Stein

Garmin Nuvi 760. It's great, voice prompts, great routing so far and you can get refurbs from amazon.com for $199. Mine was listed as a refurbished but I can't tell it from new.

That smallie is fricken awesome!

Rocks over weeds is fine with me! I like jakes, grandmas and big cranks that time of year anyway. I suppose I will have to still throw the DCG's as well, but I really don't like winching those things in. Anyone that says they can burn them all day either is lying or has my utmost respect.

I appreciate the update tjsa. I didn't know if anyone stretched up that way much. It was worth a shot, though. I'm sure I'll figure it out in the first couple of days. It's part of the hunt.

I know that I'm a bit early asking as I don't get to come up for two more weeks, but can anyone give me a muskie report for Minaki/Roughrock/Big/Little Sand area or is anyone going in the next week or two? Not looking for spots as we have been going for the last 15 years now, but with the cooler summer are the fish shallow, on rocks, on weeds, etc? Looking forward to 10 days of muskie fishing bliss. No work, no phones, ahhhh. Can hardly wait! Feel free to PM if you don't want to post here. Thanks!

That HAS to be the first time a Drama rod has EVER been on a downrigger.

I've become a big fan of floro leaders, but I tend to stay with 130 lb leaders. A bit better biteoff protection. If you believe internet lore, there have been biteoffs on 100 lb, but no confirmed cases on 130 that I am aware of, so I think that is kind of the tipping point. I use them on everything except jerkbaits. You will want to stay with a stiff single strand on them for proper lure action.

Taper, one thing I am considering doing is the following that I got from another board. It would allow me to waypoint humps, etc. that aren't visible. It may help you also. I can take scans of the Canadian Hydrographic maps that I have and use them. Here is a Copy and Paste of what he did: I had a great old paper map, and thought there has to be a better way than riding around with a map on your lap, looking for that hump that you want. One day while playing around with Google Earth, I found a button where you could overlay images onto it. I scanned my paper map in sections, then using Adode Photoshop,pieced it back together, erased everything outside of the lakes banks, converted it to a GIF image for transparency, then saved it on my computer. Then it's simply a matter of importing it to Google Earth and lining it up with the satellite image. I was suprised when it fit perfectly. I could then run my mouse across the screen, hover over whatever I wanted, and get the GPS coords for it, and enter them into my GPS manually. It actually worked better than I thought it would, and alot easier than riding around with a map in your lap.

Does anyone know of ANY GPS chip that covers the Winnipeg River area around Minaki? Any detail would be better than nothing. I haven't been able to find anything. Buying a new GPS plotter this year, most likely a Lowrance 520c and would like to have a map of this area for our September trip. Thanks, Stein

While I would agree that it would be a great show-- any cold weather series would be a great test, we'll never see it. Gotta give the audience girls in bikinis.

also take a look at the articles in the Library here: http://www.rodbuilding.org/library/library.html and check out the message board here: http://www.rodbuilding.org/list.php?2

The bass guys down here go nuts over those things. For most of them, they are the only cranks they throw.

Why would there possibly be a "Fishing Hurts" banner ad running on the OFC Homepage linking you to fishinghurts.com on a fishing forum??????

I caught two rocks within an hour. The second one was about softball sized, but flat. Felt like a fish. We have now caught five rocks from this lake (Milford Lake in Kansas) The rock is limestone with lots of holes and the hooks of crankbatis will snag in the holes. Never seen so many boated rocks.

Nope. Shot at a high fence ranch so not eligible. A bunch of cash took him home. Take a look at the ear where the ear tag was on your photos. Not shooting the messenger and I know that you said that was all you knew so no worries. www.timberghostranch.com Shot in Sperry Iowa.

No such thing as a crap report if it conveys some beneficial information.

Thanks for all of the king words guys. My comment of bad pics was related to the fact that we sould have gotten some pics of the dolphin before they were on ice. They have such great blues, greens and yellows and lose it so fast. Also, would have liked a better shot of the sail out of the water. Hard to get a good perspective of what it really was. It was a good time. I have been offshore fishing a couple of times and, while the fish are nice, it's hard to fish that way when you are a muskie guy who is used to doing everything--picking the spot, choosing the bait, controlling the boat, casting, working the bait, setting the hook, working the fish, landing the fish, holding the fish. Here, you pay the man, they do everything, you wait for a bait to go off, fight the fish and stand next to it for a picture. Kind of bittersweet, if you can relate. Not to sound arrogant or unappreciative. It's just different. I understand that if I didn't do this, I would have never seen a fish like this. Does this make any sense? Feel free to chime in. Won't hurt my feelings at all.

Nice fish and congrats on PB! Probably won't be 20 years until your next outing!

Actually, the reason I bought those tires was to participate in the inagural SCCA US Rallycross Championship but that's not what I told my wife. They are great snow tires, though. I got second place in Street Stock AWD

Well, to ease the pain of so few fishing reports, here is a bit different of a report. For my brother's bachelor party, several of us from Nebraska and Illinois went to Miami Florida for four days of fun and sun Thurday through Sunday. Temps were between 84-84 degrees F with lows of 70-72 F. One day was set aside for a deep sea fishing charter. OK, here are the particulars with a couple of photos... Started off with four of us going out at 8:00 am on Friday. Headed out into the harbor for bait. Caught 120 herring on these six hook rigs on spinning rods. Hooks were dressed like mayflies. Just drop to the depth that they were on the finder and lift immediately. You would have 4-6 fish on each time. Ten minutes later we were heading out. Winds were 20-25 knots and we were in 6-8 foot seas. Pretty big water for a 33' boat. Went out about 6 miles until we hit 200' of water. All fish were caught on kites. This was the first time I had ever fished this way. Kites were fed out and flown behind the boat which was on a sea anchor, allowing a very slow drift. Two lines were clipped on quick releases on the kite string and spaced 20 yards apart. The baitfish was suspended from the kite string and fished 1-15 feet below the surface. We hit a triple on Mahi Mahi 10 minutes after setting up. I really wish I would have gotten a picture of them fresh. When you put them on ice like in the pic, they loose all of their vibrant blue, green and yellow colors. Shortly after that, we had our first episode of chumming the water via gastro intestinal expulsion. Yes, my brother in law hurled. They were out at the strip clubs until 2:00, then they consumed a couple of large pizzas before turning in around 4:00. Myself, I passed on the strip clubs as a matter of personal preference and turned in around 10:30, as I really wanted to enjoy this fishing excursion. About 9:00 we had on and lost a nice King Mackerel and a barracuda. Later, my bother had on a 3" shark that he got to the boat before it got off. Things slowed down for about an hour, until my brother's buddy decided to do a little chumming himself. You couldn't even tell he was sunburned as white as he was. It was really rough out there. About 11:30 we had drifted into 120' of water and the captain said that if anyone wanted to get off, now was the time to speak up. My brother and I stayed and the other two were delivered to the dock. We went back out and set up again. My sailfish came about 45 minutes later in 170'. After a nice battle, we got it along side for pics. This shot was when the fish was on. You can see how high the water is, as we were in the bottom of the swell. The fish was 82", just shy of a "seven footer" as they like to say. Fish of this size are tagged but not brought on board. Sorry about the bad pics. After tagging and while setting up again, as all lines are pulled when a sail is on, my brother hit his while holding the pole before it was on the kite. It hit close and spooled about 200 yards as he was fishing with a lighter spinning reel. He ended up around the boat twice, passing the rod under the kite lines and the sea anchor each time around. As this was a juvenile fish, it was not lifted by the bill, as you can crack the skull, so it is gripped by the tail and under the belly and brought on board for pictures. The colors of the young ones is much nicer than the adults. Kind of sucks that they won't let someone that musky fishes handle their own fish. After the battle my brother was winded and proceeded to chum the line for the next fish. Yes, all of the late nighters blew chow. There may be a lesson here. We hit a dead patch with only a couple of Mahi over the next two hours. Our trip was over at 4:00 and with literally two minutes left, we hit a double on Mahis. As soon as my brother got his to the boat the last rod that was in that hadn't been pulled went off on a sail. He battled it for about five minutes but the fish was lost. It was a good fish. All in all, an outstanding trip. Stein (newbie again-but not enough posts to whine about moving them)

I second the Winterforce. I put them on my Subaru WRX and my wife's Mazda Protoge last year. They are in the $50.00 range at Tire Rack (Don't know if you can get them in Canada from them) Mine are larger than hers and are fairly noisy. My wife's are as quiet as a typical M+S but she's only running 195's. I am a salesman and put 15K miles on mine last winter with no visible wear. I bought a second set of factory wheels off of ebay for $100. Couldn't find wheels for my wife's car cheap, so got cheap steel wheels from Tire Rack. They mounted and balanced the packaged before shipping. My wife's set was $400.00 for the whole package. They have huge grooves for snow and a lot of siping and grip well on ice. I actually took my truck (Dodge 1500 4x4) to work last year because the snow was very deep and I was worried about being high centered. Got stuck in our long driveway. Walked back, got the Subaru, drove down to the truck, off the driveway and around the truck and kept on going. Pushed snow grille high for 1 1/2 miles until I hit the paved road. They are great tires for little $.