splashhopper

Top water weedless SCUM FROG in the thickest nastiest mess I can find or in the thickest shady tree lined banks

Professional newfies sounds interesting

looks tasty

An 8-year-old boy and his mother came close to drowning when they were swept away in a rain-swollen Burlington creek Saturday. And, hundreds of kilometres to the north in Muskoka, two adults narrowly avoided the same fate when they ventured into the fast-running waters of the Muskoka River; they were saved by bystanders — including embattled Industry Minister Tony Clement, who ran to help from his nearby home. In the Burlington incident, eight-year-old Leif Gorrie was wandering along raging Tuck Creek — normally a small placid stream — with his mother Nicky Ramsay, 39, and stepsisters Abbie, 13, and Bailey, 11, on Saturday afternoon when he innocently dipped a foot into the water. When the current tore off his Pokemon flip-flop, Lief tried to get it back — and fell into the swift-flowing stream. Abbie immediately jumped in after Leif. “I just kept saying, ‘I’m not going to die, I’m not going to die,’” Abbie told the Star Sunday. Bailey almost jumped in after them but instead ran about 50 metres to get her mother Nicky, who sprinted down to the creek and jumped in. “I couldn’t believe how fast it was,” Ramsay said, “and how deep it was — I couldn’t see anything or anybody.” There were now three people in the water. Leif managed to extricate himself about 100 metres downstream by grabbing onto overhanging branches and pulling himself to shore Abbie, who by this point could no longer see Leif, also snatched onto some brush and clawed her way out of the water, then sprinted up the embankment near Rockwood Dr. and Walkers Line looking for help when she came across a neighbour who called 911. Meanwhile, the swift current swept Ramsay downs the creek, which neighbours said is usually 10 cm deep and two metres wide, but which swelled to 1.5 metres deep and nearly eight metres wide after heavy rainfall Saturday. Ramsay bombed past the Rockwood Dr. embankment. “I didn’t see my kids, so I wasn’t trying to get out,” Ramsay said, “But I probably couldn’t have even if I wanted to.” Police responded to the call in less than a minute, according to acting Staff Sgt. Dan Gheller of Halton Regional Police Services. An officer spotted Ramsay and ran beside the creek before taking off his equipment belt and jumping in. The water was rushing too fast for the officer to corral Ramsay, but both soon latched onto a flotation device tossed into the raging waters by police officers waiting downstream. Ramsay travelled nearly two kilometres before she finally got out of the water. Neighbours say the creek is prone to flash floods, although no warning signs exist near the area. Ramsay and her children were treated at the hospital and released. “Parents need to ‘creekwise’ their kids,” Gheller said, “and tell them to stay away from the water when it swells like that.” Several hours later, around 7 p.m. Saturday on the Muskoka River in Port Sydney, a young woman known only as Jennifer got into trouble in the nearby rapids. One of her friends, a young man, went in after her. Amanda Anderson heard the screams, rushed to the water’s edge and jumped in, fully clothed. Clement, the MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka who has a house on the other side of the river, heard the commotion and ran out to help, as did his wife Lynne and her father, Doug Goulding. Clement said he dove in with his shorts and T-shirt and swam after the woman, but pulled back when he realized she was too far away, and felt an undertow pulling him down. But Anderson pushed on, as did Goulding, who ran around the shoreline, strapped on a life-jacket and plunged into the roiling waters with a second life-jacket. He then grabbed the woman and brought her to shore. “They got to her first, which was great,” Clement said, “It was a real community effort, a team effort.” It was then they finally noticed the other man, crumpled on nearby rocks. “We rushed over to him, and he was breathing, just spent,” Anderson said, who was also breathing hard after fighting the fast-moving water. Brad Oke, a paramedic with Medavie EMS, treated Jennifer on scene, but had to transport the young man to hospital for exhaustion. “He was in bigger trouble then her,” Oke said, “But he’s all right now.” People need to be careful around water, said OPP Const. Mark Boileau, especially this summer, when there’s so many rain-swollen creeks and rivers. “Keep children within arm’s length,” Boileau said, “And adults should wear life jackets if they’re going to play around the water.” According to Barbara Byers of the Lifesaving Society, there have been 219 drownings in Canada in 2010 compared with 188 this time last year. As of Friday, 68 of those drownings occurred in Ontario. But this weekend had a positive outcome, in part due to the rescuers involved. Best of all, Leif’s Pokemon flip-flop floated back to him as he recovered on the water’s edge, now a ‘creekwise’ kid. Liam Casey Staff Reporter Toronto Star

ditto

great picks Dutchy. Speaking of Telescopic rods.... i might be able to fit in a large suitcase the next time you go there

If I switched over to a 10 ft spinning rod that I have( that can handle BIG trout) would this help... the only challenge being that it is very light tip on it... so might not be able to drive those hooks home

I do try to "double set" the hook after I get them... And I "think" i am working the drag enough. The head shake is what I don't know how to handle... I "think" i have the line taught at all times with the rod tip up... but then... ZINNNNG goes another lure right by my head

nice looking fish...

u one funny guy... my name is Memo and i am powerless over fish !

I started targeting pike this this year for the first time and love the feel of them PULLING that line and running all over the place when INITIALLY hooked. Then they seem to settle right down and i slowly start to bring them to me. However, the past three outings, I lose them with VIOLENT tail walking head shakes at the shore or boat edge. They are spitting the hooks right back at me as if to say LOL How long should I play these fish to make sure they are somewhat subdued? I am using 30lb power pro(braid) with a 6-12 inch steel leader on the different lures. I use a spinning reel and 6.5 ft meadium stiff 2pc rod. There is always a net with me when i am targeting these. Any suggestions to improve my landing percentages is appreciated. Thanks. Splashhopper

beauties

Although not baseball, my youngest daughter (12 yrs old) has been heavily involved in Taekwondo since the age of five. ( she got her yellow stripe that day) She currently trains 3-5 nights per week and keeps straight A grades. She also keeps her room clean, most days. On the off chance I can get her out fishing the last year, she still has her brain on the sport she loves. Her sport has her competing somewhere in the province every 4 weeks and involves over night stays at most tournaments. My wife is the REAL support system in all this and has blossomed further in her own path as a parent because of this sport. ( My daughter is holding two gold medals in that pic from the 2010 Canadian Nationals Championships. She is also the 2008 and 2009 champion for her age and weight category.) As much as we think we are supporting the kids, and we do, I think we are also being given a huge gift in the social interaction of people that have a common bond through our children's sport activities. Don't worry about being a little tired at this stage of the game, the kids are gonna have to look after us when we get old too

nice fish bro

Black and Decker battery skill saw grocery buggy ( a couple of times) a barn swallow got caught mid way up my braided line in mid air( yesterday) And the gran daddy of em all when I was a kid, a sail on a sail boat in a harbour

the most important thing I learned from that article was what one of our fellow OFC'ers chat name meant ! Guess which one LOL

What is BFB ?

Toronto Star Kenneth Kidd Feature Writer The first thing to know about baby brook trout is that they are not devoted viewers of Disney. Not for them all the massed choreography of Finding Nemo, where entire schools of tiny fish move as one, virtually no member distinguishable from any other. Brook trout, it turns out, aren’t like that at all. From the earliest age, they start acting differently, a diversity of lifestyles that could have serious evolutionary implications. So varied are their behaviours, that brook trout might even be in the nascent stage of separating into two distinct species — one timid and sedentary, the other bolder and more active. Scientists could end up with front-row seats to evolution. “The level of diversity of behaviour, and the diversity in their diets that we see associated with that behaviour, are amazing things that I would never have expected when I trained,” says Robert McLaughlin, a biology professor at the University of Guelph. Back when he was a student, the prevailing wisdom included something called optimal foraging behaviour. This was a kind of Darwinian fitness test, and the result was that animals all get to some point where they derive the most energy from their environment in the most efficient fashion available. If you studied the habits of a single animal, in other words, you could safely assume the other members of this species in that particular place behaved in pretty much the same way. Except, this isn’t always the case in the field. So, scientists have since been moving to notions closer to game theory, which allows for much greater diversity and competition between members of the same species. Which is where brook trout come in — or brook charr (to use the traditional British spelling favoured at Guelph), since brook trout, Salvenus fontinalis, aren’t technically trout. Along with Alexander Wilson, one of his former graduate students, McLaughlin studied 89 wild brook charr in seven still-water pools along the west branch of the Credit River. Not just brookies, mind, but virtual newborns. Although the fish hatch in mid-winter, they remain in the river’s gravel bed, feeding on their yolk sac, until they start emerging in very late March and April. This is more or less when McLaughlin and Wilson started studying the fish in the spring of 2004, although their paper has only just been published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. The brookies were tiny, measuring just 2 or 3 cenimetres in so-called fork length — the distance between their snout and the middle of the fork in their tails. But even at that young age, the fry split into two camps, with a few undecided in between. A lot of the fish acted like riverbank couch potatoes. They stuck very close to the bank, and ended up mostly feeding on tiny crustaceans. Yet others were soon foraging well away from the riverbank and in the upper portion of the water, where they largely fed on midges and flies. The fish didn’t look markedly different, nor was it a case of the bigger ones being the more aggressive. “They don’t differ a lot in morphology, at least externally, but they differ a lot in behaviour,” says McLaughlin. The reason for the varied lifestyles, or at least a clue to the ultimate reason, lies in their brains. After the behaviour of an individual fish was recorded, it was captured and sent to the lab for detailed measurements. It turns out that the telencephalon, the part of the brain linked to movement and spatial abilities, was relatively larger in the fish that went foraging away from shore, where they would have to recognize underwater landmarks to navigate and avoid becoming prey themselves. But this raises other questions. Were the fish reacting to their environments differently, and developing separate behaviours in consequence? A study now being completed by another of McLaughlin’s former students, points in that direction. The brook charr that hugged the bank have higher levels of the hormone cortisol, which is associated with stress, so perhaps worry keeps them home. Still unanswered, though, is whether the foraging fish do so because they have bigger telencephalons, or whether they end up with bigger telencephalons because they are foraging. The brain, as we now know, is fairly plastic, responding almost like a muscle to exercise, striving to meet the demands placed on it. Hence the adage, use it or lose it. Then again, the presence of larger telencephalons could simply be a genetic endowment, in whole or in part, which the foraging fish take advantage of. At least with brook charr, the answer still awaits further study. “That’s the direction we’d like to move in,” says McLaughlin. “We have some candidate genes we want to look at there.” By which point, we may have a clearer idea of just how much evolutionary change is now at play on the outskirts of the city.

i haven't caught LM bass when i chummed for carp, but i have caught lots of catfish and rock bass, so it doesn;t seem to be out of the realm of prospects. The way that I carp fish, and I am by no means an expert, is: 1)small bait hook that will hold about 5 kernels of corn 2) 2-3 split shots about 18" above the hook (just enough weight to get the bait to the bottom quickly) 3) hold the rod in my hand( because i don;t have the big carp gear..lol) and as soon as i see anything different in my line, i tighten the line and give it a decent straight up tug. The carp suck in the food and don;t "bite it" per se' until they are going to siphon out what they are going to eat. Sometimes the movement on the line is subtle, sometimes not. If you don't have one of those "carp rod holders" keep your paw on that rod at all times. I have seen two rods go flying in to the river where I fish .(not mine either)

wtg MJL great pics....

Speaking of Holdfast, where the heck has he and Spike been? I loved that guys reports and pics.

I am grateful for H1N1... NOW i DON;T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF every time I refuse to shake hands with people for the past few years.