-Drums-

It now appears to be fixed in both FF and Mac Safari. Awesome Glenn!

Hey Glenn, FWIW, I'm on a Mac laptop (1440x960 res) and am seeing the horizontal scrollbar issue on both Firefox 2.0 (2.0.0.11) and Safari 3.0. Also, overall the page layout looks a bit off*, which is what I believe is causing the horiz. scroll bar to show. I don't really care about Safari, but the previous version laid out perfectly in FF on the Mac. *It looks to me almost like there could be unclosed div(s) (or something like that) in the updated layout markup. Or maybe it's an odd CSS bug. I know that various iterations IE can be much more forgiving of some of these issues than Firefox or Safari (which are truly "standards compliant" browsers). Anyway, I'd be glad to provide some screenshots if you like. ~Rich

Beat me to it. The great thing about email is it provides you a "paper" trail. Should it ever become necessary to escalate the issue further, you'll have hard documentation in the form of an email thread. On the other hand, email is even more impersonal, and the turnaround times are never really known. Side note: $6K in 6 months....WOW. The monkey has gotten into you good!

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/medal-of-honor-goes-to-late-navy-seal/20071022194909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001 The sole survivor of the fierce firefight that took the lives of these fine warriors, Marcus Luttrell, has written a book recounting the ordeal - Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 . To very briefly summarize, there's this from the Wikipedia page on Luttrell: To anyone who has not read his book, and is interested in military history, I very highly recommend it. It is an incredible modern-day story of true heroes who fight for (and in many cases give the ultimate sacrifice) for all that we hold dear as Americans. The Washington Post also ran a story about this earlier this summer, and provides a good synopsis of what went down: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/10/AR2007061001492.html. But the book goes into much more depth.

Respectfully, you are mistaken. :-) That community hole is "Ryan's Dam", and it actually doesn't look like a dam when you see it. It's just a bunch of submerged (and emergent) structure. I don't mind publicly stating this, because the whole world (especially those who frequently fish the reservoir out of Fountainhead park) knows about the spot. On tourney days, you'll find boats stacked up there like firewood. It's just a bit up-lake from Fountainhead park. Can't miss it. Great spot for cranks, jigs, c-rig plastics.

Wow, that's a great idea. Nice!

No doubt! I most certainly would. Great report, thanks for the interesting read!

Wow - amazing story, incredible fish. Sweet!

Cool, no problem! When my wife sent me that, I immediately KNEW I had to share it here. ;D For me the coolest part was how the buffalo went back for reinforcements....and got the entire herd, and came back to get their baby. Incredible!

Check this out - incredible (amateur) footage some folks got while on a safari trip in Africa. Beats anything I've ever seen on the Discovery channel... Make sure to watch the whole thing!

Hey Al - sorry, I just got around to seeing this post. Sorry to hear about the layoff man, bummer. But, I think you'll see the grass will definitely be greener when you get down there. I lived in Raleigh (and Cary) for a few years and loved every minute of it. There's plenty of great fishing down there. Harris, Falls, Jordan are the big water (with Harris being the baby of those three). There's also a number of smaller electric-only lakes like you're used to up here, and that you'll find offer some good fishing too. Also, despite what some of the previous (and clearly well intentioned) posts said, the traffic--while an annoyance--is NOTHING like you've experienced up in here in DC. It's funny, because when I lived there I thought the traffic was awful (I-40 between Raleigh & Durham), but now that I've suffered through DC metro traffic for several years, I only wish for what I had to deal with back then. Anyway, I definitely enjoyed the few times I got to wet a line with you, and wish the best of luck to you and your family. Enjoy your new locale!

Without a doubt, you know your tackle. But since we're being picky here, you said-- --which very clearly implied that the color was unique only to the Hot Spot. Now, if you had said "You will not find any other lure color Rayburn Red because it is an exclusive color of Pradco, which is the parent company of both Cotton Cordell and Excalibur", that would have been different.

Seems to me like a "home made" Banjo Minnow could be done as simply as: - Zoom Horny Toad Hook (or similar from other brands, with the screw-in keeper for the bait) - Zoom Fluke/Super Fluke/Super Fluke Jr., albino shad color No?

I noticed the same thing. But one simple tweak you can do is just clip a little bit of the (soft) metal off that keeper. Your basic clippers (e.g, if you keep toenail clippers for cutting line) will do the trick no problem. You'll find that it still holds the bait on nicely, without absolutely destroying your soft plastics.

Great job man, that #2 fish on the spinnerbait looks like a chunk!

Absolutely incredible. Way inspiring. And--with no scientific expertise whatsoever to back this up--I'm 100% convinced that fish is a hybrid of some sort. My money is on a largemouth & smallie cross.

And looking at the *** site, it's owned by Brent & Amy Bollinger. Same family name.

Agreed.

Answer: Using IE (in any form - 6, 7, whatever) at all makes your system more vulnerable to attack from hackers, viruses, spyware, etc. This is largely due to the hooks that IE has directly into the Windows OS itself (via "ActiveX", which is a proprietary Microsoft technology that allows for extended functionality in the browser). Now, you can get all crazy with the IE security settings--tweaking this, disabling that--but the vast majority of folks don't ever bother. Apparently IE7 has addressed a lot of the security issues, that's mainly through those annoying prompts asking if you want to allow X to do Y with Z. In some cases, answering "yes" means you're just opting-in to the same old security holes. Nice. Switching to Firefox (as suggested by others on this thread) means that you virtually eliminate ALL of these vulnerabilities, unless of course you install the "ActiveX plugin for Mozilla/Firefox". But that one's easy--don't do it. I myself am a Mac user, which means I never (really, I mean it, never) have to deal with any of these security issues. But, I do have a PC in the house, and the house rule is "IE not allowed". I even removed all the various shortcuts to IE (from the desktop, the start menu, the "Quick Launch" toolbar, etc). Believe me, if I could uninstall it entirely, I would. End result: that computer is 100% spyware/malware/virus free.

Agreed. So, since I contributed to steering us off topic, let me help try to bring it back. Today I'll be fishing a pond (which I've never been to or even seen) with an old friend of mine. I plan on starting with the lighter shakey-head setup, rather than falling back to it if needed. Spinning tackle, 8lb. P-line, 1/8oz. jig head. I realize this is towards the upper end of the light tackle spectrum earthworm77 wrote about, but I think it still qualifies. I'm psyched!

That was me; and not to derail this thread, but you brought it up so I thought I'd respond. FYI, it's a 5/8 ounce jig & chunk I've got on the end of that 20# CXX. It still handles like a slinky. But that said, your point is absolutely valid about balanced tackle and I fully agree. -Rich

CX Premium is my favorite line. I love the stuff. I fished it on all of my baitcast setups all through 2006. It has less stretch (and therefore a little more noticeably sensitive, when compared to Trilene XL). I used 15lb. test for pitching jigs & soft plastics into heavy cover (mostly wood, some rocks) all season, and only had one break off, and this was clearly due to me not checking my line after catching several fish. User error, not a product issue. I recently got a Team Daiwa Light & Tough flipping stick and a Revo S (from Santa) and thought I'd give the CXX stuff a try--20lb. Verdict so far: thumbs way down (for me). That stuff is like fishing with speaker cable. It has the memory of an elephant. I will very shortly be switching that setup to CX premium, or maybe the new Evolution stuff.

Nice smallies! New River, I assume? I lived in southwestern VA (Radford/Blacksburg/Christiansburg area) for a few years in the late 90's. Man, how I loved the New. I never caught any of THAT size, but I had some amazing days on the river. Nice work!

Flippin4it just bought a (split grip) Kistler Magnesium flipping stick so I bet he'll weigh in here before the day is over; but I've held it and even made a cast or two with it, and it is SWEET. Really light, nicely balanced. I also recently got a new rod with a pseudo-split grip -- a new Daiwa Light & Tough flipping stick. I say "pseudo" because the split on this rod is much smaller than what you see on the Kistlers, Powells, G-blanks, etc. Meaning, there's a noticeably larger amount of cork at bottom of the rod (after the split) as compared to those others. But that said, I love it.

I almost spit the food on the monitor ahaahhaahahahahahahahahaahaha Ditto! Except I did spit my coffee on my monitor....