basement dwelling losers: -Carl Sagan (PhD in both astrophysics and astronomy) -Bill Gates (a well known supporter of legalization in Washington State) -Steve Jobs (founder and CEO of Apple) -Barack Obama -Sanjay Gupta -Rush Limbaugh -George Clooney -Michael Bloomberg (billionaire Mayor of NYC) -Ted Turner -David Letterman -Morgan Freeman -Maya Angelou (Poet, Author and Civil Rights activist) -Phil Jackson (Hall of Fame NBA coach) -William Shakespeare (Researchers found traces of cannabis on clay pipes uncovered in the garden of Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon). -George Washington (a hemp farmer interested in the medicinal properties of cannabis, making diary entries that showed he was growing varietals with a high THC content). -Christopher Columbus (In 1492, Columbus's ships carried seeds of Cannabis Sativa, thus making Columbus responsible for introducing marijuana to America). -Sir Richard Branson (billionaire founder of the Virgin empire) -Stephen King -Arnold Schwarzenegger (Actor turned Governor of California) Perhaps the people you are referring to would have gone that way regardless of if their drug of choice was marijuana, alcohol, cocaine or any other drug of their choice. The notion that if some people can't handle themselves accordingly, all people should be prohibited as a result, is antithetical to the free democracy we aspire to live in. Your "friends" should to take responsibility for their personal failures and not blame marijuana. On Glyphosate: Glyphosate is not harmless, and is on the second highest tier of believed carcinogens categorized by the UN. Roundup ready GMO crops use the same genetic strain for all crops grown worldwide. This kind of monoculture farming leaves the world food supply vulnerable to a single pathogen. This is the opposite of fostering biodiversity. Roundup ready crops have led to Glyphosate resistant super weeds. This has led to farmers mixing Glyphosate with other pesticides, including neonicotinoids (believed to be responsible for Colony Collapse Disease, killing bees worldwide and endangering our ability to pollinate our food crops). The notion that this is safe for use in our food chain is something only Monsanto could say with a straight face.

This is kind of my point. It's only attractive because we make it taboo, and it's only valuable because we make it illegal. Time to change our approach.

I would have to see who paid for those studies before I give them any weight. At any rate, I clearly stated in my post that I am not advocating use by minors. I could talk about LD-50 dose and many other measures of a compound's toxicity, but frankly this is not an issue of whether marijuana is healthy. It is an issue of rights. If being unhealthy was the primary consideration for legalizing any product, our lives would look very different. No more car exhaust, alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, cheeseburgers, etc for anyone. And don't get me started on food safety. The government allows wholesale use of Glyphosate (aka Roundup, a known carcinogen) in our crops. They can't do that and then claim marijuana is unsafe. The bottom line issue is that I don't recognize the government's right to restrict my freedom unless they can show the exercise of that freedom infringes on someone else's rights. My use of marijuana is my business and no one else's. This is not entirely accurate. There are a number of factors that have led to increased pressure on the Dutch government to move away from liberal drug policy. France and Germany have been putting pressure on them to "toe the line", and (in response to an anti immigration backlash), a Christian Conservative Coalition came to power, headed by a man named Geert Wilders. He attempted to reverse Dutch drug policy, but many city mayors revolted. The Mayor of Amsterdam said he would refuse to obey any order to crack down on marijuana. Luckily, Geert was exposed for the racist psycho that he is, and his coalition is no longer in power. The fight continues, but the Dutch will never have a policy remotely close to our version of Prohibition. It is not that the Dutch are "Pro drugs". Quite the opposite in fact. Many Dutch people are actually quite conservative regarding drugs. However, they tend to believe it is better sold by regulated shops than in a dark alley. Of note, despite their liberal drug policy, they have a lower per capita rate of drug use than we do (another example of the ineffectiveness of prohibition). I leave you with this food for thought. According to Jeffrey Miron, a senior lecturer at Harvard University, the USA spent more money last year on marijuana prohibition (over $20B) than on the entire budget for NASA. Can anyone seriously tell me with a straight face that this is money well spent? That it's more important to stop me from having a joint after work than to work towards scientific discovery for mankind's future? If so, I would say you need to check your priorities.

Marijuana prohibition (and by extension all prohibitionist policy) comes down to one simple issue. Freedom. It is no one's business if I smoke a little at home after a hard day's work. Just as it's not my business to tell anyone else how to live. We have a sovereign and inalienable right to freedom, and that right must not be infringed unless it can be shown that the exercise of that right infringes on someone else's freedom. End of discussion. For me personally, this is about weed. For others, it's about sexuality. For others still, it is about their right to practice their religion. I have voted Conservative all my life, sometimes while holding my nose. I can't do it anymore. Not when this government believes that it knows best how I should live my life. Further, this government is demonstrably corrupt on this issue. The only people who have been approved to grow medical marijuana are politically connected insiders. There are a number of traditional arguments put forward by the prohibitionists: * Marijuana kills brain cells FALSE. This contention is based on a study done with monkeys in the 60's. A study paid for by people who wanted MJ illegal. The researchers fought for decades to keep their data from peer review. They eventually lost, and once reviewed, the study's conclusions were debunked. The monkeys were fed MJ smoke through gas masks, without supplemental oxygen, until they suffocated to death. Of course they were going to have dead brain cells upon autopsy, they were suffocated to death! * Marijuana causes cancer FALSE. The largest and longest study of its kind was done by Dr. Donald Tashkin, professor of medicine at UCLA. after studying thousands of users for 20 years, he concluded that MJ did not cause cancer. In fact, there was a very slight reduction in the rate of cancer versus the control group. * Marijuana is addictive FALSE. There are two components to addiction, physical withdrawal and habit strength. MJ does not cause physical withdrawal. Also, note the hypocrisy; if we ban things for being addictive, why do we allow the sale of alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and sugar? I will acknowledge one potentially harmful aspect of MJ use, and that is that when used regularly by young people, it can lead to an early onset of schizophrenia. It is important to be very clear here though. Schizophrenia is largely hereditary and physiological in nature. MJ cannot cause schizophrenia. It can only advance the onset in people who were going to get it anyways. And no one that I know is advocating its use by minors. Which leads to the next fallacy.... * Legalization will make it more accessible to kids. FALSE. MJ is already in wide use by teens in Canada. Prohibition has failed to stop this. The best place to get it is probably a high school, and many teens say it is easier to get than alcohol. The notion that controlling it like beer or cigarettes will make it easier for kids to get is simply untrue. * Marijuana supports criminal gangs. TRUE. But ONLY by virtue of being illegal. MJ is not very difficult to grow if you know what you are doing. It should be no more valuable than tomatoes, but because we spend billions to constrain the supply, we artificially inflate its value. Making it legal and cheap (by not taxing it so hard that it retains its prohibition era value) makes it an unattractive commodity for organized crime. Stephen Harper, by way of his willingness to put his personal and/or religious dogma ahead of science, had lost the moral authority on this issue. I for one will not be able to hold my nose and vote for him again. /rant

Thanks for the 'gratz all. Hoping to make it back there this weekend. Good luck guys. :Gonefishing: EDIT just looked up the Ontario record, it's 17" (3.78#) so this guy was close on length but nowhere near the weight. Still beats any crappie I ever caught!

It's going to be a tall order for the little guy to catch a crappie bigger than that one. That's actually the only crappie I've ever seen caught at that spot. We were very surprised when we first saw it.

My friend's Son caught the crappie of a lifetime. What a smile!

Some friends and I got out to my favorite Kawartha Lake this weekend for some shore fishing. It's been a bit of a slow spring so far compared to last year at the same spot. On the plus side, I haven't seen many anglers either, so we haven't had to share our spot with others as much this year. We did get some nice fish, but with long droughts in between them. We ended up with a half dozen walleye, a couple of hefty OOS smallies (promptly released, no pics), and quite possibly the biggest crappie I have ever seen in person (16.5", 1.9#). We also saw a 36"-40" musky cruise right by the shoreline, it was quite the sight! All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better weekend fishing with friends and family. We didn't take too many pics, they are tough at night sometimes, but it's not a report without the porn (sorry for the crops but trying not to advertise my spot ):

" 2. Even breathing in super heated air is harmful to your mouth, throat and lungs. That's beside the point that it contains way more tar than even tobacco smoke." Netminder I suggest you read about the study done by Dr. Donald Tashkin (professor of medicine at UCLA). His study, the largest and longest running of its kind, concluded that marijuana use had no measurable correlation with lung cancer. In fact, it determined that occasional marijuana smokers had better lung function than non smokers. A lot of what people believe about marijuana now days are are holdovers from the propaganda war on weed. There is a lot of quality info out there now from reputable sources, I suggest you might want to re-examine the genesis of your opinions. (Further reading: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/10/study-smoking-marijuana-not-linked-with-lung-damage)

Canisbay is a nice park for car camping. Sites are good size and good privacy - for the highway 60 corridor. There are no pet/no radio zones so be sure you book the right site. I once caught a nice lake trout on Canisbay and there are smallmouth in there too. If you have a boat with <20 hp you can fish in Tea Lake (launch off the beach). I have had some really great smallmouth fishing on Tea Lake - there are 5+ pound hawgs in there if you can find them. Have fun!

Thank you Sir!

Guess it's a moot point, seems like they're sold out everywhere........

Thinking of making an impulse buy here. The 4x HDI Ice is listed at 308.95 at LeBaron, less 10% for members, plus a $50 rebate. Hard to beat that price. For those of you that own one of these units, can you tell me if it would be possible to adapt this unit to a kayak for soft water? Is this unit effective for soft water or ice only? Thanks, don't want to splurge and then regret not being able to use it this summer....