You really mean I can’t say “[censored]”?

Have you ever noticed that the only two genre’s of music that people “assume” you’ll want to hear are either country / western or classic rock? A nice quiet day on the lake and some numbnut across the way is blasting out the Eagles, or something about “Your cheatin heart”.

I have yet to have a Vivaldi lover blast me, or a lover of Pete Seger. My dream is to buy a beautiful cabin on a secluded lake and drop some obscure Eurotrash [censored] punk band on the world… with the dial set to 11.

After making sure my fishing needs were covered for life, I’d invest the bulk of it in fast women and hard liquor. I’d squander the rest of it on food and shelter.

Heck, sounds good to me. We need better freeways since ours are falling apart. More strip clubs? Competition will drive the price of a lap dance down to where you can really get something for your money.

If they pay the homeless enough to get out of town, I might just jump on a corner for a day or so to get the bonus money. More doctors? Can’t hurt.

Now, the fuzz have enough toys already. THAT we don’t need, but I suspect we’ll be stuck with more of that Super Bowl or not.

Every group that wants publicity will be out talking to the press. Recall that for last years game, the anti-trafficking folks were claiming that 250,000 hookers and pimps would be piling into town to take advantage of the tourists. That would be two hookers for every ticket sold. Stupid, sure, but they got a ton of publicity.

On the other hand, houses were renting for thousands for the week. If I play my cards right, I can get sent on vacation with the other homeless and rent my place for big coin. Then, I can afford to buy a honkin big tv and watch the game from a nice warm bar.

My guess is we’ll be hosting Cleveland vs. Detroit in a blizzard. Lowest ratings ever.

Nice, but I want one of these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDXVN52cHI

Last fall I was out west of the Metro and got stopped at a boat landing by a local “AIS warden”. He gave my boat a thorough going over and wanted to check my livewells. Ok, no problem. Then he wanted to check my remaining boat compartments. I told him to go…..

I was told that if I didn’t give him the ok, I couldn’t launch and the police would be called and I’d be arrested for trespass. He also said it was a county ramp and not a public ramp. Not sure if it was a public launch or not, I consented, fuming the entire time. I checked when I got home and it was indeed a public, DNR launch.

The next time some whiny assed punk asks to see my compartments, whether he’s wearing a badge or not, he’s not getting in. The law is pretty clear that without a warrant, they cannot look inside barring a “reasonable suspicion”.

I am so sick of being told to give up my rights for something nebulous and vague. I’ve drawn my line in the sand. Look all you want at my boat and trailer and even the livewells if you want, but nothing inside the boat or truck unless you get a warrant.

Klatu, barada nickto, ya’ll.

I’m not trying to be flippant, but check this out. I was working the Northwest Sport show last year and an older guy was wistfully looking at our products. I asked him what his interest was and he shook his head. He told me that his wife had made him sell his boat over the winter. He was 81 and she didn’t want him found dead out in his boat.

I asked him if he would be any less dead if he was found in the living room, kind of jokingly, but he stiffened and a smile came across his face. Later in the afternoon he came by and shook my hand. He’d gone over and bought a small sixteen footer with a small outboard. He used the same line on his wife and she agreed, that he wouldn’t be any deader. He’d rather be out in a boat doing what he loves, rather than sitting watching cable tv.

Just something you might want to… cautiously bring up. Fishing is fun and relaxing. As long as he can drive or have someone else drive, and launch the boat, he’s probably better off out on the water. It’s better for him than snacking out of boredom watching NCIS marathons.

PS> My 85 year old stepdad will be heading up to Ely with me this summer. He can’t spend the whole day on the lake anymore, but he’ll be out there as much as he can. He still fishes the harbor in Sheboygan for salmon whenever he can.

I was farther north of you up in Polk county. I found water temps from 37 to 44 degrees. The only fish I saw came from the lake with 44 and there weren’t a lot of them. Maybe next week. Except I’ll be up north here for the opener and I’ll be in cold water once again.

God, I’m sick of being cold.

Heck, they even make parts of our fighter jets and cruise missiles in China. The only rockets we get come from Russia. USA! USA! Well, maybe not.

Most of the stuff “made in the USA” are only assembled here. The parts come from the third world.

In 1980, 25% of the federal budget came from import and export taxes. Now, it’s less than 2%. Sigh.

Very nice. Kind of makes me want to go there.

Thanks a ton. Looks like I have some homework and a bit of driving to do.

No, I don’t have the naked lady mudflaps. I’m hoping to do better, if you get my drift. It’s going to be hard enough meeting women with a 4×4, but then again, it wasn’t all that easy out of a bright red van, either.

Working on the gun rack though. My 22 should look awesome hanging there, huh?

I’m not sure I get why you’re upset. The Mississippi River is open year round so it’s not impacted by the opener for either state. The number of boats heading into the St. Croix probably won’t even be noticed with all the other boats out there. If you want to fish, go fish.

The last time I flew into Florida, I shipped my rods and tackle by UPS a few days before I left and had them shipped back. Cost a bit less than getting extra baggage and oversized baggage onto a plane and saved me the hassle of check in and check out. Still brought the reels and some extra tackle with me.

Sinkers, are cheap and can be bought locally. Soft plastics can be shoved in between spaces in checked in luggage, so be creative. Throw jigs into plastic bags and do the same. I bought some cheap Plano boxes there and donated them to the guy I was staying with. Cheap and easy.

Now, see, nudy camping in Arizona makes sense to me. It’s hot and dry and no bugs. Here in Minnesota, you have about four days where the weather is ok for it, and when the weather’s fine, you have more mosquitos, biting flies and wood ticks than anyplace on earth.

You have to admire their optimism, though. I’d go on “hot babes weekend”, but probably miss a lot of the other events, like the fall classic, where bobbing for apples is the big event, or the fourth of July fireworks extravaganza. Not lettin’ the dangly bits anywhere near fireworks. No sir.

On the other hand, packing for a week there should be a breeze. If it rains, do you get to wear rain gear? What would a nudist do?

How about something near Ely? There are fairly cheap, (secluded)cabins for rent, great restaurants and shops in town and not, too, far away is a golf course made from a strip mine. Beautiful and difficult to play. Then there’s the golf course at the casino near Tower. Lots of smaller lakes filled with smallmouth, walleyes, northerns and even ski’s and lake trout.

I figured I’d let everyone know how my Humminbird issue turned out. They updated the software, told me my temp was working, despite my never having seen any temp in the year and a half I used the beastie, and said the connection with my antenna was bad and charged me $260 for the new GPS. I don’t know if they just replaced the cord or shipped me a new cord and antenna, but at least it was only gone three weeks.

Of course, Fed Ex left the unit sitting outside my door in the rain. When I got home, it was in plain sight on the sidewalk. We definitely need some competition out there for our dollars.

Sigh. Ok. Name one, just one right that Muslims have that Christians don’t. Just one.

Name one right that gays have that the rest of us don’t. Just one. Oh, that’s right. You can’t.

Want to do business in the US? You have to follow the law. That means treating all people equally. Blacks? Sure. You have to serve them. Interracial couples? You gotta serve them. Sorry about that. Catholics? Yup. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go into business.

Now, I totally agree that the tribal “Nations” is pure crap. Separate but better than equal. They DO have special rights and the supreme court has ruled it so. I don’t know how that will change, but I agree that it must at some point.

What I have never understood is that the tribes do have the right to harvest, but why do they get 50% of the resource? Since they are 1% of the population, why don’t they get 1% of the resource?

I’ll be working there most of the show. I’ll be in the Quick Cleat booth. Any Ido’ers stop on over and say hi. If you’re looking for a great anchoring system, especially for you river guys, I think you’ll be impressed.

Thanks for all the input. I know that they’ve got me, so there isn’t much I can do. It just galls me that it’s probably just a bad connection and all they need is a replacement wire and they nail me $259 plus a month gone.

When you could bring it to a Fishlectronics you’d get it back in less than a week and cost $50 for the part and labor.

By the way, I used to run Raymarine. They aren’t very big here in the US unless you are into salt water. Hard to get parts or service in this neck of the woods. I couldn’t find a replacement unit when the old one died. It was solid and I didn’t have any problems with it, just can’t find them anymore.

These are lakes that have weed killer sprayed on them four times a summer and the locals also put a ton of fertilizer on their lawns. The good weeds are gone and the algae are thick. Seems like a contributing factor at least.

Snail also has two deep holes and a lot of shallow water. Once the oxygen goes in the small hole and you are in trouble. I’d also expect Silver lake in the eastern metro to have a similar fate. Very shallow with only one deep hole.

Well, we’ve finally found a judge that understands the constitution. The officer could have easily gotten a warrant if he had a suspicion that they were well over the limit. They still have to pay the fine for the extra lines.

I don’t have any time for poachers, which is why I had to move out of Wisconsin. They are such meat hogs I’d have done something crazy by now. We need more wardens to keep a lid on folks like this. I think I only saw one warden last summer and I’m in the boat four or five days a week.

I need to pick up a new unit after someone stole my bow mounted unit last November. It looks more like they just have different units with different features. Just not the combo I want. It looks like I can get high def down imaging and GPS, and side finding or not. What I want is the down imaging and side finding, not the GPS, which I have on the console. Sigh.

The new units are cool and they are a few hundred bucks cheaper, but if you want the side imaging, you still pay for it.

Anyone ever watch Lost? My guess is that one of those characters found a time machine / portal and came back in time. The show was really a docu-drama, warning us. Too, bad it didn’t work.

The locals poison the lake with weed killer four or five times a year. They don’t want us fishermen there anyway. The lake is now very murky since there aren’t any weeds and the dead weeds just decompose and all you get is algae.

About the only weeds left are the sand grass flats as sunlight can’t penetrate more than a few feet. The DNR is all about the destruction of lake habitat in the name of killing milfoil. Maybe this will be a wake up call, but I doubt it.

Before the weed killing blitz, Owasso had nice clear water and great cabbage and milfoil beds. Fantastic musky, bass and walleye fishing. It really hasn’t been the same in the past years as the fish are there, but patterning them other than docks is tougher.

It’s a shame.

I’ve been on the Lynx bandwagon for three years now. Just gotta love a winner!

When we had a lingerie football team, I was on that bandwagon, too. Gosh, I miss them!

We use the post office at work almost exclusively. We get tons of mail, mostly checks arriving daily and the number of lost or very late mail is very small. You remember the lost and late stuff and not the hundreds of others you get on time. The cost is very cheap. Don’t forget, when they founded the Post Office, it wasn’t supposed to turn a profit. It was there for citizens and businesses to use and available to all. Only Ronald Reagan had a different vision and turned it into a semi governmental agency. If it was fully funded, it would be working even better.

One way I know is to use a casting reel, which allows you to feather the last part of the cast, which will let the lure pull and end up in the right position. You can feather a spinning reel, too, by lightly putting your finger on the edge of the spool and as the lure nears it’s landing zone, increase the pressure a fraction and the same thing will happen. The lure will pull and end up tangling less. Just takes a bit of practice.

I’ve had some ever since I met the inventor at the ICAST show in Vegas. I have a mixed reaction to them. They are strong and light, pretty sensitive and don’t cost an arm and a leg.

The downside is, the guy is a materials science dude, not a fisherman or engineer. The blanks don’t run through the handles properly and most of my spinning rods have the cork break on the top part. I’ve also had my flippin stick in for repairs and the guys at Thorne laughed at how the black ended in the front of the handle and the rest was just sort of stuck on there. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence on a big hook set. Also have a lot of trouble with guides popping their inserts.

I’d rate them good rods for the money, not great rods.

Based on my experience lately, it’s both. On Saturday, I went to one of my favorite smallie hotspots, having had pretty good success on windy, overcast days. Nada. Second time this year I got skunked.

On Sunday, went to one of my secret hotspot largemouth lakes and ripped up the big ones. One over six, and my best five would have easily hit 23 pounds or so.

Yesterday, went to a local lake and had one northern bite off in two hours.

I’ll be out again this afternoon before the wind and rain hit again so I’m due.