adolson

GPS coords? Thx

I have a 12' Sportspal bought in 1968 and it's done me well over the past year. I am looking to upgrade now, likely to a 14' Sportspal, and hopefully it will have a keel as my 12 footer does not. THAT makes it super annoying to paddle in anything other than zero breeze. I almost always use a 40lb Minn Kota, though, and it's decent (but still requires constant adjustment to keep straight).

There is another company in the US that makes "Sportspal" canoes that look similar, but are not related at all. Meyer or Meyers I think they're called.

I made only one lure when I was a kid. I made a spoon using a spoon. I bent it repeatedly until the handle came off and then drilled holes. I didn't catch anything with it.

I bought a Fuji FinePix XP50 specifically for outdoors stuff (primarily fishing). Someone in another thread commented on the quality being quite good, so I guess it's alright. I don't think the pics are as nice as my Canon P&S, but that cam isn't waterproof.

Here's a quick test clip I shot from my canoe just by sticking my hand in the water. This is near the boat launch. The water is kinda greenish, and sometimes the camera filters it out.. The shifting in color is kinda annoying, but it doesn't always do that. I'm not sure if there's a setting I can toggle to make it consistent or not, but honestly, underwater video is not the primary reason I bought it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQMFxvXyE3k

It has to be that any fish at all, target or not, avoids the skunk. There's no way I could say "I tried for splake and I got skunked... and this 34 inch pike," you know what I mean?

Thanks for the tip on splake tackle, Mike P. I only tried spoons and spinners today, but next time I'll try a crank.

I dunno, 34 in pike sounds like fun to me. Nice gator.

Haha, well yeah, it was fun. It took off and peeled drag 4 or 5 times, dove straight under the Sportspal a couple times. There aren't many weeds in this lake so it didn't wrap around and just sit there like in many of the other pike lakes I've fished, so it put up a good fight. It was pretty exciting and fun, I just really wanted trout.

I went fishing for splake this afternoon with no luck. I could see fish in shallow, but I wasn't sure what kind and they weren't eating my lures.. I did have a couple bites right after a heavy rain fall, but they're tricky.

I did a bunch of trolling and all I caught was this pike. It's not gigantic or anything compared to what some of you guys catch (34") but it's the biggest one I've seen in person. My right arm is wet because I didn't take a net with me (just forgot it in the trunk, but it wouldn't have fit in my trout net anyhow). A nice cottager took the pic for me and we had a good chat for a while. I would have much rather caught a little 14" splake, but at least I caught something.

I also caught some kind of Matrixx lure that someone lost, so double bonus.

It's probably cheaper for you to just buy one than waste a roll of duct tape on your Red Green Rod Holder. It's like $4 for a proper, metal rod holder at my local flea market and it works rather well in my canoe.

I wonder what lure the guy who caught the fish the second time was using.

Without a doubt, it had to be a.... Lucky Strike.

YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh

So tell me mate......are ya closer to the illusive Aurora?

My sister has a ferret named Aurora. She was running under the couch and when she came out, I caught her. With my bare hands.

Quite an accomplishment ... Nice pics too.... Must be an SLR.

Thanks! But the camera is no SLR, hahaha. I wish. It's just a Fuji XP50... The pics aren't as good as my Canon PowerShot SX130 (also not an SLR but I can get some decent pics out of it - see here for a few I posted before: http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=55258), but it's waterproof and all that, and was bought specifically for fishing/camping trips.

Thanks, everyone! Glad you liked my pics and stuff.

Last year my goal was to catch 100 fish and I passed that. This year, I only want to catch one of each of the trouts in my area, and maybe try one or two days for auroras, but not like last year. So far this year, I have only caught 16 brook trout, 4 lakers, and one splake. Only thing left is rainbows, which I don't think I've ever caught.

I talked with my father and he said my first fish ever was a speck, and told me where. I'm planning to revisit that location and see if I can catch one there myself. I'm also going to be a dad later this year, and if there are still brookies in that creek, I'm going to do what I can to make my kid's first fish also a speck from the same creek.

Chad, maybe you and me could hit this lake sometime.. I think you'd like it.

Anyhow, I went back to this same lake tonight with my brother and his girlfriend because they wanted to catch trout and we were going to take the cached boat in since it would hold the three of us... But it's actually chained to a tree with a lock, so I guess they don't want people using it. Oh well. We fished from shore like I did yesterday. We caught only three, this time they weren't touching worms on hooks, but they were hitting Little Cleos and a cheap no-name spinner of some kind. I had a few bites I missed but I caught the first one, my brother the other two. He actually caught the second one practically on top-water, as I witnessed the fish jump to grab the spinner right as the cast landed. Pretty crazy sight! Overall, there was far less activity than yesterday - not as many jumping, not as many bugs on the water, and no wolves. Still, any day you catch a trout is a good day in my books. On our way back to the launch, I had some little fish on and lost it, right at the same time my brother's girlfriend caught a 16" walleye on a crankbait. Here are a couple pics from today:

Very nice, Joey! I've got about four or five creeks I have planned to try, so hopefully I'll catch a few of these babies myself. I'll be sure to pick up a small net like that first.

Beautiful fish and scenery! Trout are so pretty.

I was going to go after rainbows today, but the lake I had planned to try is in one of the areas said to be inundated with smoke from one of the many fires going right now. So instead I decided to try locating a little speck lake I'd heard about. After about a 10 minute walk through brush and fallen trees, I found the lake. I put a bobber and tiny hook with a piece of worm on, tossed it into the lake from shore, and within 90 seconds, I had this guy. I snapped the pic and released and put on a new piece of worm.

I was at the lake for a total of about 45 minutes and I caught five specks in total. I would have stayed longer and caught some more, but a pack of wolves showed up and I was getting a little nervous. One of them started making its way around shore to me, and it got really close before I toss a rock into the water near it and it took off. I don't know if they typically attack people or not, but I wasn't in the mood to find out. Still, at less than 10 minutes between trout, I thought it was a great day and was happy with that. It was pretty crazy though. The first time I've ever seen a brook trout try to eat a bobber... Two different casts, too. Pike, I could see. Bass even, maybe. But those trout must've been pretty hungry!

I met some Americans on the way in, and they were trying for pike and walleye in the first lake. When I relocated my canoe on the shore where I'd left it, the Americans were close by (this was about 3k from the launch, in one of many bays). Anyhow, got to talking some more with them and they offered me two free lures, because they are so cheap where they're from. They were all casting the same colors and shapes and catching pike and out-of-season bass, so I tied on one of them. I wished them well and went on my way. I stopped where a good pike location stood out to me, did a cast in and hooked into one in about 3-4 feet of water. But it was no pike, it was a walleye! Too bad it was in the slot. Bah. But then I did a couple more casts as I made my way along the shore and I landed a nice pike. Satisfied with the hat-trick, I motored back to shore and headed home, early, so I could rest up and pick a lake for tomorrow.

Here are some more pics:

(three wolves are in this pic, which is hard to see since this was taken from a video. I didn't take a pic when the one got really close, I was busy with a fish on and then had to find a rock real quick like.)

As for me, I'd use a broom. They sell them at hardware stores.

Yeah, I don't know what magical fantasy land you live in, but brooms don't work that well on gravel driveways, much less gravel driveways that someone came and used a street sweeper on yesterday that was, I am guessing, supposed to sweep up the glass but instead thoroughly mixed it into the rest of my driveway. And the days prior to that, there was police tape sectioning off the exact portion of my driveway, as it was being treated as a crime scene.

I am not trying to "cash in" here. Tell me how exactly I would benefit from having various sizes of glass all over my driveway cleaned up? Having my driveway back the way it was, is somehow going to make me rich?

Why do you have to be so hostile towards me? This isn't the first time.

As you probably know, my neighbor's house exploded and tons of broken glass was sent onto the street and all over my driveway.

My wife is extremely angry and upset because we can't park our car in our driveway beside our house. She had the day off today and the rain took away all the snow, so she spent some time trying to pick up the glass. She got a bag full of larger pieces, but there is still lots more, and many small pieces. It will take many hours of work for us to pick it all up by hand, and by the weekend, who knows if it'll be buried in a foot or two of snow?

Is this really our responsibility to clean it ourselves by hand or pay someone out of our own pockets to clean it up? Is that how it works? Is there any actual way to do this? This is the first time a house has blown up and shattered massive windows into our driveway, so I've not got much experience with this.

Thanks for any advice.

Good advice. If that ever happens to me, I'm gonna try to get the plate if possible. Maybe get out at a red light or stop sign and go confront them. Or make an unnecessary turn into the nearest police station. Go stop at Subway and get a fresh footlong turkey breast on whole wheat, and see what they do then. Or just make an O-turn and tail them (maybe tough to do with a boat and trailer, haha). But this probably won't happen to me, since my old canoe sits on top of my car pretty much whenever not in use, and there's rarely ever anyone at any of the lakes I go to. Still, I wouldn't have thought to keep an eye out, so that's good advice for all.

Does this come in a lefty model?

Reel arm is reversible... lol

Last year I got this game for Christmas. It's probably the best fishing game I've played, and even has a special controller with it:

Considering the ice has decided to come and go and who knows if it's coming back, I may have to dust this thing off, myself.

I had the same sort of thing happen when I listed some things on North Bay Classifieds a few years back. Almost the exact same wording, too, complete with the same stupid question about price - clearly indicated in the ad! Except instead of PayPal, it was Western Union.

I told him I would only take cash and to give me his address and I would personally deliver it to him. He insisted on Western Union. I insisted on cash and in person. That's where it ended. It was painfully obvious it was a scam.

Now, if I was selling something and the guy simply asked if I'd take PayPal, and sounded like a normal human being, I'd entertain the thought, possibly put some conditions such as the money has to clear and the shipping address and name has to match, etc. In general, PayPal is fairly safe, but I have only used it to buy things online and sell on eBay, as well as receive payments for minor side consultations for some guy in the US that considers me his Linux guru.

Interac Email Money Transfers are still my preferred method of accepting payments, though. I've had people rip me off in person because I was too trusting and figured they handed me the full amount ($20) when they actually handed me a rolled up ten and a rolled up five inside... For example. EMTs, I can see the amount beforehand, it's deposited immediately, no fuss, no muss. But that's just me.

So were they cooking meth?

In their hot water tank?

seriously why would anyone bother

Benefit of the doubt: maybe he really is concerned and has been seeing them, but could never get a pic so he figured if he faked one, he'd be taken seriously.

My dad and uncles and now-late grandmother have seen cougars on their farm property up this way, but that was about 15 or so years ago.

Well, the police and fire marshal finished up today, took down the police line tape, and I guess that's a wrap. They didn't ask me for a statement, despite telling me they would be around on Monday evening. I saw one of them today with some kind of device, touching the ground in many spots with it. I assume it was a hydrocarbon sniffer or something, but I don't have much knowledge of these things.

The news reported on this last night, and they said that the wife was injured in the initial explosion, but we saw her outside and she wasn't hurt in any major way, thankfully. I heard from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone that the initial blast was a hot water tank that exploded.

The wife is still mad that nobody cleaned all the of tons of broken glass out of our driveway. I am glad our house didn't burn down.