Sup?

So here we are again, back @ the ranch and my boots are still off. Plannin' a day outdoors but still not decided where... Busy week again this past week. Got biking last week-end and remembered how GOOD it all felt again, after such a long winter lay-off. Took a picture or two of an old aquaintance (sp)of mine, along with his bike while out on a neighborhood ride. Biking, the attitude, along with the balance and co-ordination factors involved, keeps one young, in MHO anyway. ;-) I bike to keep healthier in mind and bod. This type of thinking will make anyone feel younger, if they want it to and let it do it's magic...

That reminds me that I'll have to put a link to my blog at LarryB's Blog on my Biking web-site, over on the Tripod server Biking with LarryB Yup, there sure is a lot to do these days. I'm SO fortunate to be able to keep this all up so far...

So anyway, here's two of the shots I Pentaxed the other day, while on my way to work, at my day job. These nice Mullein plants were growing in a waste area, in a nice little colony, not far down the slope from a sidewalk, when I spotted them thriving there.

MorningMullein

This slick little digi-cam certainly ranks right up there in my Photojournalist bag of essentials or EDC items, even. :-) These new leaves are only about a week or so old. Just prime for pickin' in my estimation. Somewhere else on one of these blogs of mine, I mentioned that these leaves make GREAT fire-starter material if left to dry for awhile. So these are the follow up pics to show what they look like when I pick them for my fire kit.

Does anyone else use Mullein? Some swear it makes the best spindles for friction stick fires, if you can find it in your area. Even Tom Brown Jr. stated that in his book, TB's Guide to Edible & Medicinal Plants... :-)

Handy Mullein

Don't be shy about leaving a comment in here, please. I thrive on feed-back and love to interact on the internet. :-)

later,

lb

Middle of April already...

Well it's already the middle of April and the nice weather is catching up and the snow is disappearing real quick, without too much flooding... I'm lovin' it! The beautiful sunny weather just really makes me feel Alive and my health is good as far as I know right now. Just added some more cool gear picks to my other blog last night so I'll try to link it up here to save from downloading all those megapixels in here again. Hopefully this code with work in here to make the link live.

Latest blog

If it doesn't come out, you could just Google me, we have a thing going on... :-)
Here's another shot I Pentaxed two week-ends ago up in Orleans, as mentioned in a previous entry in here.

Waterfalls

Now does that Look relaxing or what?

Here's one I took today, of the Rideau, @ Manotick.

Rideau River

Won't be long before I'll have to pull out my rod and stuff, and do some Spring Fishin' :-)

later,

lb

Wowza! The link DOES work! YaHoo! It's nice to see Blogger let's us do that, eh? Thumbs up to Blogger dot com! You ROCK!

Collectibles...

Some Cool Collectibles...

I've been into collecting neat stuff for quite awhile now and it's only my increased interest in working on the web, that has slowed me down in that department. If I never collected another thing again, I would still have plenty of cool stuff to play with for the next two or three decades. Here's a look at a little bit of some of those collectibles.








Here's my old killer Shadrap, in Crawdaddy flavor to boot...



More later,

lb

Back in the bush again...

Sunday's Adventure...

Mission: To Pentax Cardinal Creek.

Took a #176 to the transit way and then an eastbound #95 to the neat hide-away called Orleans Ontario. Then got into walk mode to give my recently injured right foot a work-out. It was an awesomely beautiful and sunny day and it felt SO Good to just be alive and walking almost normal again. The X-ray from last week showed a brutal sprain and bruising and stuff but the good part was that nothing was actually broken. So anyway, the four or so mile walk there and back gave it plenty of opps to let me know how it was doing. No complaints apparently from the foot now. Wow that feels good again! :-)

Well here's a pair of pics from my sleek little Pentax E30 Optio, after I made it to the falls and back.



Met a Korean Student studying English and we had a fairly interesting talk while we walked from where I had met him @ the creek, to Place D'Orleans. His favorite actor is Brad Pitt, he says ALL the girls over there go Ga Ga for him. ;-) So boys, there's a hot slick trick, fer ya, right there. Get your hair cut like Brad's and you'll be gettin' the looks from all the chicks, where ever you go. He says he eats ONLY fast-foods as in take-out stuff and scrawny ronnies and pizza this and sushi that etc. :-( That of course got him a fine (at his pace of course) lecture from the ol' boy about how he should be eating and what to feed his bod. Did he know he was NOT eating healthy? Nope. Just normal, he said. I even laid him out a little food plan that was healthy and inexpensive to boot. He liked the cheap part and we were soon talkin' up the good old Dollarama. That Store is just really awesome! I can prove it SO many ways now. I LOVE how they work and what they sell.

This spring I will be field-testing some VERY beautiful Chinese Cranks in the river here and Pentaxing any fish that gets caught on them. I have VERY high expectations for them too and some I've already customized with different hook sets. Mark my words ! These Dollarama Crank-baits will Catch fish this year! Can't wait to try 'em out...






Well there you have it friend, another page in this little blog for anyone interested, in reading it. What is it about Waterfalls that seems to attract us? Almost everyone I know or ever met, liked waterfalls. Hmmmm...

It's a very beautiful place right on the edge of Urbana and I Will be headin' back there for another Optio shoot in a few weeks for sure...


Later,

lb

Easy Fishing Rod Mount

I was going to wait another few days to blog so I could say that it had been a month since my last entry, but due to terrible weather, I left work early to-day and felt inspired to write when I got home.

Here's a poor man's tip for hanging some of your fishing rods. I'm known for simple and cheap ideas to get the job done, whatever that is.

This is about as "unfancy" as you can get, as for ways to hang your fishing rods. I LOVE simple stuff and hanging up my rods is no exception as you can see here. Yup, that's a single 1 1/2 inch finishing nail hammered about a 1/4 inch deep and at a slight angle, pointing upwards, towards the wall. Next, you simply balance the strung (ready to go) rod, above the reel, on the handle where ever the balance point is for that rod and reel combo. There, you're done. Fast, dirt cheap and totally efficient. Also you're displaying that puppy proper like, for your visitors to view...



Here's a link to the same picture, stored over at Boxstr, one of my FREE Photo Hosting places on the web. By clicking the link, you can take a look at some of my other photos if you want as well. Most of them will end up in here some time or other, so you get a kind of preview if you will, by sliding over to Boxstr. Plus, you might like them enough to get yourself hooked up with this fine FREE Photo Host for your own pictures to boot!

EasyMount.jpg - Uploader v6

Hey, it's March already and spring can't be too far off, although you would not have thought that about 6 this morning on my way to work. Freezing rain made every square inch of sidewalk a real hazard and a total test of balance skills and broken bone avoidance. Management decided that it was too dangerous for the boys to work to-day and so, sent us home after a little re-loading of about a ton or so of material. Makes for a shorter week and I LOVE it!

Later,

lb

Old times...

As pointed out a few times already, I'm basically an old school Outdoorsman. Sure I follow the new trends but my roots are old. The first good or shall I say, brand name fishing reel I ever owned served me well for over twenty years. Back then it was one of the top spinning reels in the world. It wasn't made in the states or Sweden or Japan either. No sir, this dependable, medium priced reel was built if France, a place not very well known as a fishing knowledge center. Well, they sure knew how to put together a solid and very efficient line winding device! :-) For the next twenty years, I put that Mitchell through it's paces. The two spools it came with was a BIG jump on "smart fishing" because one reel could suddenly handle many species and size of fish. One spool loaded with high test 4 pound mono and the other with eight or ten, I was ready to tackle anybody. I still have that reel to-day and it's still catching fish. Who says newer is better?

Later,

lb

Favorites link button...

Here's a new button to add links to your bookmarks on Tecnorati...

I LOVE Forums...

To-day I want to express the fact, that I just Love some of these Internet Forums that are all over the net these days! Pick a topic or subject to get Google to find you some forums to check out. You may be surprised to see just how many there are out there, to do with your topic. My topics always have an Outdoorsy slant and so I can only speak of those types of forums, with any kind of authority. The interaction within the membership of these forums is a real lesson in Communications. When you start a thread, you will get various responses, especially if you've posed a question in that thread. Many who frequent these types of forums are pretty Gung-Ho at what they love, so you get valid, sincere and personal comments from these guys and maybe get asked a question back, by them. Other members, are the more passive types and love to just read through the threads and follow along with the conversations without actually posting very often. These folks are mostly the learners and act as part of the big reason the Gung-Ho dudes are in there. People who know, like sharing with those who don't, on these forums. Getting, newbies up to speed, gives these lads a charge. There is so much encouragment from the vets usually, that newb's don't stay green very long and are soon startin' neat threads of their own! :-)

Anywho, to-day I want you to see a little sample of a post I made a while back, on one of my favorite Outdoorsy forums. I climbed the little learning ramp last evening and figured out how to put samples of some of my forum posts in here in my blog for you, my dear blog readers. :-) So here you go. Have a look at how a typical post may appear on a forum, if you were to get into this, forum thingy. I'll be posting a few more samples in here from a few different forums a little later but for now, I'd like you to view this one from the fine folks over at --->
Wilderness-Survival.net

Here's a snapshot of the actual post to do with slowin' down in the woods...click it to see it better.

SlowDown...

If you haven't visited forums yet, this may give you a gentle shove to do so to-day. There's nothing like communicating with folks of similar thinking within a cool little worldly niche like this!

Peace!

Winter fire stuff...

Well the weather lightened up a little, so yesterday I decided to take the opportunity to head into my local section of woods and see if I could get a little fire going out there in the snow. I hadn't been out in the bush for a while, so it felt real good to be there. The trick of the day of course, was to use only the fire-stick and steel to produce my fire with mostly any materials at hand in the middle of winter. Took about ten minutes for me to round up some strips of White Cedar bark from a towing ancient old forest monarch and a few hunks of dead White Birch bark off an old stump, filled with rotted wood. I also snapped off a nice handful of tiny twigs and branch tips from a dead Poplar and some more from a stunted Rock Maple, all nice and dry to the touch. After laying down a thin layer of green Cedar branch tips on the compacted section of snow I had prepared, I rubbed the Cedar bark between the palms of my hands until it was all a mass of fine dry fibers but yet not broken into little pieces or too powdery either. Next came the White Birch bark bits, split into little noodle-like strands with my trusty old folding knife. The skinnier these pieces are, the better. A few tiny branch tips from the maple and Poplar were added in a criss-cross pattern to the top of the pile about an inch deep and packed real loose and airy. Then, finally, I took out my new "secret" never-fail, tinder and started to spread it and pull at it and fluff it until it was about 3 inches across on all sides and about a good 1/8 inch thick. It's amazing just how much cotton is in a real cotton ball, eh? Yup, I said cotton ball, as in the kind you get at any drug store or Wally-world even. That's right friend, the plain and simple, old fashioned, genuine Cotton ball, is THE tinder of choice for this ol' bushguy these days! Once the cotton ball was properly prepared, I then carefully slipped it under the edge of the shredded Cedar bark and Birch bark layers, with about a square inch of it sticking out beneath the pile...

Using the tip of my broken piece of old hacksaw blade to hold the cotton steady, I slid the tip of my fire-stick under the edge of the blade, at a right angle to it and applied a firm pressure. Then, in one smooth semi-quick motion, I dragged the firestick up towards me while maintaining my firm grip on the piece of hacksaw blade so that it wouldn't move and disturb the tinder pile.

Poof! A dozen or more medium sized sparks jumped to life off the stick and five or six of them ignited that cotton like there was no tomorrow. Then Woosh, within about three seconds, the Cedar and Birch bark flew into flames and I reached over and fed a few larger twigs to the quickly warming spot in front of me on the winter ground. :-)

Man, I just LOVE this little Fire-Stick/Cotton combo, for totally dependable fire making power, wherever you REALLY need a fire.

Here's the results of that whole simple little process and also a shot of the gear used to create it. If you don't own a fire-stick of some sort yet and you spend any time in the woods at all, I would strongly suggest that you snare one of these cool units somewhere and stash it in your BOB or your bush jacket pocket even. Shucks, I now carry one of mine on my keyring, like you see in the picture there. Don't forget the cotton balls too though. They make everything about this fire starting stuff, totally easy and fool-proof! Wish I would have know about all this neat stuff about thirty years ago! :-)

Can you smell the woodsmoke there?



Stick & Steel...



Later,

Children, naturally...

Nature's Wonders are everywhere, everyday, all around us but we are usually too busy to see, hear or smell them. Not wanting my children to grow up blind and deaf to nature, I started their little lives off with an ongoing Nature class. They would be involved with it every day, in some manner or other. For instance this old picture catches my daughter Brooke marveling at her latest newly identified and long to be remembered, wild plant.



In this case it's a beautiful and delicate little Bloodroot plant. Look closely and you will see where she had just used the "blood" or juice from it's underground root/stem, to paint a picture of it's leaf, on her left hand. Kids are never too young to be awed by nature. Parents are what holds children back from the woods these days. Too many mosquitoes, too much sun, too hot, too cold, to wet, and a bunch of other lame excuses succeed in keeping tons of to-days children in the house too much in their early years. Both of my children could rhyme off a list of bird names to identify every flying thing in our neighborhood, before they even ever went to school!

To do is to learn so every aspect of nature was explored first hand by these youngsters, with dad always there for guidance and encouragement to continue their path. By the time they were 6 and 5 they could gather the proper materials to prepare and light their own small beach fires in the simple "Indian style" manner, I had shown them, the year before. All of this cool stuff was either shot with a camera or video taped and played back to them, as a further learning tool as well. Somehow all this started to mature them pretty fast and by the time they were 7 and 8 they were little walking, experienced, bush encyclopedias with proper manners and their own unique styles already.

In this close-up shot, my son Lee, gets treated to the old, "lame-wing" display, put on by a Killdeer, that few other children have ever witnessed.



Why deprive your children of all this kool Nature stuff, if you are lucky enough to even have children? Should you not be giving them EVERYTHING you possibly can? Learning about nature starts as you walk out the door of your house, no long distance traveling involved and no entry fees either. Man, get those kids of yours out there in the woods and down by the rivers. Stop denying them the wonderful gift of learning about all of nature's free gifts. Help them to get involved in something, anything, outdoorsy. You owe it to them. Or you could just be content to have kids that don't know a Spruce tree from a Juniper bush or a red breasted Robin from a freakin' Seagull but are in the know about all the names of all the players in a bunch of video games, and what they can do...Now that will really help them in the future, NOT!

Your children are your future, please do more about encouraging them to get into Nature related stuff. You, and they, will benefit from it, guaranteed! Well, at least if my own kids are any proof of it, that is...

later,

Fire talk...

Happy New Year!

Fixated on fire? Well now let's see, without it, we would pretty well all still be just animals, living perhaps in cold, wet and very dark caves. :-( Your best friend in the bush is FIRE. Without it, you could, should and would easily die. Non-smokers beware! If you don't smoke, then please make sure you bring a lighter with you if you EVER go into the bush. It would be a real drag having to die for lack of a dollar store lighter or a box of freakin' matches, for that matter.

Lately I've been depending on a fire-stick and either my good old fashioned carbon steel folding pocket knife or a short piece of old hacksaw blade on my key chain to produce the sparks with, to get my fires going. What you must know with this method is that the tinder that catches your sparks, is VERY important. You could and should even, bring some from home, in your pockets somewhere. Good dry wild woods tinder can sometimes be hard to find, especially after a rainy day or night. The best stuff from home is pure cotton balls that you can get anywhere. Works like magic! Dryer lint and char-cloth is awesome too. If you don't bring ANY of this kool tinder stuff, then you had better know what to look for in the bush. Many things will work but any and all of it will have to be totally beat up and made really soft and thin and or powdery even. You could beat it on a rock or tear it up and crumple it and rub it between your hands to get it real fine. My favorites are in no particular order, Red Cedar bark, Dry Mullin leaves, scraped and shredded White Birch bark, certain tree fungus, Cattail down, Bull Thistle and Milkweed fluff. There are lots more to be sure and the more of them you know, the better off you'll be. When things get wet, you really have to make sure that whatever it is you use for tinder, is absolutely dry or you are NOT going to have an easy time if it.

Always bring some fire stuff along if you ever intend to step off the pavement. You could even carry some in your car or truck. You never know when you will need it, either for yourself or to help someone else. Here's a pic or two of some of my fire stuff...

Stick&Keys

If you are just new to this whole, roughing it in the woods thing, then a candle and some waterproof matches as well as a Bic lighter should be in your kit, no matter how big or small your kit is. Always! :-)

FireStuffKit

After we cover the life sustaining power of our fire, then good ol' shelter is the other BIG thing, that I'm going to yak about in here. Now anyone and I mean anyone, can make it through a night or two in the bush, even in the winter, if they have the brains to carry a little life-saving, modern-day shelter, like this in their packs or pockets. Slick Survival Shelters...Watch for it.

Chow

A touch of humor...

Just a little humor to start yer day off right. Got this pic off a great Treasure website called, Lost Treasure USA They send me a FREE Treasure Newsletter twice every month, to keep me in the know! :-) Gonna have to get a little rednecked and try that on the BBQ next summer! ;-)



Man, life has been gettin' SO serious for me lately, that stuff like this picture above, just cracks me up and helps to even out the serious vs outrageous sides of me, when the seriousness takes over too long. Anywho, I also believe that we ALL need a little more laughing and fun in our lives! That and a whole lots more LOVE! I grew up in the Beatles era and felt the "peace over war" thing, ever since then and it's all true. Love will get you more places than hate will. The more we are loved in this life, the more we are reaching our potential. No love in your life means nobody knows you, get on the net. A RICH life is NOT measured in Gold or Real Estate but in how many knew and loved you. To share LOVE is a form of "richness" that seemingly few these days, have enough to share. Example: Your beloved dog. He/she just worships you. Unconditional LOVE, expressed every day, from beast to man. You'd probably almost beat someone with a cane, if they were to try and hurt your dog. How many people do you know and say you love, that you would do that for? How many of those loved ones would do that for you? There are MANY, many depths and heights to what this love stuff is, to be sure. It's up to each and every one of us to explore the full gamut of it, you only have so long, you know...

later,

Liquidational moves...

O.K. then, so for the last few days I've been heavily into "photog" mode and shootin' pics of a pile of my little collectibles. Thank God for this sweet little Pentax point and shoot which I bought for myself as a birthday gift, last October. I've used Pentax and Minolta 35 mm cameras for over 30 years and this little baby easily whoops them both. If you own a digital camera runnin' at least 6 mega-pixels, you KNOW what I'm talkin' about here, now don't cha, eh? :-) I can't say enough about these super slick pocket cameras that work miracles with light and perform so well with normally difficult, fairly close-up work assignments!

So then of course once you shoot the picture, it has to be resized and or cropped, then titled and saved to a folder. Once that's done, it's pretty easy to add pics from there to the ad posting board. Of course all of this takes time and demands quality of work, in the process, so only so many shots can hit the ad boards in one day.

My two fav's are, Kijiji and also my most recent winner ad board is,Used Ottawa.com. You might even want to slip over there yourself, if you have something you'd like to sell, it's all FREE. :-) Good luck on that if you do decide to go ahead and post over there. Take a peek at some of my little ads there too, if you get a chance. I could most certainly use any and all of the little amounts of money that I'm asking for my stuff.

Here's two pics I will be posting on kijiji this evening, hope it gets bought quick-like...

Royal Daulton Creamer

Africa Patterned Royal Doulton Creamer

That's it, that's all...

later,

Nutrition plus...

We all eat differently from each other but usually share a few common foods with one another at the same time. Combinations of the right foods can effect your body as if they were Super-foods. As a matter of fact, after much study in the eating/health department pertaining to my life, I've come up with some very interesting little lists of foods that provide the most impact for my body. From my personal library, here's one of my favorite sources of food intel...

You'll probably agree that this man MUST know what he's talking about if it's got to do with the human body,eh! :-) So if Arnold says to eat it, I EAT IT...Here's a couple of pages out of his book, "Arnold:The Education of a Body Builder" which have to do with his take on Nutrition. Since applying his techniques and recommendations over the last two decades, since I found this book, I have managed to stay fairly fit for a man of my age etc. etc. :-)

Apply some of this stuff to your daily diet and you will not be sorry! This is by the way, NOT my only source on nutrition. Trust me, when I say I research something, I mean I get the best sources in the last century and filter through them until I have, in this instance, a couple of power-food lists that almost anyone can use to their benefit. Granted,some folks, my very best friend included, are diabetic and have to watch closely what they eat so they don't unbalance everything. :-( For the most part, most people in general, would greatly benefit from adding some of Mr. Schwarzenegger's recommendations to their daily food intake.

If you have children, Please, feed them the right foods during their formative years. If you are a young teen out there readin' this, try getting the right food into yourself and you will actually start feeling better than you do right now. More energy, stamina, and zest in general. Food, real food, is our fuel. Bad fuel, equals bad performance. An old computer geek term for that was GIGO, which meant, garbage in, garbage out. Fuel yourself with natural power foods and your performance will jump accordingly. Instead, if you just eat say, chips, candies, cookies, cakes, greasy foods, canned spagettio's and other crap, then you can watch your body get all fat and sluggish with little energy and if you're a teen-age person, watch those pimples and other scary ugly zitty things appear on your suffering young body too. Eat Right fair reader, it's never too late to start healing your body and making it stronger so it can live longer...

One more thought...This may come as a suprise to many of you but there are only two kinds of food actually. I won't go into right now but will cover it better in another post. The two foods are: Live food and dead food. Here's the big hint. Eat as much Live food as you can while eating as little dead food as possible. Makes for a livelier body and mind whereas dead food breeds deadening bodies and minds. Well anyway that should get you going for now. Much more later.


chow,

Carrying a folding knife...

I don't know how many of you use or carry knives but I've had some kind of folder in my pocket ever since I was about 8 years old. Back in those days, you could have a jack knife on you and nobody would hassle you about it except perhaps to warn you to be careful and don't cut yourself with it. Well, over the next four decades, I picked up another one here, another one there and got this one as a birthday gift, that one for Christmas, bought a new one at... well anyway, you know how it goes, eh?

So here's a picture taken last fall of a dozen folding pocket knives out of my collection. Some are lock-backs but most are not. None were expensive and all have done much work for me. I think every man should own at least one pocket knife and any women that spends any time in the woods or rural areas at all, should be packing a blade too. They are just too handy to NOT own one. If you do like knives that fold up, which one do you like? Got a favorite? Post it here, in the Comments section.



There will be more pics of more knives, of various kinds shown in here in future installments. Watch for 'em if knives turn your crank...

later,

My metal buddy...

The week-end is here already, came right outta nowhere. Man, if you don't blog, then you have NO idea just how hard it is to keep them goin' on a regular basis. There are only so many things you can do with 24 hours. Many a time, I've simply passed up my chance to sleep once it got to be 1 o'clock in the mornin' and the creative juices were flowin'. Even though I had to be at work the next day, the sleep time didn't seem to be missed too much as I performed as I would have on a regular day with my normal 5 or 6 hours sack time...

Anyway, there's a whack of white crap outside, all over everything, to the tune of six plus inches deep and the temps hovering in the -12 degree zone. Brrr, shiver brrr. Yup, I think I'll just stay in to-day and catch-up on some of my web stuff. Speaking of which, here's a shot of what's under my seat etc on my trusty ol' vintage (early 80's) MTBike. This rig has seen a lot of miles and shared a pile of adventures with me and yet like a Timex, it's still keeps on tickin'! I call him Cooly and he's a very proven and dependable mechanical pony, to this ol' cowboy, originally from the rolling hills of Sudbury, Ontario.

You can never have too much gear but I don't believe in excess either, most of the time anyways, I think. ;-)

Take note of the ever present slick bandana (actually there's two on there)in case the weather shitties up on me or I find one of a hundred other uses for it on my tours... :-)



Are you a bit of a gear head too? Got some neat gear you'd like to let me know about? I'm gonna put an email link in here in case some of you would like to contact me and maybe hook-up for a project or two in the future, like biking, fishing, detecting, photography or web work say...

For now though, you could just leave a note in the Comments section.

later,

Well alrighty then, now that was a busy last few days, what? Too much stuff to do and never enough time to do it all in. I just now finished hookin' up with the good folks over at Technorati to see if I can get this blog noticed a little more. According to the good rumors I've heard, it's THE place to be. We'll see. Just click the link below to see what's up with all that...


Technorati Profile

While you're here, why not bookmark this little blog with this easy button...



Have a LARGE evening my friends! :-)

lb

Startin' the day watchin' Angler & Hunter on tv. Kids show today. They were talking about 2 FREE Fishing days per year coming. One in the winter and one in the summer. AWESOME! Since history began in my area (Ottawa) anyone that was a resident of Ontario could "try" fishing whenever they wanted, during the open season. A few years back, the powers that be decided to take all that away and began to charge everyone to fish. Well, everyone over sixteen that is. So a kid could fish but his dad couldn't afford the new luxury taxed fee so he couldn't take his kid fishing so both parties suffered. :-(

The third party was the only party who benefited there, with the millions of new dollars to line their already bulging government pockets. :-( So, I guess it's nice that they are trying to give us back what we already had, that they took away, and make us feel like we're getting a good deal again. Another real life lesson to portray how the government works for us...

Anyway, get out there and fish if you do NOT have or want a fishing license. Call a buddy that fishes and ask him if he can take you to the water on those free days this year. You might like it.

Here's a picture from this past summer down at my secret lake. :-) There are Perch, Bluegills, Walleyes, Musky, L.M.Bass, S.M.Bass, Sunnys, Carp, Black Crappies, Golden Shiners, Emerald shiners and a few other Minnow types, all fighting for survival in this sweet little lake overrun with boats and motors. That's kind of like peeing in a crystal clear mountain stream to me. A jewel of a lake, polluted to near death, evry summer and nobody says or does ANYTHING! There is Way Too much $ money $ involved with Tourism on this lake for them to EVER try and Protect it! I am probably the only person in Ottawa to be whining about how the two or three faced government can continue to kill this lake and go nuts on your head if you bring a little bass home to put in your special set-up aquarium, or hook a walleye with your Crappie jig before the walleye opener, or fish with three single hooks on your line while ice fishing instead of the stated 2. :-{



So despite all that killin' goin' on, there are definitely a pile of these bad boys in there that I chase every spring for the last 15 plus years. I like talking to the kids that walk by and start a dialog with me. I get them going on fishing this place and tell them it's loaded with fish for them to catch, for free even. When I meet a couple of kids fishing together, I have been know to lay a couple of my special hand-tied Crappie Cillers on 'em so they can really start spanking the panfish population, after I show 'em a bit about "how-to" fish the deadly little units... :-)

later,

One of the oldest little tools that I've packed around for years has been the venerable G.I. can opener. According to the story, it took 38 twists with this little unit to open a can. I haven't counted myself so I couldn't really tell ya for sure how many twists it takes but I liked the story. :-)

These little pieces of metal are just SO darn handy. There has been numerous articles written about them over the years to illustrate their versatility and express an appreciation for them. They have also created many memories for men in the Service as well. Many guys remember most of the men they served with, when they look at a P-38 to-day. They take up basically NO room, are very light, tough, slick and very functional and all that, makes them very Cool in my books and now in my blog too.

More than 5 inches of snow on the ground now so I guess winter is definitely here to stay. Buses certainly are not as good when there is a lot of snow on the roads. Slush waves are common to-day if you're walkin' anywhere so keep to the inside of the sidewalk if you can. ;-)

Have a good one...

O.K., so I was diggin' through some old slide trays the other day and came up with this dusty old shot of none other than the legendary Robert H.(Bob)Jones, long before he became famous. We used to fish together on a fairly regular basis and I can say here with certainty that I learned a passel of good fishin' stuff from this ol' Master. We shared some pretty good times, he and I, and we took each others pictures a number of times over the well photographed bow of his ol' "Tin Goose", the name he gave his trusy, battle scarred, Sportspal canoe...



Now here's a pic I took a couple of weeks ago while down at my local lake with a buddy for the afternoon hatch. I'm really lovin' these kool little crankers, slurpers, gliders, darters and slick poppers, coming over from China this summer. I've got BIG plans for them next year! :-) You got any yet?




How 'bout my faithful ol' Cardinal 4 here, still whirring after all these(25 plus) years? That says a lot for good equipement. I've yet to break one of the two bail springs on this reel. Imagine that, would you?













Have a good 'un!

lb