Fishing Rhino

To quote Vinnie Barbarino, "I'm so confused."

No cabin fever here. I look forward to the off season. Gives me a chance to do the inside stuff around the house. We have a spare room we started renovating last year. Then the weather warmed up enough to go fishing. Paint the walls. Put down a hardwood floor, after ripping the carpet up. Sanding down the edges of doors that stick a bit. Nothing major, but enough to keep my wife happy. Getting ready for the family Christmas dinner we have every year. In the middle of February we're off to Daytona for the races with a stop at our daughter's home in GA on the return drive. Be home in early March. There should be some fishing days around here starting in late March, but it has to be a nice day. I doubt there will be much action to make it worthwhile fishing on windy chilly days. April will be better. On April 26 the boat will be hooked up to my pickup, and about one in the morning I'll pull out of the driveway, headed for the Pickwick road trip, and hopefully about ten days of fishing. Just thinking about it is enough for me to need a nap.

Hey tipptruck 1, have I got a woman for you.

The mall? Here's the scoop, Al. It isn't them. It's you. See, you're getting older, and it's a coping/defense mechanism. I can remember my parents comments about my generation. I was repeating similar things about the next generation twenty years later. Kids want to be different, so they are different by all doing the same things. I've never quite understood how that works. Life does have its cycles. We wore diapers early in our life. We'll wear them again in our later years. See, what goes around comes around.

I'll be some of those who believed this have awakened with the mother of all hangovers. I have to wonder how many have ruined their lives by doing things they otherwise would not have done because they swallowed this claptrap hook, line, and sinker.

Some have posted that it is already tomorrow in Japan, thus the propecy failed. Don't be so sure. It's a Mayan prophecy, so it goes by their time, not that halfway around the globe. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that the Mayan culture lived in what is now the Pacific Coast time zone. It's December 21 for about twelve more hours. Until then, we all need to be paying attention. Attention to what? I don't know, but it seemed like a good thing to say.

I remember that well. Computers were going to crash because they weren't programmed to go past 99 on the date. That was about as dumb as saying a car would stop running when the odometer turned from 99,999.9 miles to zero miles. So the story went that the computers would not know it was 2000. The truth is, they didn't know it was 1999 either, or 19 anything else. They would roll to 00 and be perfectly happy. Y2K is a sore subject with me because we had a vacation, planned years in advance to celebrate the end of the twentieth century (it really didn't end until the end of 2000) at Disney World. We made reservations six years before. I was playing golf with a consultant who clued me in that Disney was planning a humongus celebration to welcome in 2000. We booked reservations that day. My wife had to return home on New Year's Eve to be at the hospital just in case there were any of the publicized, inevitable, Y2K problems. She missed one of the all time great fireworks displays at Epcot. They didn't even have a sniffle in the computer systems.

If you want to soar with eagles, you can't let the turkeys get you down.

Westport, Mass checking in. Three hundred hours and all is well.

You keep posting like this and you'll shatter your carefully crafted, twisted image.

Here's one for you.

I recently noticed that none of the HD broadcasting was in surround sound. I first noticed it when I tuned into an NFL game on Sunday. No crowd sounds from the rear speakers. I looked on the display on the audio visual receiver that shows which channels are receiving a signal. Only the left and right were lit up. No woofer, no rear speakers. Called customer service and they connected me to an advanced service tech. Went through all the steps and all the settings were correct for receiving Dolby Digital. The "problem" is on all three high def receivers that we have. The tech then tried to find a channel broadcasting in surround sound, and came up empty. Every one he checked was listed as stereo, not DD. Any other DISH customers on here? Are you receiving surround sound? I went to the "official" DISH website and spent over an hour searching their site and could not find a mention of DD anywhere. I did a search, and all that came up from their site was old info about surround sound and DD.

When fishing alone, set the boat up so the stern becomes the bow. It will put you closer to the center of the boat. It will also put your trolling motor closer to the center as well. The canoe in my avatar is rigged "backwards". Here's a couple of images that show how close to the center I'm seated. The bucket behind the seat serves double duty. It holds the anchor, and on windy days, I remove the contents, and toss it over the side to slow the drift. You can see the white cord that makes a three point harness to make the bucket stable when it's dragging behind the boat.

Around here, it's the Portuguese who are most often joked about, so here we go. Two brothers, Manny and Tony move to America from the Azores. They search the help wanted ads, and apply to one seeking truck drivers. There is an opening for two drivers on a long haul rig. Manny and Tony apply for the job, and go for an interview. During the interview, the interviewer addresses Tony and asks him how he would handle this situation. Tony, you've just come over the crest of a steep hill. As you head down the hill your brakes fail. At the bottom of a hill is a school that is letting the kids out. The street is full of kids and school buses. There is a railroad track just beyond the school with a slow moving freight train across the road. Your brother is sleeping in the berth behind you and you are gaining speed. What are you going to do? Tony, scratching his head groans and says this is a tough one. Then he suddenly brightens up and says, "I'm gonna wake up my brother Manny. He's never seen an accident like this one."

Why do some of these "partyin" posts make me think of the beginning of Independence Day when all the hippies, yippees, and guppies were gathered on the roof of a skyscraper as the "death star" was opening its "torpedo" hatch on the bottom just above their heads. Everybody wants a front row seat.

Me? I'll be refueling my flux capaciter from our compost heap.

I too have done well with the craw, lobster, space monkey, and toad. This year, I tried the Curly Tail Grub, and the new Menace. Did very well with both, but give the edge to the Menace. Here's how I rig them both. Only a pic of the Curly Tail Grub. I rig the Menace the same way, but with the tail horizontal. To me, the menace looks like a tiny Manatee with a split tail.

I cannot say that many others do not have it, but I maximize whatever ability I have by keeping my emotions on an even keel. I don't get into a frenzy when I hook an exceptionally nice fish, and I don't sulk or mope if it escapes, and otherwise take time to recover from my "loss". If a nice fish spits the hook, I'll continue the retrieve if it happened some distance from the boat. If it happens at the boat, I'll examine the bait, and if all is ok, it's right back in the water. Having a tantrum or excessive celebration means I'm not putting the bait in the water, which is the only place fish can be caught. On the final day of the last road trip to Pickwick, I hooked into a very nice bass. Bassin Sargeant was with me. The fish jumped, but I couldn't see it since he was in my line of sight. When he saw it, he grabbed the net, and got back on the corner of the stern. After a bit more of a tussle, the bass jumped and came unbuttoned. Again the Sarge was in the way of my view. I reeled in the line and made another cast. He was amazed that I wasn't even whining about it getting away, so he did the screaming, cursing and hollering for me. While he was emoting, I was fishing.

Lindsay Lohan? She has been Marilyn and Elizabeth, why not WW?

It takes less force to set the lighter gauge wacky hooks, be they Jackall, the new Gamakatsu which I really like, though cannot use in MA because it is lead. You don't need to "cross their eyes" with these light hooks to get a good hookset. I fish mostly four and six pound fluoro and have yet to bend a hook, even when it snags a rock or other obstruction. I use them where I can because they are the most effective of the wacky type hooks. The only thing that can snag the grass is the wacky rigged worm. With Jackall, Inichi, Flick It and other similar "weedless" hooks, the eye is on the top of the weight, and it snags plenty of gunk.

And each reindeer would be required to have a flame arrestor on their butt.

Hmmmmm, every kiss begins with K(ay). Must be a Hershey Kiss.

I yam what I yam, and that's all what I yam. Is a minion a small onion?

Be careful about those "spankings". This is a family forum, even for the mods.

How disappointing. I thought you made a spelling error when it came to "bears".