Cudz

I have been in Orlando enduring 80 degree temps for the past 10 days. I will be driving home tomorrow and wondering if there is a chance that Simcoe is fishable? Cooks usually freezes sooner so is that safe? Kempenfelt bay? When I ask about it being safe I mean 'take your kids on the ice safe' thanks

I am driving to Orlando on Saturday evening. Hopefully things are cleaned up by then.

lol. 7 pounds

I like the God part of the show. Does not offend me at all.

He does. He passed it the first time. We have all learned from that mistake and even in the daytime i find myself paying much more attention. Tough lesson to learn but luckily nobody was injured and a lesson was learned. I have been out since at night and we always take it really easy now.

good for you. I once wrote an English essay on a bass tournament I entered and won when I was 17. I got an "A" on it. I also took a 400 level fisheries biology in university and my main project dealt with small and largemouth bass. Did well in that course too. It sure helps the ol' grades when you are actually interested in the topic.

sandbars with current. Get ya everytime. Hope you don't have an Arctic Cat. Everyone knows cats don't swim.

Tell her we can't do as much damage with a 12' tinner and 6hp. We can try though. Just get her to double up on the life insurance. My wife expects me to do stupid stuff. I told her about the accident and she didn't bat an eye. I am always do something dumb. I currently have a broken ankle.

GPS is for losers. We go by feel. The boat was written off. The engine was an injected 5.7 and it had about 200hrs on it. The salvage guy got the boat just for that reason. He said it wasn't worth it except for the engine (Pretty sure he got $200 worth of gas and a $1200 wake cage as well).

Does Lindner use some kind of a convex lens on his cameras because every fish on that show seems to be huge. Maybe it is just the way they hold the fish but I am always amazed at the size of the fish. They are good fishermen and it doesn't hurt having God on your side but seriously they seem to catch big fish all the time.

Hey Rob, You know whose cottage that is at? Your old football coach's. Tony and Rob were both in the boat for the accident.

Maybe showing off a bit. Boat can actually do a hair under 60. It had a 5.7 265 hp. It really isn't that close to shore. The angle is weird. He was looking up to see where the trees parted which he thought was where the narrows started. He was wrong. The narrows started about 200 yards before that. He was about to throttle down to endter the narrows. Problem was that he had already entered the narrows.

As I mentioned on another thread I was in a pretty serious boating accident earlier this summer. We hit about a 4ft wall of rocks (peninsula) at 45 mph in complete darkness at midnight. There were 7 of us in the boat and we managed to clear 40 ft (length of peninsula) in the air. I do remember being in the air for quite some time. I don't know how high we were but I have to assume we were at least 10ft off the water. The impact on the rocks wasn't bad but the landing really sucked. We landed sideways and stopped immediately. We were all tossed around like rag dolls. The boat was written off with dramatic stress to the hull and multiple holes. The outdrive was toast as well. The boat was full of fuel (170 liters) and it came to rest in 2 ft of water. The boat in the picture is actually sunk and resting on the bottom. Everyone stayed in the boat throughout the jump and landing. Injuries were very minor considering the impact and damage to the boat and the boat's interior. Of all the passengers, we had 2 black eyes, a sore toe, one cut elbow, a sore a$$ (no comment there), a slightly sore back. I know we were in the air for a while because I distincly remembe thinking to myself - Hey this is not too bad- ... That was until we hit the water. I was standing in the passenger seat next to the driver facing backward. Everyone else was in the boat at the back. Thank God nobody was sitting in the bow seats. I only turned around at the last second to see a huge grey wall in front of me. The boat itself is quite big. In the picture it doesn't make it look very big but it is a 21.5' Chapparel. Strong boat for sure. Any slower and we might have landed on the rocks. Any faster and I probably wouldn't be writing this letter. Lesson learned for sure. The walk back to the cottage was bad as well as we had to walk through knee deep marsh. We also got lost and it took us 1.5 hours to find the cottage. It is great to have angels looking over me. Also for anyone else who is attempting to hit these same rocks, 40-45 mph is the correct speed you need to clear them provided that your boat has a big bow. PS to add insult to injury, I have been on this lake 3 times at night and have hit this same peninsula twice. Once this summer and once 18 years ago. OOPS! Before anyone says: You should know better- You shouldn't do that etc. We know. It was a nasty lesson but everyone involved learned something. All seven guys on that boat own boats so there were many lessons learned. It was a mistake and the driver felt really really bad. He was on unknown lake with about 6 other guys who "knew" the lake and these narrows. Although we weren't driving, we didn't help things either. Oh yeah. We only went out for about 30 minutes but we got skunked that evening and in the accident we managed to break 3 or 4 rods, 2 reels, and my tackle box. Here are a few pics. point of impact point of impact different angle peninsula from landing end. The guy standing is at the point of impact end damage more damage other side outdrive being held on by hydraulic arms. Note huge crack at the top of stern drive picture of prop and skeg - Prob is a wallhanger for sure

Ok I will make a new thread

I used to run 33" on a grand cherokee. I also ran 235 70 16 for 3 years on a vehicle that was supposed to have 225 70 16. People make too big an issue with the exact size. Lawsuits blah blah. When I lived in the Dubai I ran 245 70 16 on my range rover that was supposed to have 205 80 16. Wider footprint and bigger sidewall for the sand. WIth a bigger sidewall I could lower tire pressure and get a much bigger footprint with each tire on the sand. I don't recommend different front to rear or side to size tires at the same time but people are a bit too caught up with this exact size thing. I had a Jetta that had 3 different sizes recommended in the manual. Their overall diameters were considerably different as well.

I have read that some are as bad as 10% at slower speeds.

Yeah I have weird definition of fun. Earlier this summer i was in a boating accident (not the driver) that was pretty bad. 7 of us in a boat at midnight doing 45 mph hit a peninsula that was 4 ft high. Managed to launch the boat 40 ft over the peninsula. Landed sideways on the water and everyone inside got rag-dolled. Ripped the hull apart and the stern drive off. No one got ejected and only minor bruises and small cuts. Now I am not saying that it was fun but it was incredible. I remember being airborn after hitting the rocks thinking "hey this is going to be ok, that impact wasn't too bad" Yeah not too bad until we hit the water sideways upon landing and immediately came to a stop. In the accident we broke 3 rods 2 reels and my tackle box. Came out alright. Someone is up there always taking care of me. Worse part about this accident is that I have been on that lake 3 times at night and I have hit that peninsula twice, once this summer and once 18 years ago. You would think I would learn. I bet I don't hit it a third time. I have some really good pics of the boat and accident.

100% they were loons. They had very small wings and had a hard time getting going out of the water. I know what a loon looks like and we got about 20 -30 ft away at times. From a distance I thought they were ducks but when we got closer it was obvious. I guarantee they were loons. I thought the same thing about flying south. I actually said to my friend "what is up with these stupid birds. They should be out of here by now." Obviously still lots of food here. I tried fishing the spot where they were but nothing doing.

I used them last night. Took them off only a few times and one was for the picture because I also took a pic of my friend. At one point I didn't even bother putting the mitten part over the fingertips because I couldn't feel them anyway.

lol. Because of the cold and the quick ice build up, it leaked a lot less than normal. My 12' has about a 3.5' transom width and is very shallow. Calling it a bathtub would be an insult to bathtubs.

LOL. Yes I do. It is now 12:48 am and I had better get to bed. I have to be more awake than the kids tomorrow.

Managed 3 personal bests. 14" Crappie 36" Pike 7 pound Smallmouth My catch of the year was the smallmouth.

They could fit over the calipers. Generally speaking you can go down one inch on the rim size and have no issues with calipers unless you have upgraded multi-piston or aftermarket products. Might want to look at the offset as well but that is less imprtant especially on winters.. My car runs 16" wheels in the summer and 15s in the winter. do this calculation to fisn out the overall difference in diameter of the 2 sets of wheels. Summer tires 2(205 x .55) + 400 = 625.5 mm which is almost exactly 25 inches. Therefore your tires stand 25" tall Winter tires 2(205 x .65) + 375 = 641.5 mm which is about 25.66". Therefore your winter tires would be 25.66" tall I believe the recommended allowance is about 1 cm or 10 mm. Your difference is 16 mm or 1.6 cm. Not too bad. Your speedo will be off a bit but not all that much. Your tires will be about 2.6% taller than the originals.

At times I make wise decisions and at other times I make poor decisions. This evening's decision was of the latter variety rather than the former. Despite the forecast being cold and windy I decided to venture out (with a friend) in my 1960 12' boat onto the lake. I should have known it was not going to be a good evening when I got to the launch and realised I had forgotten my tackle box at home. I had to drive home and get it which delayed our launch by 15 minutes. Although the wind was very strong and cold, it was out of the west so it was not going to affect us that much (lol), Anyway, as I was navigating to our spot I was getting drenched by the bow spray. No big deal though because it just froze almost instantly to my ski pants, jacket, face, fishing reel, boat, fishfinder and pretty much everything else. Once we got to our spot I grabbed my rod only to find that the line had somehow broken. I put that rod down and pick up my spare only to find that the tip had broken off and was now down by the weight. Wow! Not cool! Now I have to run the line through all the eyes of the first rod and tie a new knot. Did I mention it was very cold. My fingers were already going numb and it must have taken me 10 minutes to retie. Finally I start to fish. The drift was too fast so eventually I had to run the motor just to slow the drift down. While fishing the guides kept on freezing solid and somehow I managed to get a huge knot around the second last guide. Instead of trying to unknot it I just started fishing with the broken-tip rod. There was no way I was going to cut and retie that first rod again. To make a long cold story short, we caught nothing in the 2 and a half hours we were out there. Near the marina there must have been 30 loons. That was cool. They took off when we go too close. They really have little wings. We called it quitting time when it started to snow pretty hard. Once on shore, we got the boat on the trailer, took the engine off and backed up to the thin ice sign for a a quick pic. It was fun and cold but I don't recommend fishing in a 12' tinner when it is -8 dgrees out and windy as it can be. I think with the windchill it felt like -16 or something ridiculous like that. lol. My fingers still don't feel quite right. Here are some action (ha) shots from this eve. Sorry no fish pics.

Well here was my take. When I first saw it I started to weigh the pros and cons of doing this with the first guide. Here is my theory but it is just that. When the line comes off the reel it comes off as a wave. IF you place the first guide too far away from the spool the wave width becomes too big and thus causes the line to hit the rod blank which causes friction and thus slowing down the speed of the line and in turn reducing the distance of the cast. At the same time if you put it too close to the spool it will cause friction again due to the fact that the line is being forced to go at an 'unatural' angle. Having a guide too close could also interfere with the blank's natural backbone or optimum bending point and ultimately affect the rods overall performance. So here is what I think. Megabass were able to put the guide farther forward on the blank as to not affect the backbone or bending point of the rod and at the same time have the actual location where the line goes through the guide remain in the exact same location if it were attached in a conventional method which would maximize the casting distance. Does what I wrote make sense? If you look at the crappy drawing I did below I think you will be able to understand what I am talking about. You can keep the actual guide in the exact same location but move the attachment location of that guide forward as to not interfere with the strongest part of the rod.