Corey

I just spent 2 hours with the snowblower. I will be leaving for work shortly... 4' drift at the end of my driveway... took a little bit of time, but I snowblowed through it.

My feet were warm as long as I stayed moving around. When I was in my hut my toes went numb. We were on the ice from about 9:30am to 4:30pm or so... roughly 7 hours.

I better go take a shower now... I have that smell going on as well.

I had cash! But I wasn't going to spend $159 on a pair of boots when I got a $150 pair at home. I was going to just run to Cdn Tire or Walmart and pickup some cheapies for the day. Big thanks to BricknBlock for the loaner boots. He saved me $40 or so on a cheapie set. If I can make it to the Tyler event, I will find a way to repay you. Boots Corey

Well, twas the night before quinte and all through OFC, some members were sleeping some members were not. We all woke up pretty early, some ealier than others. Troutologist, Uncle Buck, Gerritt and myself all hit the road about 3:30am from Hamilton. Stopped in Ajax to pickup GoneFishing and then made a beeline to Carra's in Belleville. It seems our chauffeur has a slight relation to Mario Andretti as we made quite possibly record time, such good time we got there 1/2 hour before Carra's opens. Once Laurie and Glen opened the store (at the proper time), we were pleasently made aware that for today, all of the OFC members there were also getting 10% off any tackle we needed to pickup. We also bought a load of minnows that were specially put aside for us and as it turned out was about 3 times as many as we needed, but we got a good deal nonetheless. Total props out to Sam and his staff at Carra in Belleville, would recommend them in a heartbeat to anyone heading that way. Next we are going to omit the part of the story that I am sure others will tell. Don't believe them, I wore boots today! After hooking up with a few other OFC members we headed out to the secret spot and started the journey. Out to the red buoy we walked, gear in tow. Turns out because of lack of space Gerritt was unable to bring his hut. From ths point on, we will refer to Uncle Buck's hut as jabba the hut, darn that thing is big. We got all setup, drilled a series of holes and started to fish... not much going on. A couple of the guys headed on a scouting trip to look for a place to move and setup camp number 2. They found a small pressure crack that had opened up along a transition and while checking it out, watched a guy 50ft away land a 5+ pound walleye. Cha Ching! we now have location of camp number 2. Drilled some more holes, in a more spread out pattern. a few minutes later we hear a slight roar, which turned out to be Uncle Buck hollaring FISH ON!!! wee little guy, back in the drink he went. Not much longer and a few more fish are pulled up, 2-3 pounders, good eaters. Things are kinda getting slow, the wind is picking up (ok... it could have been gale force winds at that point). While some of us are hiding from the wind, yet another, much louder roar erupts. While not being able to fully comprehend what was said, the next thing heard was so load and clear it had people from far away coming over. There was no mistaking Uncle Buck (with a big smiley on the face) yelling out IT'S HUGE!!!. Keep in mind Uncle Buck has never fished for walleye through the ice and landing a solid 8 pound 4 ounce whopper was definately the highlight of the day... but wait! Was it really the highlight of the day? Adam and Sandy, tucked away in their hut brought another bohemoth to the hole, only to find out that the fish's head was to big to fit through the hole. Maybe a tie for highlights... 1 huge fish landed another huge fish released without coming through the hole due to size. In the end, the wind got to be a little too much to handle and we decided to pack it in for the day and head home. It was a great experience for everyone there and a lot of OFC'ers met eachother for the first time and it seems everyone had a pretty good time. I'm sure people will post some picks later on in this thread and add their bits and pieces to it. Corey

I'll throw a disclaimer out here that I am fully certified through RIM for the Blackberry and BES products so I am a tad bit biased. There is a reason they are called crackberries... they are addictive. You are going to find that it's hard to live without after you have had it for a while. Email anywhere for anyone who relies on their email is a godsend. The antennas built into the blackberry are nothing short of the best. The amount of engineering that goes into a blackberry is simply amazing. The main goal during the production of the blackberry is battery life. I charge my blackberry every 4 days or so and receive 4-600 emails a day and talk for about 3 hours a day on average. You will also find that there are many third party applications available for the blackberry as well. During downtime I will often be caught playing a little texas holdem or sudoku on mine. If you have a blackberry and are connected to an enterprise server you will find web browsing much faster as well. In addition to all of that, real time sync with your outlook can't be any better. *All* of you contact, all of the time is something pretty nice to have. If anyone has blackerry questions, by all means post a thread in the computer support section and I will answer it. Corey

TFT is an LCD screen. It will freeze, it's just a matter of what temperature.

The ice machine sounds like a champ. The only concern I would have is the liquid in the display freezing. Other than that I was very tempted to pick one up.

OK... we have a few people lined up for the trip. I think we need to get the rest of you fence sitters to commit to the trip. We are going to meet at 7am at either Carra's or Skevy's, depending on which one is going to offer us the best chance of catching dinner. We will post tomorrow night which bait shop we have decided to start our adventure at. We will post directions as well. We have almost all the vehicles filled now, but a few others willing to drive. Gerritt needs one more to fill his truck. We will have gas augers and all the toys available up there so there is no excuse not to come. So the HAMMER TOWN!!! crew has issued the challenge to the KW crew, Burlington crew, and Sarnia crew for the most walleye caught. We need a few more GTA crews... TO, Miss, Oak, Scar... get your crews together and get ready to face the Hammer crew! It's hammer time! dum dumdum dum dumdum dumdum (BB style there). Let's get people posting in this thread confirming that they are coming! Corey

there are plenty of sites out there with regard to stealing satelite signals. I don't think asking about something that is illegal in canada is the best thing to do in a fishing forum like this. young jedi... google is your friend.

Gerritt, you should give a quick account of watching the guys behind us trying to put up their Eastman on Thursday. Best I can offer at this point on the Eastman is to make sure you have Gerritt fishing close to you so that he can chase the bag for the hut half way across the lake when the wind picks up cd.

so what's the plan for saturday? I can get out for the morning. anyone feel like hitting Dunnville? Welland Rec Canal? Marina in Jordan? cd.

Ya Gerritt... I am available on the 17th... meet at your place? cd.

Well, as discussed earlier, headed out to Binbrook this morning to see how the bite was... Got out there, parked beside Gerritt who was nice and cozy in his heated hut. A short while later Bill Parker showed up, so we fished for a few hours... caught a few small dinky perch, other than that nothing else was going on. Seemed like the fish turned off into the late morning and then the wind picked up causing havoc for a few people out there. Gerritt took some pics, I'm sure he'll post them up later. Hopefully the bite picked up after I left, cause with the wind that was starting to howl, it isn't worth it to stand there with no fish. I may try and hit up the dam in Dunnville tonight depending on how things go. cd.

OK... I think I am coming out... I will be there between 8 and 9... if anyone is bringing kids, I have a portable tent type hut I could bring that we could use as a shelter for kids, or even adults who are getting cold. I don't have any type of tie downs for it though. Let me know if I should dig it out and bring it. cd.

I'll make a post Wed night to confirm if I can go on Thursday, if I can I will bring my little jiffy, if anyone needs holes drilled just ask me if you see me... HH floater suit, frabil ultralite hut and jiffy model 30 auger. cd.

I was thinking of bagging off work on thursday to cruise over there... if I go, you will hear my auger... and I pull a frabill ultralite around with me. cd.

I can understand complaining about poaching, but there is no way that the fishing pressure on simcoe is depleting the fish population, especially when it comes to perch. With later and later safe ice dates over the past few years, the fishing pressure is less and less. If you consider that most people throw anything under 9" back, and people are catching hundreds of fish, it's not hard to see that the fish are plentiful. Harvesting fish helps control over population as well, there is a finite carrying capacity of any body of water. If you figure on any given day, on the ice there are 1000 or so people out there, catching 100+ fish... that's a lot of fish. If you figure that on average people keep 10 fish, let's say 60 ice fishing days a year... 600,000 fish harvested in a 2 month period, and there are still lots. Of course I am talking perch here... I really don't think that fishing is going to put a dent on perch anytime soon. Some of the other fish, like herring and even walleye to a certain extent may need tighter regulations. The whitefish population has been helped with a hatchery... My numbers are most likely way off, but it's more of an example of the sheer number of fish that are in simcoe. I have the right to take 50 perch from simcoe each time I go up there, have I? No... the most I have ever taken is 28 (I believe). I also have a wife and 3 kids who like to each fish as well... If it was up to me, I would have a 100 fish daily and 100 fish posession limit. As much as I enjoy fishing, I go fishing to bring home dinner. I would much rather make 1 trip to get enough fish for a few meals than 2 trips. Agree or disagree, either way, the fishing pressure on simcoe is the least we have to worry about. cd.

I wouldn't callanything a "catch limit" per se... There is a daily posession limit of 25, and overall posession limit of 50 on a conservation license and daily of 50 and overall of 100 on a sport license. There is no limit on how many you can actually catch, in a day or season or otherwise. I have caught hundreds of perch in a single day, and I think I took twenty something home, on a sporting license. Very legal. cd.

whoa! They spelled his name wrong... what's with that apostrophe thing in there... see how he spells his name on here... what disrespect I tell ya... haha cd.

now now... linux has it's place, but I really don't think it's here. 99% of OFC'ers have a tough enough time with Windows. Linux is not the right thing to plug here. Don't get me wrong, I run several linux box's for various things, including an 8 node beowolf cluster, but I am geek #2, or so it has been said Let's keep things relatively simple. cd.

no Anti-Spyware ... There is a free antispyware program available from them, so you have 2 programs, not 1 for all no Anti-Spam ... Be discriminating with handing out your email address, your ISP should have anti spam filtering on their servers no Firewall ... If you have highspeed internet, buy a $20 router, perfect hardware based firewall, if not, use the free built in windows firewall no 64-bit and server support ... If you are actually running a 64bit version of windows, chances are you know enough to find something else that works. If you have a server in your house, you most likely know the same. no 24/7 Technical Support ... Who cares... never needed it, rock solid software with updates frequencies that match commercial AV software no High-speed updates ... The updates are plenty fast, takes a few seconds through my cable modem no Multiple languages ... I only speak english, considering it's german made software, english works for me, nothing interesting to read anyhow no Detailed settings ... ok... so I can't exclude a keylogger or some other kind of virus that I *really* want on my system, bummer no Consent for commercial use ... if you are using the machine on a business system, you should purchase the commercial version, for those in the know, it pops up and complains if the machine is joined to a domain only. If it's a single computer, it'll never complain. try it out, you won't be dissappointed. cd.

It's not that you have to pay for AVG... the message you are getting is that the version you are running (7.1) is discontinued and no longer supported. All you need to do is download version 7.5 and upgrade, for free. No need to worry, just take the free upgrade and continue with what I feel is the best free AV software out there. cd.

If you are using Windows XP on your computer, it comes with software to do that called Windows Movie Maker. It will work quite fine for basic video, pitures and music... Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories and then the Windows Movie Maker. My wife used it a couple of years ago to make DVD's of pictures, short movie clips and sound to give out as part of Xmas gifts for the family. If she can use it, anyone can use it. Corey

Rogers uses better technology. Rogers bought Fido and integrated the Fido system into Rogers. Rogers has the best coverage in Canada. Telus has PTT (Push to Talk, ie. Mike/2way/Walkie Talkie). Telus uses least popular technology. Bell uses proprietary technology owned by Qualcomm. Bell has the fastest data rates right now (it changes every year or so). Bell and Telus (non-Mike) have a deal to share towers. Pay as you go companies like Virgin Mobile actually piggyback on the Bell network. They all are a pain in the tush to deal with over the phone. Rogers will always have the newest toys because they use GSM technology (~87% of mobiles in world are GSM). As one of them geek type, I use Rogers for all my mobiles... They have a superior network. Corey