Jonny

Whoa! I just noticed the post count for Irishfield! Is that the record for this board???

I started hunting with my Dad when I was 10 years old. I shot my first partridge and rabbits (snowshoe hare actually) with a Cooey .22. When I was 15 I got my first single-shot shotgun and embarked on a long run of duck hunting til I was about 35. I used to be crazy about it... and all other kinds of hunting. I hunted moose for many years, mostly with rifle but later with a compound crossbow to take advantage of the archery seasons. I still hunt deer on the North Shore (Iron Bridge area) for a week every November with a good bunch of guys. And I still love to walk bush and trails with a single-shot Cooey .410 or a single shot Anschutz .22. You can't beat a feed of breaded partridge and pickerel! I used to own quite a few rifles and shotguns, but I downsized by about half a few years ago. Now I'm ready to part with all my guns except the ones I actually use frequently or at least occasionally for hunting. Ellwood Epps Sporting Goods in Orillia has a good consignment arrangement for guns, and I've considered taking some there, if I get around to it. Does this site accept classifieds for firearms?

It's there all right: Patrick, there's a whole thread on 2 stokes vs 4 strokes if you want to compare them. It contains all the arguments pro and con. Not a great idea to exceed the rating on the boat based on your own home-grown calculation.

Ontario stocked coho in Erie between 1873 and 1878. Later, the book says coho were stocked by Ontario (1969) but doesn't say where, just "the Great Lakes". Could they have been stocked in Huron?

I'm not that familiar with either species, only having fished several times for salmon on Lake Superior (Wawa, Michipicoten River). The ones we caught were identified for us as chinook. That was fine with us - they could have called the beauties we caught "Polka Dot Salmon" and we would have been just as happy! I've been doing some research in "Freshwater Fishes of Canada" (Scott and Crossman) and the two species - coho and chinook - are so similar that I think you'd need a much better photograph to identify the difference, especially with the darkened spawning colour. Better yet, you'd have to see the fish itself. Marine (ocean) coho have pale gums, but Great Lakes coho usually have grey to black gums, the same as the chinook. One of the best indicators seems to be the spots on the caudal (tail) fin. In the coho the spots are only on the upper lobe of the tail. On the chinook the spots are on both upper and lower lobes of the tail. At spawning, the males of both species develop a hooked snout and lower jaw, the coho snout just slightly thicker and blunter. (It seems to me you'd almost have to see the two side-by-side to make a meaningful comparison.) This all according to the book, which I gather is one of the bibles, if not THE bible, of Canadian fish identification. -- An interesting sidebar on the chinook: "Establishing this voracious fish-eating but non-reproducing species in the fresh waters of New Hampshire led to the interesting suggestion of using it in fresh water for control of coarse fish. The chinooks exterminated smelt from the lake in 3 years and then died out themselves, leaving the lake ready for the re-introduction of native trout." And one on the coho: "Adults will be competitors of other predaceous fishes such as the rainbow and lake trouts. However coho probably feed at depths much shallower than those used by lake trout and are dominated in a competitive situation by rainbow trout; thus they may not adversely affect either of those species, or other highly valued predatory species in the Great Lakes."

I wish Harv had taken a picture of the one he saw. I'll have to ask next time I see him. He just might have. I imagine that someone who has fished for salmon as much as he has would know his fish.

I had to SQUINT to see that word. I use the 'OFC Club' skin for this site. -- Thanks for the kind words, gents! I'm having an indecent amount of fun at this.

Right on. And the bonus is that this site is PG-13.

I don't know where Dunnville is, sorry, but I got mine at Benson Auto Parts in Sturgeon Falls. Here's a link for their store locations that might help: http://www.autopartsextra.com/en/location_Ont.htm

Thanks, Jacques! We have a small garden and I think I'll have to try that. Can't have too much garlic! I saved your instructions to remind myself at the right time.

I look at my post count and for a "new guy" it looks pretty high. Too much enthusiasm for a new-to-me forum I guess. I should probably forego some of the enjoyment I've found in posting here. There's a danger that if you post too much, others might conclude that you don't have a life.

Me too. The first time I tried it I figured what the heck, if it doesn't work I can probably edit it out.

I think if you go back to your first post and click on "Full Edit", you can add a poll. Look for "Poll Options - Click here to manage this topic's poll"

Harv didn't say he saw the supposed 25 lb Sturgeon River coho - only that he had heard a story to that effect.

Good idea... good post. I really like the way you laid it out!

Awesome. I hope you can find it --- I'd sure like to have a look. Same as the lake trout you posted about, I'd never heard of coho in Nipissing. I figured probably others hadn't either. I wonder how suitable coho find the lake environment and whether they will proliferate. Proliferation always seems to be at the expense of some other species.

Ol' Harv again. This reminded me of Randy from Sturgeon's post about lake trout in Nipissing. Harv dropped by a native friend's place not long ago and the friend said, "Come have a look at this." Harv told me he said, "Holy smokes! That's a coho!" The fish was 13 lbs. Believe me, Harv knows his fish. Among many other things, he's done a lot of fishing at South Baymouth and also ran some charters from there. He says there was also a 25 lb coho caught (by angling) in the Sturgeon River, and that the MNR allows that there are a few in the lake, probably coming up from the French at high water in the spring, like Randy mentioned for the lake trout.

I was just talking to Ol' Harv (more experience than just about any three fishermen put together) and he told me about a friend of his who had an $800 casting combo stolen out of the back of his pickup. Harv asked him if he planned to by the same outfit again. He answered, "Hell no, I can buy an outfit for a LOT cheaper that will work just as well!" I asked Ol' Harv about Okuma reels. He said, "Good reels. I've got a few of 'em and they've been good." "And did you know," he says, "Okuma's made reels for Daiwa. They make 'em and Daiwa slaps their own name on 'em."

Never having fished for muskie, and only ever having caught one (incidental), I'm always intrigued by them. What you call small looks pretty good to me! (by pike standards).

Nice crop! I love garlic but know nothing about growing it. So you plant the cloves in the fall? What do you start your first crop from? Can you buy seeding cloves?

Yeah, slander is spoken, libel is written. Funny thing is, if something is spoken on radio or TV, it is classed as libel. Apparently because it is intended to reach a wide audience, like a newspaper would.

Bang on, FNW, well said.

Stay away from the site that calls itself "paypalsucks". I got a threat warning when I linked to that. Yes, these horror story sites have been around for a while. They mostly deal with people who are selling products, not buying them. So they are of little concern to me personally as all I do is buy. I've sold a couple of things using ebay and Paypal and had no problem, but only a couple. If you want to use ebay you have little choice but to use Paypal. It's all that most sellers will accept. If they have problems with some of their customers, they must chalk it up to the cost of doing business, because there are many sellers who have sold thousands of items (check some feedback numbers) and continue to use it great guns. Refusing to use Paypal is certainly an option for anybody who's uncomfortable with it. Just be aware that it severely limits what you can do on line. You're swimming against the current. There are probably tens or hundreds of thousands of transactions that go through ebay and Paypal every day. There are bound to be some complaints. I'm not saying that's good, but it's not surprising. --- EDIT - Sellers can check the feedback rating of potential buyers on ebay. Some sellers state in their ads that they will not accept bids from buyers who have low feedback or negative feedback. Ebay's feedback system, from what I can see, works quite well.

You've certainly got a legitimate gripe if that's the way you liked to do it, GBG, but it doesn't really matter if ebay makes money off Paypal--- you don't have to pay for it to use it, if you're a buyer. The reason everybody has gone to it is that it's easy and instant. Those are the two watchwords these days, and almost everybody has a credit card, even if just for purposes like this. There's really no reason not to own one if you pay your outstanding balances immediately, like I do through internet banking. Transactions cost zero, and they're secure. I take it you're not happy with AP's comment. ... justified. Don't worry about pigeons --- their coo is worse than their peck.

A piece of the log he's standing on. Note that the log is floating higher in the second pic. Maybe the first one was from just after he landed? Really nice shots. I've never seen one closer than about 30 - 40 feet.