JFR

I've been away for a while, and most things slip easily out of the senile guys mind Wold someone direct me to the area to load photos, or a quick tutorial Thanks for a senile oldy

Greetings Ice Fishers It seems that the Town of Innisfil is planning on charging a fee for use of the access to Lake Simcoe ice fishing through Innisfil Beach Park. This article appeared in the Dec 2nd issue of the local community newspaper. If and when it comes into effect, please don't bust my chops or other residents of Innisfil, take a look at your fellow fishers and slobs who think nothing of leaving a mess every weekend. This is the article in full: Non-residents may face winter parking rates By Chris Simon Out-of-town ice fishers could be paying to cast their lines near Innisfil Beach Park this winter. A town committee approved a plan to charge non-residents $10 to enter and park their vehicles at the facility this winter, during a meeting last week. If approved by council, the charge would be in effect in time for the start of the ice fishing season, which usually runs from January to March. "This is because of the ongoing problems we have down there, with all the garbage and damage," said deputy mayor Gord Wauchope. "The people from out of town are not taking care of the park. When spring (hits), there's a lot of clean-up." Currently, entrance to the park is free from October to April. But the town is forced to cover ongoing maintenance and snowplowing expenses for the park during colder months, while staff repair turf damage and pickup garbage each spring. Staff estimate ice fishing costs the municipality about $12,200 in maintenance costs each year. "Many municipalities around the lake charge for parking during ice fishing season," said community services director Kerry Columbus, noting most other municipalities charge between $5 and $10 for parking. "Innisfil is one of a few who do not charge. Implementing fees would help offset these direct costs now covered by taxpayers. We would be at the top end of the charge rung." Staff would also need to be hired, to collect the fees at the park entrance gate, a move that is expected to cost the municipality about $6,500. However, the municipality should recover those expenses, said Columbus. "Ice fishing is a major winter use of the park, providing an economic stimulus Bridge opens to the local economy, (through) gear, bait, food and gas," he said. "The implementation of a fee should not be a deterrent for continued use by non-residents." As part of the plan, staff will prepare a cost/benefit analysis on the rate, following the conclusion of the ice fishing season. "This is a fair start," said councillor Rod Boynton. "We're not trying to ding our residents; we've worked to really relieve their costs. It would be good to study this for one season, then look at it again next year." http://www.innisfilscope.com/news/2009-12-...king_rates.html

Cliff Glad to read the update. My thoughts and prayers are with you. Hope Sue has a speedy recovery.

I'm sorry of your loss. Diane and I offer our deepest and most sincere condolences. Your memories and your recent fishing trip with your dad, will keep him forever in your heart. John and Diane

In order for you to be safe, you need to purchase the SMALL CRAFT NAUTICAL CHART #2025. (Bobcaygen to Lake Simcoe) You should be able to purchase this map in a set, any any marina. The fish hawk map is OK for general fishing area, but do not rely on it for navigation, etc.

Happy 27th budz

Lew, Here is a link to Transport Canada and the VHF radio system. http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/eng/CCG/MCTS_Radio_Aids John

Nice catch Mike. I owned a Langford Prospector 16 ft a few years back. Great tripping canoe, but once arthritis started setting into my knees, my tripping days came to an end :( Enjoy your new ride John

This is the link to Transport Canada's safe boating site. Click on the individual topics on the right hand side. http://www.tc.gc.ca/marinesafety/debs/obs/menu.htm I would suggest you use a good grade of synthetic oil marine oil.Mix it according to the mfg's directions, usually 50:1 Good luck and good boating. John

Looking forward to Seeing everyone on Saturday Morning...in time for breakfast. By the way, does this Golden Griddle serve a buffet type breakfast, at that time of day? John

I am wondering if there is any interest in sharing transportation cost to the Odyessy and back. We could hook up at the Commuter parking lot at Essa Road and the 400 hwy, at about 4;30am, getting us to St.Catharines in to,e for breakfast with Lew and the boys. John

I use Shimano's TDR rods for trolling, with Okuma Convector or Catalina line counter reels.

Li'l Angler Why not check the local SPCA branches, and adopt a furbaby. You can also research breed rescues. You will be getting a dog that has had some basic training. If you only want a dog for a pet, you should re-consider the working/hunter type dogs. Most responses were not negative, just grounded in reality of the breed. You current choice is good, IF you have a lot of time to devote to training and caring. Consider the costs involved with having a furbaby. Your annual Vet visits for the routine vaccines. The cost of food, has risen substantially of late. You can get pet insurance now, but without it, you will have to have deep pockets. Not trying to discourage you, just my .02$ John

I have been using Abu 6500 C3s since the mid '80s, when fishing for Salmon in Geogian Bay. Never had a problem with any reel. I am currently using the same reels for Muskie fishing, and totally satisfied. these are sturdy, well made Swedish reels, not an Asian import. My .02$, go for it, you'll not regret. John

My wife has a pair and she says they are great. We picked hers up at the eye care centre in the Wally World store. I know they weren't as expensive as the one's at BPS. John

Cliff I got fed up with Bell when their bill would nickle and dime me to death.( small monthly fee for "touch tone phone" When I asked to drop this fee, they said I could if I used a rotary dial phone(try finding one). Kicked them out of my neighbourhood. I switched my cell, internet and phone service to Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood, and have been completely satisfied. I kept the same home number ( have had this number since 1975). I also switched out Express Vu when they demanded I purchase a "new dish" and a receiver box for Hi Def TV stations. I opted for Star Choice and being a Shaw Communication company, get to deal with real Canadians in Calgary for Customer Service Since the switch 2 1/2 years ago, I constantly get mail from the Mother Bell Corp, asking me to return. Seems they are becoming desperate for clients. John

I was surfing a dog/cat site and came upon this: Interesting to say the least John 10 Secrets Pet Food Companies Don't Want You to Know 1. Pet food is NEVER mostly meat. Many ads suggest that it is... In order to list a meat source first on the bag label pet food companies resort to a variety of gimmicks. Here are a few to get you thinking. 1st Listing, a "wet" ingredient in what ends up being an essentially dry finished product. Wet meat gets a lot lighter when the moisture is cooked out. This labeling loophole is blatantly deceptive to the general public. All ingredients should be weighed and listed in dry weight equivalents for you to know truly how much of each makes up the ration. If the label lists, "chicken" it means chicken weighed when wet. Drop 75% of the value. If, on the other hand, it says, "chicken meal" they play fairly. If it says, "meat (any type) by-product meal" or "meat (any type) by-products" it was never meat to begin with. Find another food. Another gimmick is to "split carbohydrates" (grains) into multiple parts to get the "meat" to list first. Label ingredients are listed in descending order by weight. So, If you have 10 lbs. of chicken meal and 25 lbs. of rice, which should appear first on the label? Chicken of course! (if you want people to buy the stuff). Here's how it's done... 1st- CHICKEN MEAL, 2nd- GROUND RICE, 3rd- RICE BRAN, 4th- RICE GLUTEN. Pretty sneaky and obviously deceptive unless you know the trick. Rice Flour, Brewer's Rice and Rice ala Ronny could also have been listed if they really wanted to be fancy. A related tactic is to use a variety of grains with different names to get meat listed first. This is slightly more valid since they have different amino acid profiles and are truly different ingredients. Grains cost a lot less than meat. Meat "by-products" cost a lot less than meat. Both also have considerably less food value. The last gimmick for now is the campaign to convince the public that meat by-products and meat are just about the same thing. Hmm... "Honey, I'm having a ribeye steak tonight and you're having a nice pile of by-products, ok?" "Would you like the chicken breast or the intestine-cartilage-beak medley with your rice, Bob?" "Well gee Dear, doesn't really make any difference to me, they all sound equally delicious, nutritious and healthy!" By definition, by-products may contain anything from the specified animal except, (in the case of chicken), feathers and feces and, (in the case of beef), hoof, hide and feces. Meat and fat are separated out first because they are costlier and are therefore not present in any appreciable quantity. What's left is the bones, tendons, cartilage, beaks, feet and innards. Proudly displayed and masqueraded as meat. A pet food bag is not a place for dumping stuff of unknown nutritional value. Some foods even use the term , "SELECT by-products". All these contortions serve one purpose; To make you think that you're getting more meat than you really are in your bag of pet food. After all, who'd pay $35 for a bushel of corn?! Well, keep reading! 2. The cooking process used in pet foods KILLS off a vital component: enzymes. In order to eliminate bacteria and make cutesy shapes that pets care nothing about, processing temperatures in excess of 160 degress F are used to extrude or bake your pet's food. So what? Well, glad you asked. This places the entire burden for digestion on your pet's pancreas to supply the enzymes necessary for breaking down nutrients for absorption. In nature, this is far from the case. Animals naturally follow the path of "least digestive resistance" in the wild. Consider the fox who catches a rabbit. First item on the menu is the contents of the gut. Let the rabbit do the digesting and enjoy! The rabbit spent hours nibbling grasses and grains readying them for the fox's easy absorption of carbohydrates. Quick and cheap fuel. Next the fox buries or hides the rest to stew a spell. What we call, "turning rancid" the fox calls, "just getting better". In a couple days, the live enzymes in the rabbit meat have broken it down into easily digested protein. Notice how no fire was used in this process? For dessert, a little bone gnawing for the marrow, the calcium, and the teeth cleaning, and it's naptime. Left for the lower animals in the hierarchy are most of the by-products and the hide. Let's get back to your pet. In puppies and kittens, the pancreas is usually robust and up to the task of supplying sufficient digestive enzymes to make dead food somewhat useable and fulfill it's other vital functions. With age, however, pancreatic function is weakened and often can't keep up with this undue burden. If the pet food fed day in and day out is of low nutritional value to begin with, the taxing effect on the system will be all the greater and the pancreas will most likely give up that much sooner. The consequences to your pet's health are too broad in scope to cover here. 3. Giving "real food" aka "table scraps" is the RIGHT thing to do! Stepping on a lot of toes here to smash the myth that you should only feed the stuff from the bag and nothing else ever, PERIOD. What is it they are afraid of anyway? That your pet will learn to beg? Unlearn that. That your pet won't eat the chaff they call "food" after tasting the real deal? Probably. Or that it will throw the delicate balance of their finely tuned "nutrition" out of whack somehow? He He Hoo, hardly. Here's the scoop... Providing real food (not potato chips or other junk food) in its raw form counteracts some of the deficit that can be caused by only feeding commercially prepared pet food. It can provide the living enzymes to make digestion an easy rather than burdensome process. But, don't just go wild and throw everything in the feeding trough. Good bets for pets are raw carrots, broccoli, yogurt, cheese, garlic and meats. Cooked oatmeal, rice, corn, squash and the like are fine too. Don't feed raw grains, legumes, potatoes, onions, celery or chocolate which are either unusable or unhealthy. If you aren't comfortable with raw meat and fish, don't do it. Keep in mind, they aren't people and have an entirely different gastro-intestinal system than we do. Introduce new foods a little at a time about three times a week to start and give your pet's pancreas a much needed break. 4. Most "vet recommended" foods pay mightily for the "honor". Does it matter that the majority of vets know very little about pet nutrition? The public is told to, "Ask your vet". The vet is told by the pet food companies, "we'll send you to Hawaii for a week of golf if you sell and endorse XYZ brand pet food". In school, vets-to-be could ELECT to take an overview course in animal nutrition. Or not. There have been changes of late to make this required study. AS IT WELL SHOULD BE! You are miles ahead if you understand the pet food label yourself and take the time to learn some basic nutritional concepts. It's not that complicated! Find out for yourself, trust your own judgement and ignore what people say who are getting paid to say it. 5. The #1 vet recommended brand is probably the #1 worst pet food value. Without mentioning any names, if it lists corn as the first ingredient on the label and gets blasted by the competition for it, you know the company. Read the label! Compare it to the cheapest stuff you can find. There isn't a dimes worth of difference in most cases. How much does it cost them to make a 40 lb. bag of this stuff you may wonder? Right? Sit down. How about less than $3 including the cost of the bag? How much does the duped public shell out for the bushel of corn and peanut shells most recommended by vets? About $35. "Have a nice flight to Maui, Dr. Cutter and thanks again for your support". 6. Feeding "Soft-Moist" diets will cut your pet's life expectancy in half. Thankfully, these foods are on the steep decline but aren't gone yet. Perhaps killing your customers isn't a good way to develop long term brand loyalty. These toxic morsels are so loaded with chemicals to stay soft and prevent molding and so laden with sugar to cover the harsh chemical taste, they rip a pet's insides out. The sweetness is addictive and you'll hear owners say, "Fifi just won't eat anything else". Well, then better buy the small bag because who knows how long Fifi will be eating at all? Anybody feeding this garbage should stop at once and the manufacturers of it should be faced with a class action. 7. Many companies have "slithered" away from using ETHOXYQUIN. The once popular, and staunchly defended as safe, preservative (antioxidant) called "Ethoxyquin" has been mostly abandoned because of "hushed" litigation and settlements with professional breeders. It formerly was championed by pet food manufacturers (and others) as an advanced and healthy inclusion in pet food in an attempt to hide the fact that it was never intended to be eaten, much less on a daily basis. It was originally formulated as a rubber stabilizer and a color retention agent. Tires stayed pliable and spices stayed red. Despite efforts to get it approved as a food stabilizing agent in people food, it is only allowed for extremely limited application with colored spices. The people who know the devastating truth about this ingredient when eaten daily by pets have been paid off and forced to never tell their stories. There are innumerable instances of stillbirth, sudden liver failure, kidney dysfunction, permanent pigment changes, tumors and death thought to be caused by the addition of this wonder substance to pet food starting in about 1987. Much of the talk about ethoxyquin has quieted since the major pet food companies jumped off the bandwagon and switched to safer (and less legally troublesome) preservatives like forms of vitamins C. If they want the trust of the public, they should own up to their mistakes and come clean. Fat chance. All you'll get is denial. 8. Nature didn't intend for pets to eat dry food devoid of enzymes. Convenience is paid for in reduced pet health. Where is it written that your pet's bowl has to be filled with chalk dry nuggets of quasi-nutritious ground up brown stuff? We've been sold on a bad idea. We bought it because it made life easier. Until the real bill comes, that is. But doesn't kibbled food make their teeth shiny and their breath fresh? Won't their teeth fall out if they eat soft stuff? Yeah, right. Ever watch your dog eat? Does it look like some kind of teeth cleaning exercise? How about the cat? Really getting the old gum line clean huh? The truth about teeth cleaning is this... sticks, rocks, yarn, bones, toys and saliva primarily accomplish this task, not food. Commercial pet food has to be flavor enhanced with digest and sprayed-on fat to be even remotely attractive to your pet. Without these palatability modifications, the old dry kibble would just sit there and get dusty. People get paid big money to invent coatings to make your pet dive headfirst into the food bowl. Because then you smile and feel like it must be healthy and that Fifi loves the food and you too so you'll buy it again. Right? Remember, the fox didn't go in search of a crunchy rabbit. It ate the soft one and it has a dazzling smile and a fully charged pancreas. 9. Some companies sneak sugar into pet food to hook your pet. Watch out for these guys! They call it other things of course... (cane molasses, corn syrup) but it absolutely does not belong in your pet's food bowl. Processed sugars are foreign to dogs and cats and over the long term can result in obesity, tooth decay and diabetes (along with other maladies). Until 2 years ago, propylene glycol was being used as a sweet tasting preservative by those who must have cared much more about shelf life than about pet health. Thankfully, it has finally been banned. Pet food companies will tell you that the industry is tightly regulated and that your pet's health is being fastidiously protected. Do you buy that one? The FDA can't even keep up with human food and didn't lift a finger on behalf of the pet owners during the ethoxyquin debate. The regulating body for pet food ingredients is AAFCO. The American Association of Feed Control Officials. The rules and definitions they adopt are made by those with vested interests and are enforced through "voluntary compliance". The fox guards the rabbit hutch here. 10. Almost all manufacturers use stool hardening agents in pet food. Convenience again triumphs over pet health. Stool modifiers make clean up easier and mask the effects of nutrient malabsorption. Who's going to buy a pet food if you've got to SCRAPE up after your dog? It's easier to just stack those little bricks into a pile or kick them elsewhere. Consider however the strain on your pet's innards. Would you put concrete mix in your pancake batter? How about sawdust? If you were dieting, would you mix ground peanut shells into your breakfast cereal? Well, they do all that and more for your beloved pet. See if any of these made it into your pet food bag: sodium bentonite, powdered cellulose, beet pulp, tomato (or any other) pomace, ground peanut shells? The explanation for including these usually is that they are fiber sources for your pet's well being. Maybe a little truth there but not the real reason they are added. Whole grains provide great fiber content. A bit of bran would do well too. The real goal is to make you buy the food again because clean up time is so easy and enjoyable with brand XYZ's designer stools. Before you do this to your pet, try it yourself for a few days. One question to ask a company representative is this, "Aren't there times when my pet needs to evacuate it's system rapidly such as when a toxin is ingested or when the kitty or doggy flu comes around? Is having a cork in there at all times really a good idea? You'll then likely hear mumbling about "Our research..." and "regulating intestinal transit time for optimal nutrient absorption". Do you buy that one? If the food is good and fed properly, stools will be fine without forcing your pet to work a brick through their digestive and excretory systems.

I know most of the community colleges offer a wilderness coirses, check out Humber College and Georgian Colleg for mor details. John

Rick, I feed my lab pup Orijen Puppy food. I did all my research before hand. A little spendy, but you feed them less, so a large bag should last a little longer. (less poop) Here is the web page for Champion foods. They have two brands "arcana" and "Orijen" http://www.championpetfoods.com/ These two brands are available to Global/Ryans Pet Foods. I was very impressed with the company, All Canadian sourced ingredients, designed to meet Europe Union dictates for pet foods. FYI, dogs are carnivores, and do not need grains such as corn, etc. Whatever you decide follow the feeding instructions on the bag, and observe the shape of your dog. You should be able to feel her ribs, but not see them. She should have a tight waist, and her muscles should be defined. There are only 3 or 4 companies that manufacture their own foods, all others contract the making of their food to outside sources, and this was the cause of the recent dog deaths and pet food recalls (tainted grains from where else...China) Just my .02$ worth John

Congrats Matt......great gig,we'll miss your smiling face around town. John and Diane Ross

......only for a moment and the moments gone

Congrats Rob, and Brian good looking baby, are you sure the genes match?

Should have looked through the post B4 I posted. See you in the AM

Just back from Innisfil beach and checking the ice conditions for tomorrows Fishing for Tyler Ice has firm up after the mild spell, ruts left in the slush out from the ramp has firmed up, and may be a slight problem for snow vehicles little or NO snow cover on the ice, so it might be a bit slippery for the walkers. I did notice a few trucks and vans on the ice, a lot of huts further out Cold temps overnight, clear evening sky, should set up well for tomorrow morning. See you in the AM. John

Very strong winds and gusts here in Stroud, so unless your hut is well anchored it may be on the other side of the lake John