I work for the USPS. Been a rural carrier there since ’09. So if you need a punching bag, go ahead and swing away. LOL

Some of what’s been said here is accurate, some not so accurate. How it happens that packages make their way around the country (or world I guess) is beyond me. That’s not my department. All I can say on my part is that when it gets to me, it’ll get to you….almost always by 1pm if you were to live on my route.

What is true though is the long hours for subs, the 7 days a week, the holidays, being denied time off for vacations, weddings, graduations or even critical doctor appointments, and the less than desirable treatment by those in charge.

Also true is the lack of employees. We could use at least 20 more people where I’m at….25 would be better. It’s not the attractive job it maybe once was. The pay isn’t great, it’s a labor job where you’re out in all the elements from extreme hot to extreme cold. Antiquated equipment doesn’t help attract people either. I could go on and on.

The money situation, there is little to nothing we as carriers (or clerks) can do about. That’s congress and the higher-ups. It seems they’re making an effort to save money though by cutting our rural carrier wages. I make $5k/yr less because I work too fast. Others lost $20k/yr because they didn’t set their route up correctly in the computerized pay system, and other reasons.

My customers know that when driving conditions are favorable, they’ll have their mail by 1pm or earlier depending on if they’re at the beginning or end of the route. When mail comes to me, it goes out to them. But I can’t give you what I don’t have. I’ve had people blame me for not delivering a package, losing a package or once even stealing a check….only to find out days or weeks later that they got it from FedEx, UPS or some other delivery service. It never came to the USPS/me in the first place.

Many of us try to be timely and accurate. But the other problems like parcels going around the world, or costs, are beyond the control of folks like myself. Hopefully we get more employees. They’re needed badly. Properly trained, that would at least improve the delivery service and make it more reliable for customers….not to mention the morale of those already working there.

Thanks guys. My dad said he found a place in I’Falls that sells/exchanges Canada money. So we’ll stop there.

Agreed with the above.

Last year we printed out the attached file in the confirmation email we got and used that as our outdoor card and fishing license.

The outdoor card (good for 3yrs) was mailed to us some time later last year. We keep the outdoor cards in our safe and use them (like this past week) to buy our fishing licenses. We leave on Saturday and will have our outdoor cards that were mailed to us last year, plus the printout of our online fishing licenses purchased.

Oh, ok. I was thinking the card fee would be a percentage…. like 3% or similar. But if it’s just a few $, then we’ll just use it. Thanks!

Yeah, we could do that, but just trying to avoid the fee. Could use American money to pay for the cabin, but we don’t get the current exchange rate and lose out on some $.

I’m a little bit of a penny pincher.

Thanks for the tip John. We’ll keep that in mind and have the mechanic check it out every so often.

Thanks guys. We’ll order our crawlers in Fort Frances then.

Thanks for all the replies! We/she decided to buy a ’13 Escape. Had our local mechanic check it out and from what he could tell, it’s in good shape. As long as she takes care of it, we hope it’ll last her through college plus a year or 2.

Hey Dan, when they take your passport, they scan it and all the information from the ArrivCan App is pulled up! I thought the same thing the first time I went through, I asked the guy about it the second time we went up.
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I had our ArriveCan stuff printed out, in hand, waiting to give it to him after I handed him our passports. He asked about 6 quick questions, handed me our passports back and said “Your Arrivecan is good. Have a good vacation”

Years ago we were asked to roll all our windows down so they could see in. So now I automatically roll all my windows down upon approach.

Otherwise do just as the others have said. I always say “sir” or “ma’am”, never joke with them unless they joke with me first, and answer questions directly, honestly and quickly like you know what you’re talking about. Do that and you should be fine.

Took us maybe 90sec when we crossed 3 weeks ago (but others ahead of us were sometimes questioned for nearly 7 minutes)

I used a snap rap one morning on our Canada trip a couple weeks ago. I caught fish nearly every other cast for a good while. Walleyes, pike and smallies.

It worked more as a darting glide bait and was very effective casting in shallow water (6ft to 12ft depths).

My next outing will be locally here in south-central MN and I plan to give it a good try. Plus I’ll be buying more of them and the jigging raps which I don’t have yet.

Figuring out the right cadence was important.

Are jigging raps all that effective in lakes that turn real green from algae blooms? The water clarity is reduced significantly and I wonder if ripping jigging raps 3, 4 even 5 feet may be ineffective?

Got back yesterday from our trip to LaBelle’s in NW Bay. Great trip as always! The weather was a bit goofy with little to no wind and if there was a wind it was from the east. Few days of storms otherwise relatively high skies.

Pike during the morning were cruising the weed edges adjacent to deep water. During the day many were over the rocks from 6ft to 20ft+. Nothing too huge. My nephew got his PB at 34″ and I lost an absolute tanker.

Smallies we got were over the rocks in 4ft to 20ft. Most were in the 2lb – 4lb range and came on jig/crawler, crawler harnesses, snap raps and topwater poppers.

Walleyes were found in all sorts of depths from 5ft rocks, 9ft weedlines, 15-25ft reefs and 20-25ft sand flats. Plenty in the 18″ to 24″ range and plenty of keepers from 15″ to 17.5″. Harnesses, jig/crawler, and snap raps caught most of the fish.

I wasn’t able to go exploring like I had hoped either due to weather or family things. But I was able to add some new spots to the list and delete others. LOL. Water surface temps in the mornings were 73 to 75 and afternoons was pushing 80.

Great trip, great hosts and great memories! Can’t wait to do it again!

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Good to know guys. On our Canada trip I’ll make long runs so if I got fish in the box, I’ll just shut the livewell off until we come off of plane.

Batteries are in good shape. They’re all new last year. And I have an alternator on the motor, so keeping a charge is rarely a problem on the starting battery.

Nice! Thanks for the feedback! I’ll just put mine on auto then once I get fish in the box.

Ignorant question here… but is there any risk of burning up the pump if left on while making long runs from one spot to another? Or does it continue to pull in water even on plane?

Bringing up an old topic, but I finally decided to replace my spinning reels that are both 20+ years old. They still work great and I’m keeping them as emergency spares.

But I went and bought 2 of the Daiwa Regal LT 2500s. So excited to use them on my Canada trip in a couple weeks!

Bit of positive news… it sounds like mom is going to provide the letter. But of course, that’s what’s been said thus far

Are there options if the mom refuses to provide a letter?

Thanks for the replies!

Getting a letter from his mom is damn near impossible as she won’t give him anything unless she gets something in return. She does it to play mind games and it’s terrible. My nephew’s dad has no problem signing the letter as he wants him to go have fun and catch fish, swim, play games, etc.

So it’s a conundrum. Can have dad’s letter, but the mom won’t do one to be spiteful.

Might just get dad’s letter, have all the paperwork and give it a go. He’ll be riding with grandpa and grandma, so that might help things.

Makers Mark is one of my favorites.

I live in Sibley County. No rain = no mosquitoes. Hardly any around right now.

My folks and my brother’s family are up on the north arm this week. Sounds like they’re burning lots of gas…. not looking for fish, but dodging storms and squalls.

They’ve been there since Saturday. Probably only accumulated a day’s worth of quality fishing in that time. But when they do get to fish, it’s been good.

Weedlines adjacent to deep water are producing well pulling harnesses. They haven’t hit the rocks too much yet, but with nice weather on the horizon, I’m sure they’ll stretch their legs and venture out to the reefs.

Plenty of nice keepers in the 15″ to 17.5″ range along with some overs pushing 24″ along the weeds.

I get the y-bones out then like to cut them into fish sticks or put the filets on foil on the grill with ranch & seasonings.

Curious what the water surface temps are hovering around right now? Some of my family members leave for a week at LaBelle’s on Friday/Saturday.

We’re headed to Canada next month and I primarily fish walleyes. But of course there are pike in the same areas. Besides live bait rigging, I like to use plastics on jigs for eyes too.

So do fluoro leaders when fishing jigs & plastics help reduce pike cut-offs at all? And if so, what pound line should be used that won’t affect the walleyes, but help prevent cut-offs on pike?

Took my daughter and her boyfriend out Sunday in all that wind. It was difficult to say the least. We did catch a couple small bass, a few small Gills, a few small eyes and one 25″ pike that I cleaned for the boyfriend and his family.

Yesterday I got done with work early so my daughter and I hit my favorite early season lake. The water was 80-81 degrees, lots of algae, and the weeds have died off mostly. We did boat a few small eyes and missed on some other hits. Was a beauty afternoon to be out, but I won’t be back to that lake until opener next year.

Next outing may be this coming weekend. But that might be my last local outing for a while as I have some minor boat fixes and things to get done before our Canada trip.

My folks and my brother’s family are keeping their reservation to LaBelle’s for July 9 – 16. Last I heard 2wks ago they were having to boat in to their resort. No idea what it’ll be like in 10 days.

We switched our reservation from that week to the week of August 13 – 20 and I’m pretty happy we were able to. My parents will be going with us as well, but my mom is concerned the fishing won’t be any good and that it’ll be hotter than the dickens. However I think it’ll be just fine. It’s been 30 years since we fished Northwest Bay in August, but I’m guessing the fish will be in the same areas as July.

Thanks klee. My last outing was with the kids on June 12. Overcast with east/southeast wind and I thought it would be good on the west/northwest side of the lake. But, the area I had pounded them 3 days before was somewhat dead. We picked up a few keeper eyes, a couple nice Gills and some throw back pike, but that was it for a solid 2-3 hours in that area. Jigs & crawlers worked best. Nothing on the cork nor plastics.

For the last 1.5hrs we moved to the calm side of the lake. Water was much clearer and the sun came out. I didn’t think we’d get a thing, but we actually had much better fishing. Caught some nice keeper eyes and a few too small, then ended our day. It leads me to believe the cleaner, clearer water made a difference.

My next outing will be this Sunday. Taking my daughter and her boyfriend out for a while. Hope the weeds are still in decent shape after all the heat and wind.

Going to do a little “guiding” tomorrow. Taking my kids and my nephew out.

Kids are set up for jigs/crawler fishing. I’m gonna cork with a leech.

We’ll see how it goes.

Iowaboy1 wrote:

Thank you sir!! the last time spring was shaping up like this one has been the temps never got above 63, cloudy and rainy everyday, first time since 1984 I had to sit by a campfire the third week of June with a hooded sweatshirt on, the bonus was no skeeters so that was worth something!!

I just hope the water levels don’t goof things up for you.