Dabluz

A person wearing a warm jacket....holding a ski.....snow in the picture....person wearing a long white beard (Santa Claus?). Everything looks normal to me....lol

I also suggest to run the fuel mixture with a bit more oil than less. I would start at around 30:1. It will only smoke a bit more and maybe the plug will eventually get dirty but you sure won't seize the motor. You can later run leaner but I would never go to 50:1 with any motor over 20 years old. If you want to troll with a large motor, use a drift sock or an electric motor or a smaller motor. It all depends on the size of the boat compared to the size of the motor. If you have a 30 h.p. motor on a 15 foot aluminum boat....get a very small motor for trolling.

All of the GPS units are great. However, stick to 2 brands....Garmin and Lowrance. Both are just as good as the other. Maps....there are maps for each brand however the maps are not interchangeable. I would say that the Lowrance H20 (colour) is the best bang for the buck and it's maps.....you can say are exactly the same as those for the Garmin. If you want topo maps....both Garmin and Lowrance have them. If you want streets and highways....the same. If you want nautical maps....they are available for both makes of GPS. It's a shame that Magellan does not offer a better customer service because it is a superior GPS. However, steer clear of the Magellan gps. If you really looking for the best nautical maps.....check out which maps you prefer (Garmin or Lowrance) and then decide which make of GPS to buy. Portable GPS systems do not have voices telling you to turn right or left. Only vehicle GPS systems have this or if you hook up your portable GPS to a computer or a palm pilot. You do not need voice activation when boating or hiking etc. It's only handy when you are travelling on a road and don't want to take your eyes off the road. On top of that, most of the GPS systems for vehicles do not allow a person to enter waypoints.....I think. Topgraphical maps have all the streets and highways you will ever need. However, there is so much detail, you cannot get all of N.America on one digital card. Example, my old Lowrance IFinder Pro has an SD card containing topographical information for all of Quebec south of the 53 parallel, NewBrunswick and a large portion of Ontario. My old version does not have the contour lines. Yes, the maps you buy are upgraded every once in a while. Nautical maps are different. People who use nautical maps want info for the large bodies of water they fish like the Great Lakes, St-Lawrence Seaway, East Coast, West Coast etc. Topgraphical maps will give you details like islands, shore lines, rivers, streams, brooks etc etc but no info on depths, buoys etc. For those small inland lakes....topographical maps are very adequate. There is usually no nautical info for these lakes anyway. So if maps are important....check the maps first then decide on the GPS after. The big problem with Garmin is the fact that they have way too many models. They each have small differences and you really have to know what you want before you can make the best choice for you. Do not buy the Garmin Colorado....too many people have been disappointed. Do not believe the hype that one GPS is better than another. My old Lowrance IFinder Pro is as fast as a Garmin 60CS in getting a satellite fix. The other day during a "geocaching" reunion, my old 80 Lowrance got a satellite fix in the middle of a room where there were only 2 small windows as fast as a Garmin 60CS. Meanwhile, the Garmin 76 never got a fix. When looking for geocaches, my old Lowrance was just as precise and fast as the expensive newer models of GPS's. A great GPS is the Garmin Legend. They sell for about 150 dollars here in Canada. If the Garmin nautical maps are your choice....then you can load the info you need for your outing on the 8 megs of memory in the Legend. If you want to completely load your nautical map in your GPS, you will need a GPS that accepts SD cards. The Lowrance H20 has a slot for SD cards up to at least 2G. My old IFinder Pro accepts SD cards up to 2G. You can save a bit of money by buying a black and white GPS. The shades of gray are very visible. But colour is much nicer and now only costs about 50 dollars more to have but does consume a bit more energy. Black and White GPS screens are getting rarer every day. Final thing to look at but still important is the number of pixels on the screen. The more the merrier. A good accessory to buy is a power cord for the GPS. This way, you can plug your GPS into your car's cigarette lighter or the one on the boat. Supports for the GPS can cost quite a bit....shop on ebay to find some that are just as good and much cheaper. You can even find a decent GPS holder for 1 dollar at Dollarama.

I haven't been to Gananoque in quite a few years but I'm positive that there are a few bait and tackle stores there. There may even be a Canadian Tire store there too. One thing for sure, there are a lot of boats and a lot of fishermen in that area. I wouldn't be worried in the least. Same thing for maps of all kinds....this town is invaded by tourists who come by car or boat every year. Do some internet searchs with the word "Gananoque" and I'm sure you will get tons of info and even the e-mail address of a tourist information bureau.

I have run across a couple of very emaciated fish too. One was a very long pike who should have weighed about 20 lbs but was about 7 lbs. I caught him on a jig. There was a clip from a fishing chain punched through upper and lower jaw. This was on the upper Ottawa River during the pike and walleye opener in may so this fish had this clip in his face since the previous season. He still managed to have enough of an opening to grab my jig. I removed the clip and released the fish. Since I often use 2 lb test mono and baited hook for brook trout, I usually retie my hook after every fish....especially when it's a brookie over 16 inches long. Most of the time, I just cut the line and put the brookie in a large metal mesh bag hanging in the water beside my canoe and then retrieve my hook when I get home. This way, the trout stays lively all day in the bag. I usually find the hook quite far in the stomach even though I could see the hook in the trout's gullet after I have caught it. Surely the hook does travel to the stomach. The red finish on the red Gamakatsu hooks really takes a beating from spending a few hours in the fish's stomach. I'm sure that the further away from the stomach the hook does not dissolve as quickly. I often check stomach contents when cleaning fish and I've very rarely ever run across any hooks or lures in the stomachs of fish unless it was a fish that I or somebody had hooked and lost due to a break off a bit earlier in the day. Since I have run across recently hooked fish and yet have never encountered an old deeply embedded hook there can be only 2 conclusions. Either the hooks do rust away quickly or the fish eventually dies. But, if an embedded hook is so fatal, why do I often run across fish that had been submitted to quite a bit of damage and yet have healed and lived to bite again? I even caught a trout whose whole upper jaw was missing....right up to between his eyes. Everything had healed up, the lower jaw was bent up until it almost ended up between the fish's eyes and the eyes were bulging outward. I'm sure that someday, a future biologist will make his thesis on this subject.

Nice topic. Depends on a lot of factors for many people. Most of my fishing is from a canoe with electric motor for brook trout. I do a lot of fly fishing. Therefore, fishing alone is almost a must. I also like to fly fish for pike from my canoe. Trolling for ouananiche (landlocked salmon) or walleye from my 12 foot boat is another story. It's more fun when I have someone else with me. I also like to go wilderness camping/fishing. Most of the time, I go by myself. I like to be able to go out on the water when I feel like it and eat when I feel like it etc. But doing the same thing with a group is a lot of fun....especially when there are just 2 guys per boat. Next summer, my wife will have more free time on her hands and she will be going fishing with me more often. She likes going camping/fishing with me....I do almost everything while she just enjoys herself. Of course, it is a bit more work for me because I don't mind roughing it when by myself but when she comes with me, I bring along extra stuff to make things more comfortable.

Yep....Dannyboy is right, DEET concentration is limited to about 34% I think. Funny thing about DEET. No matter what the concentration is....it's effective. The concentration of DEET determines how long it will last. The 5% stuff is just as good as the 100% stuff....you just have to apply it more often. Usually, you only need insect repellant for a short period anyway. 95% of the time, I use something like Skintastic or Skin so Soft which has about 5% DEET. I did use some military spray one time about 25 years ago. It was in spray form and was close to 100% DEET. I accidentally sprayed my lips and they were numb for the whole day. The stuff was meant for clothes only. I still have some old bottles of OFF, Muskol and ZZZ.....100% DEET but rarely use the stuff. However, I most often carry the stuff because there can be times when it just has to be used. In an emergency situation....like when you have to change a tire and you are nearby a swamp or when you have to walk to civilization after a breakdown. The big problem with this stuff is the fact that my skin gets all dry....my ears turn into dry leaves. And.....it STINKS like old dog breath. There was a time when Noxzema had a suntan lotion/deet combination. I used that for a few decades. Great for keeping the insects away, great smell, skin felt soft and non-oily and it did work as a sun protector too. However, no such product exists any longer due to the fact that sun protector is supposed to enter the skin while DEET is not supposed to enter the skin due to it's toxicity. I live in the Saguenay Region of Quebec. The whole area is litterally covered in small bodies of water. I rarely have to use insect repellant because once out on the water, there are few insects. It's just when it's time to load the canoe on the vehicule in the late afternoon or evening that the bugs are at their worst.

No matter what weight I was, my snoring was always very very loud. So loud that when I was in the armed forces, no one could stand living in the same room as me so I got a room alone. When I go to my brother in law's cottage, a lot of other people don't go if they know I will be there. One time, some of the guys couldn't fall asleep so they slept in their cars. It was well below zero so they kept their vehicules running while they were sleeping. I only breathe through my nose and it's a real problem when I get nasal congestion. I hate it when only one nostril works....lol. I'm almost positive that an operation at the back of my throat will do the trick but the doctors do not want to do it. The reason I know that the back of my throat is the problem is due to the fact that every once in a blue moon, when I am in a deep sleep, like after doing a lot of drinking, I wake up with the epiglotte (that thing that dangles in the back of the throat) so swollen that if actually goes deep in the throat and when I swallow, it pulls hard on that dangly thing and my throat hurts bad. I know then that I slept with my mouth open. I do a minimal amount of drinking due to this scary problem....lol. 95% of the people who use the CPAP machine say good things about it. I will have to give it a good try. Since I've got it, I might as well give it a good try. If I still don't like it, I guess I will sell it and buy a small used outboard engine.

I have one of those machines too. I got it a few years ago and it has about 10 hours use. My biggest complaint is the fact that the air you breathe is warmed up. They say it's to help humidify the air. Anyway, I can't stand breathing warm air. Another thing is that the air pressure slowly increases because at high pressure, a person cannot fall asleep as easily. The machine is programmed to increase pressure so that maximum pressure is attained approx 30 minutes after the machine is started. The pressure in my machine is just too much. Air gets past the nose piece and blows into the eyes. You wake up with swollen eyes. There are not enough sizes of nose pieces and even if I have a very normal nose, none of the nose pieces really fit good. Maybe there are new nose pieces available. The CPAC machine also works on a 12 volt power supply. It's quite compact too. If you sleep with your mouth open...you will have to wear the complete mask that covers the nose and mouth. Luckily, I sleep with my mouth closed. The machine is quite expensive. I got it for free because I am on welfare. Lost my job while trying to find a way to reduce my drowsiness on the job. My sleep apnea is severe....approximately 1 every minute. Yes, my apnea has been trying to kill me too. First heart attack when I was about 32 years old. Lost a good job over falling asleep all the time. My bosses had no inkling that someone with apnea compensates for his ailment in many ways. Example, waking up suddenly when needed and being instantly alert, great concentration, lots of energy etc. But it does look bad when there are clients and they see someone snoozing. I did a lot of eating to keep me occupied and awake. Got huge and this caused other health problems like diabetes. The diabetes was so over controlled that it damaged my kidneys. So I did the best thing I could do. I quit working and now on welfare. Now, when I feel like taking a snooze....I do. I do sleep well and fall asleep quickly. I also can wake up at any time I want without an alarme clock. Ok....so I'm on welfare. That's ok. I have a house, an old vehicule, an old canoe, an old boat, an old snowmobile, an old ATV. Not much money...but when I was working, I was always short of money anyway. Nothing has changed in that department. Even rich people are short of money. I may use my CPAC machine again. I used to fall asleep at the wheel of my vehicule all the time but not any more. The 6 km drive home from work is through the city. Lots of times I would end up home.....not remembering my drive from work. I took up playing guitar in 2000. I also learned to play harmonica. I play in a blues band and play every once in a while in bars. When driving, all I need to do is play some blues music and it keeps me awake like nothing else. I also play along to the music with a harmonica. One time when driving back home from Ontario, I was listening to the same tape. It was a 2 hour tape of Stevie Ray Vaughan. It was the only blues music I had in the vehicle. For 9 hours I listened to the tape and did not feel the slightest bit sleepy. My wife was fed up. When we saw the lights from our home city, she asked if she could listen to a tape of her music. About 30 seconds later, I fell asleep. So, back into the tape player went Stevie Ray Vaughan.....lol. In the past few years, I rarely fall asleep behind the wheel. I lost all that extra weight, diabetes is near perfect all the time, cholestoral is near perfect, no blood pressure and I can shovel snow for a couple of hours without stopping or portage my canoe etc. I sleep when I feel like it. My problem was the fact that my job interfered with my sleep.

When I was an auxiliary conservation officer, we often cruised on smaller lakes with a 12 foot aluminum boat and a 10 h.p. Mercury. Yes.....it was fast. But we didn't carry much equipment. But it seems to me that my 12 footer is even lighter than the one we used to patrol with. When I was a kid, I remember water skiing behind a 10 foot aluminum boat with my Dad's old Elgin 7.5 h.p. engine. It was a 7.5 British h.p. The operator had to be alone in the boat and the skier had to take off from a sitting position on a dock. When just speeding along, I would guess that the boat was skimming on no more than 2 square feet of water. I am a bit leery of using more than a 7.5 h.p. on my 12 foot cartopper. I don't need the extra speed anyway. Like Fishnfriend said, even a 5 h.p. outboard would serve my purposes. My quest is now to trade in the 12 footer for a 14 footer. I'm pretty sure that there are people out there who would prefer a smaller lighter aluminum cartopper but are stuck with a 14 footer on a trailer. I can unload and load my 12 footer on my roof support when alone. Hauling it to the edge of the water is a cinch. But I use my 14 foot Sportspal canoe when I go fishing in such a situation. While I'm waiting for a trade, I will be modifying my aluminum boat so that I can use a bowmount fishing motor and sit in a chair on a short pedestal.

Thanks for the replies guys. The reason I was asking is that my buddy has a 9 h.p. Honda 4 stroke. The thing weighs a ton. I won't put it on my cartopper for sure. His 2 h.p. 2 stroke pushes my 12 foot cartopper at a pretty decent speed. My 12 foot cartopper no longer has the information plate....if it's still there, it's behind a piece of wood that was added to reinforce the transom. I've been thinking things over and since I already have a 14 foot Sportspal canoe for small water, I hope to trade my 12 foot cartopper for a 14 foot boat so that I can handle rougher water and use my buddy's 9 Honda 4 stroke. He has just bought a 16 or 17 foot Legend with a 75 h.p. engine. He already had a 10 foot Zodiac but rarely uses the 9 h.p. Honda. Most of the time, he uses either an electric motor or his 2 h.p. 4 stroke on his Zodiac.

I have a very light 12 foot aluminum boat. It looks smaller than 12 foot but I measured it and it's exactly 12 feet long. Is a 9 h.p. motor too big or heavy for this boat?

We did nationalize oil production in Canada a few years back. It was during the Trudeau administration. We even spent a lot of money developing ways to extract oil from the tar sands. Since then, everything was sold and then the prices really started to climb. On top of that, foreign investors are profiting from all the money that was spent developing the extracting process. What surprises me is the fact that Canada is not interested in developing alternate fuel like alcohol. We have enough hydro and we have enough waste products from agriculture and forestry to do it.

You can buy excellent fillet knives in one of those small appliance stores for about 10 dollars. You know....those small stores that sell scissors, Victorinox knives, electric shavers, electric mixers etc. Most are very high quality and are used in butcher shops. They don't come with sheaths. They are quite flexible and thin but hold an edge much better than a Rapala.

I went to soft tackle bags quite a few years ago. Actually, they were not available....I just stuffed plastic trays in a pack sack since I did and still do a lot of portaging. Now, I have 3 sizes of soft tackle bags. On some long fishing trips where I will be fishing for many species of fish, I haul all 3 tackle bags and even that is not enough because I do a lot of fly fishing too and I also store my reels in another bag. However, a lot of my outings are just quick trips.....shore fishing for brook trout on the Saguenay river. I only need my smallest soft bag and a couple of small trays in the bag for this kind of fishing. I still see guys hauling their hard plastic tackle box and then spending the day just bottom fishing with hook and sinker.

It's 1.28 per liter here in my area of Quebec. Or 4.57 per U.S. gallon.

If it's for vertical jigging or very short casts for walleye in shallow water with a clean bottom I prefer 4 lb mono. A good mono. I liked Sensithin the most but it no longer exists. I will go to Remington Ultra Premium now. If there are snags, or the water is over 20 feet deep, I use 8 lb test Fireline. It's strong enough to straighten out the hooks on jigs using light wire hooks. Fluorocarbon.....I hate the stuff. I tried Vanish and Seaguar.....I gave them a good tryout too. Both failed in some way or another. I saw no difference in the number of bites.

I think that Gary reallys wants is info about the fishing at that particular lake. Yes, eyeballing a map of the lake does give a bit of info as to where to go first but I doubt that anyone will give away any "hot spots" on that particular body of water or any other body of water for that matter. Gary, I think you should invest in a decent GPS unit with topo software installed in the GPS. With a GPS, you will even be able to see at what speed, altitude, distance, bearing etc etc you are flying when you are going to the lake. Once at the lake, you can save your own hot spots and add info like depth etc to each waypoint. Then, when you get back home, you can store all this info in your PC until the next time you go to that particular lake. You can even send all this info to special fishing buddies. With a GPS, you can even check out sun-up and sun-down plus the moon cycles for that particular lake for the date you are planning to go there.

There are things that I would look at first before buying a ATV. First, can you start the thing with a dead battery? Can you go into reverse without having to downshift into first gear or neutral? I don't think that I would like an automatic transmission. I much prefer a semi-automatic transmission. As to which is the best ATV, wow....that's a difficult question to answer. There are lots of changes every few years. There is always the question of what the ATV will be mostly used for. It's for doing a lot of cruising, then choose an ATV with a more comfortable ride. My 1988 350 Big Bear does not ride like a sofa. It has a stiff ride. The only breakdowns I've had with this atv was a weird happening with the gear shift assembly. I had to take the motor out and have the part replaced in a shop. Somehow, a small screw came undone. The other breakdown was an oil conduit close to the oil filter and close to my left foot. Something broke the white metal part. Other than those 2 problems, my Big Bear behaves flawlessly. It starts in -30 degree temperature no problem. The battery has been dead for a couple of years now. I start it with the hand rope. The oil in the engine is the colour of honey.

I like to add a worm or minnow to my marabou or hair jig. Since there is no plastic curly tail or other plastic bait, even though there is bait on the hook, the hook is not overloaded. No need for trailer hooks because there are rarely any short bites unless you add a large plastic bait to the jig. On top of that, dressing your own jigs is fun.

I remember a time when there were no plastic jigs. The first one I ever saw was the Beetle Jig. The best jigs I ever used for walleye were marabou jigs made by a company called "Evans". I still have some.

I often use marabou feather jigs that I make myself. Nothing breathes in the water like marabou. On top of that, you don't get any short bites like you do with plastic curly tails etc. The hook set is much better because it is not already full of plastic. Another added bonus is the fact that you can use a lighter lead head because there is no plastic tail that floats. However, you sometimes want the lure to drop slower to the bottom in many cases so you can add a collar of marabou and still have enough room for a plastic tail behind the lead head.

Rooster Tail. It says that on the lure. Probably made by Anglia.

I want to use a small inline planer board like the one pictured above. Has anyone tried using such a planer board tied to braided line then tying on the line from your fishing rod to a release at the end of the board? This setup would be same used for those large planer boards but on a smaller scale.

I use braid, fusion and mono depending on the situation. I've tried larger braids like 30 lb and 50 lb test on baitcasters but prefer 20 lbs test now. For brook trout, I use 2 to 4 lb clear mono. Berkley Sensithin is great but no longer available. Silver Thread is a nice mono too. It really surprised me for its suppleness and strength yet not as elastic as Trilene XL. I really like Mason Tiger Braid but tying a knot...even a palomar knot, can be difficult. It's a line made up of parallel microfibers inside a sheath of braided microfibers so when tying a knot, it must be carefully inspected with a magnifying loop to see if the outer sheath has been damaged. For pike, all the lines get cut so I use a very fine flexible multistrand steel leader material of about 10 to 15 lb test. Some of this stuff has over 50 strands yet is as fine as 6 lb test mono. It is supple enough to tie knots. It's expensive too. I get mine from Europe and make my own leaders with a good swivel at one end and a good snap at the other end. When I want to fill a reel with braid or fusion, I start out putting the amount of line I want on the spool then fill the spool up with mono backing. Then, I remove the lines from the spool using a drill and old empty filler spools and refill the spool by starting out with the mono backing and topping off with the main line. I use a small line counter to count the amount of main line I want to use. I often use only 75 yards of braid on a baitcaster. This way, I can fill 2 baitcasters from a 150 yard spool.