Spiel

Nice, very nice. Congrats to you both.

Plain-clothes MNR officers witness illegal fishing Cochrane man fined $1,500 July 13, 2010 MNR News Release / www.timminstimes.com A Cochrane man has been fined a total of $1,500 for illegal fishing. Larry Prevost was fined $750 for fishing in a fish sanctuary during the closed season and $750 for catching and retaining walleye over the specified daily limit. He is also prohibited from fishing until January 1, 2011, said a news release today from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). Court heard that on May 15, 2010, Prevost was fishing at the Little Abitibi River-McQuibban Township fish sanctuary. While trolling from his vessel at Pierre Lake, Prevost entered into the fish sanctuary on several occasions. A surveillance team of plain-clothes MNR officers were on the scene and saw Prevost catch and retain nine walleye, some of which he gave to other anglers who were fishing next to his vessel. Justice of the Peace Dolores Boyuk heard the case in the Ontario Court of Justice, Cochrane, on June 17, 2010. The ministry reminds the public that Ontario's walleye population is highly sensitive to angling during the spawning season. Fish sanctuaries are put in place to protect fish populations during their most sensitive period. Also, any fish caught and retained, including fish given to another person, are part of the daily catch and retain limit. Any fish taken illegally are unlawful for another person to possess. To report a natural resources violation, call 1-877-TIPS-MNR (847-7667) toll-free any time or contact your local ministry officer during regular business hours. You can also call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

Good stuff Dann and Kelly. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you've earned it.

LOL....Be sure to catch the measuring on video, I'm sure it'll go viral.

Dinner looks great, the dog, not so much. Hope your pup is feeling better today.

Or perhaps the second the OP first appeared.

Another vote for Belwood but avoid weekends if you can.

Just thought I might add for those that run big tillers like me that wearing your kill tether attatched to your life vest does little good when you fall backwards towards the motor. I learned the hard way with what could have been fatal for me, I now strap the kill tether to my left wrist so that if my hand comes off the throttle the motor will (hopefully) cut out.

Thanks for taking the time JP to give us the facts. I'm pleased to know that both you and Greg have come out of this intact and in good spirits.

Now that is some serious salmon fishing, spectacular even!

Well I finally had a chance to see the pictures on my daughters laptop and well, I'm speechless and of course envious.

Well if you're a Neil Young fan and you have cable you should be watching Bravo right now!

Exactly!

I use ceramic guides on all the rods I build. In fact most every rod out there has ceramic guides. Here's a description of some of Fuji's popular ceramic guides. http://www.mudhole.c...ur-Catalog/Fuji Oh and Steve I read on the Shimano site that your "Tribal" rod is built with Fuji Titanium SiC guides, you should have no worries.

For tying directly to the lure (swivel/leader) with Fireline you can't beat the Palomar knot. http://www.netknots.com/html/palomar_knot.html

Beautiful! You are very fortunate to have her and no doubt she's as fortunate to have you.

You da "Tiger Man."

Commercial fishing creates Lake Erie stir July 6, 2010 JAMES PROFFITT / www.portclintonnewsherald.com PORT CLINTON -- Ask most Lake Erie anglers about commercial fishing and the nets they set on the lake, and they definitely have opinions. "I always wonder why they let then net perch that have eggs in them," said Ron Caswell, a Wellington man who has been fishing the shores of Lake Erie and the lake itself for almost half a century. Caswell said he's also concerned about commercial netters picking up walleye during the spawn. "I think they snag and catch a lot of walleye with eggs in them," Caswell said. But commercial fisherman Rich Stinson, who manages Port Clinton Fisheries, said although he and other netters in Ohio catch many perch and walleye, they keep only legal sized perch and no walleye. Stinson said every walleye is thrown back, right away. "Not a single one's kept," he said. But mostly, said Stinson, commercial fishermen keep sheephead, mullet, shad, catfish, white bass and white perch. "Most of the fish we catch people aren't even fishing for," he said. "They're considered trash fish." Stinson's boats, which dock on the Portage River, catch fish that end up on tables from coast to coast. "Gold carp, redhorse and bullhead are popular," he said. "A lot are sold to the oriental markets in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco." When asked if his crew members ever keep a few walleye, Stinson balked. "Cut your tongue out," he said emphatically. According to Stinson, most of the fish caught are iced whole and shipped out right away, especially whitefish. "Our Lake Erie whitefish they won't grind," said Stinson, going on to explain the that processors will grind whitefish for Lake Huron and Lake Superior to make ethnic Jewish foods because they're not as tender and tasty as those from Lake Erie. "Our fish are smoked whole." Stinson said by far, commercial fishermen in Ohio catch and sell more rough fish than yellow perch. "Ninety percent or more of our catch is rough fish," he said. But Mike Zawadski, an avid Lake Erie angler and Danbury Township resident, said he still doesn't feel good about commercial anglers on the lake. "It's an unfair advantage for the fishermen netting," he said. "I really think it takes away from the average fishermen." On the upside, Zawadski said, the the commercial angling does help keep the population of bottom feeders down. But, he said, the nets are a nuisance to boaters and anglers. "Especially at night," he said, "when it's pretty easy for boaters to get tangled in nets." Zawadski said getting caught in nets can get tricky. And Stinson agreed. "The nets are handmade," he said, "you can't buy them at Walmart." Stinson said a single vessel stuck in a net, which boaters free by cutting the net, can be expensive. And, he said, boaters can be billed for the costs, plus cited by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. That's why the commercial fishermen pull their nets around the holidays. "Typically we pull the nets for the heavy traffic," Stinson said. Ohio Department of Natural resources biologist Mike Tyson said commercial fishing on Lake Erie is tightly controlled, including when yellow perch can be caught. "Yellow perch can be caught May through December," said Tyson, adding there are restrictions on locations. "Some restrictions are seasonal, others are permanent." Tyson said quotas are set for commercial fishermen based on scientist's observations. And there are no quotas on rough fish. According to Stinson, less than 10 percent of his catch is yellow perch. And Zawadski said that's good. "I'm alright with that, especially the bottom-feeding fish," he said. "We spend a lot of money on bait and fuel."

Misgivings about manure July 8, 2010 Tom Spears / www.ottawacitizen.com When I started writing stories about Great Lakes ecology in the late 1980s, an activist said something that sounded profound. Thinking back to the earlier, algae-choked days on Lake Erie, she said: "Today there's less sewage, but more poison." By poison, she meant synthetic chemicals with long, unpronounceable names, known by their initials (DDT, PCBs) or short forms (dioxin). Some were pesticides, and some were just accidental byproducts of industry, the stuff people used to dump anywhere without understanding the harm. Today the picture is changing again. Those synthetic chemicals do last a long time, but we've stopped manufacturing and dumping most of them. No one makes mirex or PCBs today. Eventually the chemical residues will break down. What we do produce in enormous quantities is manure. Federal figures show that Ontario and Quebec together produce manure equivalent to the sewage from 100 million people. It is sprayed, mixed with water, on fields near the Great Lakes, especially lakes Huron and Erie, and the smaller St. Clair. I've been uncomfortable with this for some time. Then a few weeks ago, the environmental commissioner for Ontario came to Ottawa. Gord Miller dropped in to the Citizen for a chat and mentioned that he had just given a speech to a conference on fresh water in Bracebridge, the heart of the Muskoka region. Miller argued in his speech that the biggest threat to Ontario's water isn't toxic waste. It's manure. Manure is called "nutrients" in official circles, but in reality it's foul-smelling brown stuff, especially the manure from factory farms that is kept in huge vats, fermenting a bit, and sprayed on fields in spring and fall. (And sometimes winter. They shouldn't do this because it runs off frozen land in spring into lakes and rivers, but people sometimes do it anyway.) For years we've been told E. coli and other pathogenic material in fresh water comes from both farm animals and from humans, the implication that both groups are equally part of the problem. But a recent study of Lake Huron looked at the DNA of E. coli. It shows that only about one to three per cent of the lake's E. coli come from humans -- and about 60 per cent comes from livestock manure. The rest is either unknown or from wildlife. So human sewage isn't the problem. The problem is the spraying of more animal manure than the land can soak up. If you wonder why we haven't heard more about this, Miller had an answer for that too. The Great Lakes have wave action that keeps such pollution close to shore, where people swim. But until very recently, Miller says, surveys of lake water quality were done by boats that are too big to approach shore. They've been sampling farther out, in deep water that's cleaner -- and missing the true picture. Luckily the commish is on top of this. He says sampling procedures have improved. We do hope his next survey of Ontario's environmental health tells everyone what's been happening. And yet Canadian and U.S. pollution regulations still focus on the enemies of the 1970s, the remnants of days when the chemical factories dumped waste material in a shallow hole out back, near the local river or lake. That's yesterday's problem. It's time to focus on the real, Walkerton-style pollution. There's less poison today, but more animal sewage. This problem appears to threaten more than our waterways. At Newcastle University in England, scientists have been measuring how natural bacteria change over time. In farm soil, they've found something odd: soil bacteria are showing genetic signs of resistance to a variety of antibiotics. Professor David Graham, who led the research, said the findings suggest an emerging threat to public and environmental health. Graham's point is that drug resistance in infectious disease bugs is a known threat. It most often takes the form of "superbugs" that infect people, often in hospitals. A common one is MRSA, a staphylococcus bug that resists the drug methicillin. We know that hot spots of drug-resistance in soil bacteria are often near hog farms. Pigs get antibiotics in their food regularly, sick or not, and the drugs are flushed out with the manure. In high volume, this is enough to change those soil bacteria. But then again, soil bacteria don't affect us directly, right? They help crops grow, and it doesn't matter, does it, whether they can resist antibiotics? Turns out these bugs may affect us after all. Back at Newcastle, Graham points out that harmless soil bacteria could pass on a resistant gene to a disease-causing pathogen, such as MRSA, with obvious consequences. (Bacteria are weird; they borrow genes from each other, and from their hosts.) Manure, anyone? Read more: http://www.ottawacit...l#ixzz0tC4TRD8v

Great Lakes lawmakers act to stop Asian carp July 1, 2010 Jim Lynch / www.detnews.com Legislation introduced Wednesday by Great Lakes lawmakers seeks to do what federal agencies have been unwilling to do so far in the battle against the invasive Asian carp -- create a permanent barrier between the waters where the fish is present and Lake Michigan. The Permanent Prevention of Asian Carp Act would compel the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to "expedite" a study outlining the best means of separating the Mississippi River basin and Great Lakes. The proposal comes more than a week after a single bighead Asian carp was discovered in Chicago's Lake Calumet, six miles past an electric barrier designed to stop the fish. Since that discovery, many groups have expressed dissatisfaction with the U.S. government's response, particularly that of the Army Corps. In the past 12 months, many elected officials of Great Lakes states have called for closing the shipping locks that connect the Illinois River to Lake Michigan, but Chicago representatives, businesses and Corps officials have balked at the idea. "We should be closing the locks because we should be doing everything humanly possible," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, in a conference call Wednesday. "I understand it's more complicated in the Chicago area, but the threat from the Asian carp outweighs any other issues." In a statement released Wednesday, Illinois Manufacturers' Association Vice President Mark Denzler discounted the need for immediate action. "The simple response to a request for the 'best way' to sever the essential waterway connection is it doesn't exist," he said. "Hydrologic separation would reverse over 150 years of commercial activity and devastate the regional economy." Stabenow also said the bill would address concerns that carp could reach Lake Erie in large numbers via the Wabash River near Fort Wayne, Ind.. Environmental groups in Canada have thrown their weight behind efforts to force quicker action from the U.S. government. Organizations such as the nonprofit environmental law group Ecojustice have joined Environmental Defence Canada and Great Lakes United to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the secretary of state to consider Canadian interests in all matters dealing with the Asian carp as well. Mary Muter, the baykeeper for Georgian Bay on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, said the U.S. response to the Asian carp threat has been "totally inadequate." "One of the reasons we're doing this is to force the EPA to hold public hearings on the matters so that Canada's risk assessment for these carp can become part of the public record," she said. "We've heard U.S. agencies say they're not sure Asian carp can survive in the Great Lakes. ... Well, our Department of Fisheries and Oceans' carp assessment does not agree with that."

No comment.......

I have done a fair bit of business through this board. Mostly out going in the form of custom rods and rod repairs along with a few miscellaneous items I've sold through the classifieds. Each and every person that has come into my home would be welcome back any time for any reason. In fact some of these people have become very good friends. People I would likely (certainly) have never met if it were not for OFC!

Hot diggity damn! I was just looking at the long range forecast and it would seem Sunday is my best bet for getting my little tinny out there. *fingers crossed*

I agree and if my buddy had any roasts or steaks he would have gladly offered them. In fact I have received moose and venison roasts/steaks from him in the past without having to trade anything. You've already fed me the venison Bernie so I guess I owe you.