craigdritchie

Nice birds. The pup looks pretty good too!

Ice fishing? I'd rather have a barbed wire enema.

I keep thinking I should spend more time fishing for crappies. I often think about it, but for one reason of another never actually get around to it.

That's what it's all about, isn't it? Sounds like a great weekend. :-)

Ice fishing ...... yech!

My condolences, man. That's rough.

Dave, I (purposefully) never said what lake they flow into .... many of my spots have 12 month seasons for salmon and trout.

Pretty much every creek, stream and ditch flowing into the Great Lakes gets some trout and salmon run up it. In some cases, these can be substantial runs of fish. They can be either wild fish, or strays from other systems, or a combination of both. Despite what we like to think about trout and salmon returning to their stocking sites, a lot of fish do stray and wind up in other rivers. John may have more detailed info on numbers, but I have always understood it to be a pretty significant proportion of the number stocked/hatched. Like, up to half. Over the years I have spent a lot of time exploring places where I just thought fish should be, even though they were never stocked there. And today, some of those locations have become my main fishing spots. The biggest reason is that by not appearing on the stocking lists, these places fly under the radar, and most people never think to fish them. I have one place I've been fishing for about six years now, and I've never seen another person there. There aren't huge runs of fish either, but enough to keep me happy and I have them all to myself. It's awesome. I can show up at noon on a Saturday and know no one has touched them since my last visit. It sure beats lining up at the popular spots with 20,000 of your closest friends every Saturday morning. Clarence - good on you for finding a spot like that. Find some others and keep the info quiet. You'll have great fishing for years to come.

Butt first? So that's what I've been doing wrong ......

Agree. The simplest way to get gunk out of a centrepin is to give it a quick dip. Some amount of sand and grit will always find a way in there, no matter how careful one might be - especially when using reels with lots of porting.

This is news? And wow - that comment from "Jill1" .... me thinks she has some anger management issues! Boy trouble, perhaps?

It just depends how far you want to drive. Conditions were great in Vancouver when I was there earlier this week.

I wondered how long that would take!

A friend of mine had an interesting series of pics show up on his trail camera. Someone must have saw it in the tree and decided to have a little fun, because he wound up with about 30 pictures of someone's nekkid arse.

Okay, that got my blood moving. Really nice pics. Cheers!

Erindale!

25 years for me, and I'm still getting the hang of it.

I miss the good old days with my ancient VW Rabbit. The parking brake was a piece of cinder block I used to chock the wheel. Auto technology has definitely improved!

You have to look at the bigger picture. That 2011 Chevy most likely has a lot more bells and whistles in it than the 2000 Honda does. Pretty much everyone expects air conditioning as a standard feature today, and that was not the case with a 2000 Honda Civic (it was a $1,300 option). We all expect bells and whistles like power windows and locks, remote keyless entry, a nice stereo, etc etc etc. We all want the new safety features, like multiple air bags and I-beams in the doors and ABS brakes and all kinds of other stuff that helps keep us alive in a collision - none of that stuff was found in the 2000 Honda Civic. I know because my ex drove one. End result - I would bet the 2011 Chevy probably weighs a bit more than the 2000 Honda, which is why even with more engine power, it's still delivering about the same fuel economy. Oh - and let's not forget, here we are 11 years later and in spite of continually rising costs, the retail price of a car hasn't changed all that much. In 2000 a decent economy car cost about $20k, and it still does today - in spite of having all that extra stuff in it. Look at the big picture and I think auto technology is moving forward quite nicely.

I had frog's legs when I was in France on vacation this year. Roy hit it - all I could taste was garlic butter.

where or where is Johnny Bass?

Thing is, if it's a block wall the water isn't necessarily coming in from that crack. It could be coming in from another source altogether. Or, it could be coming from multiple sources. Assuming the outside grade is okay, your weeping tile is not plugged up, and your siding, windows and eves are all in good shape, there are a couple of ways of dealing with this. It looks like the basement is unfinished where you have the water coming in. If that location is reasonably close to a floor drain, you can put in a French drain. What they do is jackhammer a small trench along the base of the wall, then take it out to the existing floor drain. The inside of the wall gets treated with a plastic sealant, and the trench gets some coarse gravel in it. Finally, they cement over the trench so it's hard to tell work was ever done there - pant the floor and you'll never know. What happens is that water still comes in, but it gets directed down into this little in-floor trench and sent down the drain - at least it's controlled and won't do any damage to your stuff. It will cost you from maybe a couple hundred bucks to $2,000 or more, depending how far they have to dig, and it works very well. But, it's a short-term bandaid solution. In the long term, you'll most likely have to dig around the outside of the house and apply a proper waterproof membrane to permanently fix the problem. That costs a lot more money (amount depends on size of the house and how easy/hard it will be to dig). But, it won't ever leak again. In the end, it comes down to how much you want to spend, and how long you plan to stay in that house.

So far as I know Tohatsu is the parent company. They make all sorts of small engines - outboards included. Scugog - it would appear that yes, they will be four-strokes. Dave - Yup, they should be more or less identical to Mercury's small outboards, and of course, Tohatsu's own-branded engines. The Johnson four-strokes that BRP used to sell were made by Suzuki. Definitely interesting times. In Vancouver tonight for a trade show that starts tomorrow. Wish I was fishing.