splashhopper

awesome

20% of the people do all the work,... the rest have something else to do, but want to enjoy the resource... are there any lifts down by London that I can help with?

sorry for your loss Camil.... I lost my closest friend in similar circumstances last August and it just hasn't been the same without him around to talk to.

me 2

great report Tibbs.... keep em coming pls

the leafs will start to improve as soon as the teachers Union sells them... and that should be soon because their pension fund is short a $$$$.....

me2

awesome pics... keep em coming please

Happy birthday Bly.... 29.95 is a GREAT age

great pics dave.

qith today's fuel costs, I welcome all reports of fish from "far away places" ..... keep em coming please

Ok, I will ask my wife if i can INTRODUCE YOU TO MY BUDDY.. if that goes well, can i have your boat?

any applications rolling in yet Bly ?

It's so easy to use dave... even I got it figured out in one day

Yep... one in the river.... one in the toilet....that's two in six months....

Holy sow!

awesome report..... keep em coming .....

FREEPORT, TEXAS—It's the catch of a lifetime, but it's not clear whether a Texas fisherman landed an 8-foot shark or it landed him. Jason Kresse, 29, of Freeport, and two crew members had been fishing for red snapper about 80 kilometres into the Gulf of Mexico and were dumping fish guts into the water about 3:45 a.m. Monday when they heard two big splashes in the distance. "All of a sudden something hit the side of the boat," Kresse told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "He ends up landing on the back of the boat." The mako shark had apparently been in a rush to feed. It began thrashing around, and Kresse said he and his crew couldn't get close to the 375-pound fish to toss it back in the water. It damaged the boat before dying several hours later. Kresse, who has been fishing since he was a child, said the unplanned catch was a shock. Just unloading it was a challenge because it was so heavy. "We had to use a forklift to get it off the boat when we got to the dock," Kresse said. The crew didn't have a permit to catch sharks, so Kresse contacted federal fisheries officials on shore to get one. Mike Cox, a spokesman with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said there's no violation because the shark's death was an accident. The shark is on display at a seafood business in Freeport, about 90 kilometres south of Houston. "I'm going to get a mount of it," Kresse said. "A fish jumping in your boat, 400 pounds, that's unbelievable." Associated Press

I'll a\second thAT

I got my 38lb thrust Motor Guide trolling motor, new long cycle battery and 2 cycle battery charger for $140.00 on Kijiji It pulls my 12 foot tinnie, with my BIG friend Dutchy, in it all weekend as well.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011) — Fish are not as dumb as people sometimes think. Marine scientists have found that fish that are regularly hunted with spearguns are much more wary and keep their distance from fishers. In investigating the effects of marine areas closed to fishing by customary laws, an international team of researchers working in the Pacific found that fish exposed to speargun fishing take flight much earlier when a diver approaches compared with those living in protected zones. To assess the effectiveness of marine protected areas and their effects on fish behaviour, the team decided to measure 'flight distance' in a range of coral reef fishes which are popular targets for local fishermen in the study area in Papua New Guinea. "We were studying the effect of the customary reef closures which many groups in the Pacific use," explains team member Fraser Januchowski-Hartley of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and the Wildlife Conservation Society. "In developed countries marine areas closed to fishing are a fairly recent idea -- but in the Pacific islands, people have been using them for generations, for traditional reasons." One of the issues the team was interested in was whether the existence of a closed area changed the behavior of the fish inside it, compared to the behavior of fish outside the area. Their study took place at Muluk in Papua New Guinea where the local chiefs close areas of reef to fishing, sometimes for several years at a time, whenever it seems the fish are becoming a bit shy. The study looked at fish traditionally hunted by the local people including snappers, triggerfish, parrotfish and surgeonfish. To study the fishes' flight distance, a scuba diver slowly approached the fish and dropped a marker at the point where the diver was when the fish was seen to take flight -- and a second marker at the point on the reef where the fish was when it fled. This enabled them to measure the distances at which fish fled from the diver, both inside and outside the protected area. "Fish which are regularly targeted appeared to have a pretty fair idea of the 3m range of the typical rifle-style speargun used by the local PNG fishers," explains lead author Dr David Feary of University of Technology Sydney (UTS). "Inside protected areas, the fish tended to move off when the diver closed to within 2-3 metres of them. However those outside the protected zone, where hunting was common, mostly fled when the diver came within 4-5 metres of them." "Quite simply, the fish in areas that were fished regularly were warier and stayed further away- just far enough that it would be difficult to hit them with the spear gun technology used locally" In the most extreme case, fish in unprotected areas had a flight distance 2.6 metres greater than the same species of fish in a protected zone -- putting them well outside the range of the spear. However when an area was closed, the fish appeared to recover their confidence, allowing divers to approach much closer -- within speargun range when the area was reopened for fishing. Feary explains "Sometimes these types of closures are used to create a 'bank account' of resources that are saved up for important cultural ceremonies. It seems that by closing the area off, communities may not only build up the amount of fish in the area, but make them easier to catch, which helps meet the goal of having fish for a feast. But this may pose a problem where temporary closures are used for conservation rather than community goals." "Our results highlight a previously unconsidered mechanism through which a rapid and large decline in fish biomass may occur when a closed area is reopened to fishing; reduced flight distance resulting from protection may increase some fish species' susceptibility to spear fishing," Januchowski-Hartley cautioned. They argue that while temporary closures have value in conserving fish stocks and helping them to recover, their effect on fish behaviour may have to be factored in when reserves are reopened, if the aim is to preserve fish stocks. This may entail the use of gear-restrictions or short re-openings to avoid a sudden, heavy kill of larger fish which have become accustomed to the relative safety of a closed area. Their paper appears in the journal Conservation Biology.

I second that ....

The water level in already-low Lake Huron could decline up to 12 inches (30.5 cm) this summer, impacting shipping and boaters on both sides of the border. Powerful storms early in the winter drew a lot of moisture off of Lake Huron, said Bryan MacKenzie, Commodore of the Sarnia Yacht Club: “Water levels do look low. Certainly, lower than normal, I would say.” The club must dredge the main passage from its harbour to Lake Huron each spring, an operation that’s impacted by water levels and requires permission from 12 regulatory agencies, he said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ most recent forecast predicts the depth Lake Huron could decrease seven to 12 inches from last summer’s 569 feet (173 m). Sarnia Observer author: By SHAWN JEFFORDS QMI Agency

BREGA, LIBYA—It may not be the most noble of occupations, making one’s living throwing homemade bombs into the sea and waiting for the daily catch to float to the surface dead. That’s what Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi reduced these four Benghazi men to over the course of his 42 years in power. Yet it has been nearly a month since they last set off bombs in the Mediterranean. Since then, these men have been standing tall, turning their homemade bombs on the Gadhafi regime itself. A Toronto Star team found these weary rebels on the weekend under a tree in the desert east of Brega, preparing some lamb over an open fire next to their Toyota pickup with an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back. It was a picnic between withering battles that now have the rebels on the run, Gadhafi’s army drives deep into eastern Libya. They acknowledged the revolution is struggling but they insisted proudly they would fight on. They don’t want their children to end up fish-bombers. They want a better future than Qadhafi can offer and vow to fight for it to the death, if it comes to that. “To fish properly in Libya using a boat, you need connections with Gadhafi’s revolutionary committees. And then you had to register with the secret police,” said Hussein Musrati, 34. “This was not possible. And so there are many of us who had no choice. Many people come here to the desert where nobody lives and blow up fish from the shoreline. It is not much of a living, but it is all we could do.” Hafed Khashini, 37, showed the Star one of fish-bombs — what looks like a tunafish tin of TNT with a home-fashioned fuse sticking out the side. And on the end, a few wooden matches wrapped with tape. Their proudest day, the men said, came as the Feb. 17 uprising entered its volcanic phase. They and others converged in the city’s much-loathed Katibah compound, the Gadhafi regime’s military stronghold, and used their fish-bombs to blast down the walls. Rebels stormed inside and set the place ablaze, chasing away Gadhafi loyalists and looting its arsenal to better equip themselves for the fight to come. “With each victory, we were able to take what we found and gather better weapons. When you have nothing to lose, you are not afraid of the consequences,” said Khashini. For nearly an hour they told of their contempt for the regime that held them down from their earliest memories, citing the paucity of education opportunities that set them on a path to bombing the seas to scrape by. Only one of the four has saved enough to marry; the rest are bachelors. One trained as an air conditioning serviceman but after a fruitless job search he has never worked a day in the trade. Khashini says he was “taken to fight in Chad” during his compulsory military service for what he calls “another of Gadhafi’s pointless wars.” When the fighters returned, he said that “the wounded were thrown out of the aircraft into the sea,” perishing on the regime’s orders. But the rebel momentum hit a wall two hours west of where they were picnicking this day. All four were there late Thursday when the battle for the oil port of Ras Lanuf raged fiercest. They claim Gadhafi spies pretending to be rebels were their undoing. “A man in one of the rebel cars shouted, ‘This way, follow me.’ And we all drove behind, heading to the shoreline,” said Jammal Ammari, 43. “Then suddenly we saw gunboats and they started shelling us. And then Gadhafi’s tanks came in from behind and we were trapped. The car that led us there vanished in the chaos and we are sure these were Gadhafi collaborators who arranged a trap.” The fish-bombers managed to escape. And they insist that however grim these past few days, Gadhafi’s advances are about to meet a far steelier defence as the fighting approaches the eastern city of Ajdabiya. “These desert towns of Ras Lanuf and Brega, they are small. But Ajdabiya, this is the heartland of the east and Gadhafi’s men will much stronger resistance here. People will not retreat from their own homes,” said Musrati. “The problem for us now is the planes. They are flying so high we can no longer see them, we can only hear them and feel the bombs. If the world will push his planes out of the air, the Libyan people can do the rest.” But either way, the fish-bombers say they will keep on fighting, whatever the odds. “We don’t want to fight around the oil refineries because this is Libya’s wealth and we don’t want it destroyed. So we are happy to pull back to protect our future,” said Ammari. “But we have more fight left. We will not let him go beyond Ajdabiya.”