Way north bass guy

A good season there for sure @A-Jay! I didn’t get quite as high of a total for my best five, and only put the top three on the scales this year, but I’d say my best five were right about 28lbs. Caught a ton of 3-5lb fish throughout the summer, mainly on my favourite home water, Georgian Bay, but the best five all came in less than 12 hours of fishing over three days in October. It was at my second favourite smallmouth haunt, the Elliot Lake region of north central Ontario where my parents live. Best two fish were 5.8 and 5.7 lbs, and we got probably 10 more between 5 and 5.5lbs with a bunch of “smaller” ones in the 4-5lb range. It’s one of the only areas in our province where bass season is open year round, and I keep telling myself I gotta get up there in April/May when they’re at their biggest weights of the year, just as they slide shallow to feed before they spawn in June. Maybe this year I’ll get a day or two to sneak up there and finally find that 7lber, I know they’re around cause I’ve lost two in the summer up there that’d be every bit of 7.

Got er done! Nothing a couple cold medication pills and three hours can’t fix?. I actually don’t feel as bad now, other than sore shoulders from fighting the snowblower through 3+’ of snow

Well, woke up to an extra special Christmas gift this morning. Full body aches and chills and coughing up a lung. I know what’ll fix it, go outside and clear 6’ snow drifts out of two driveways! I can’t even see my truck right now it’s so buried.

Ha, they aren’t even within three hours of where I am. Only the Ontario provincial police around here. And no, I’ll manage on my own ?.

The roof of our wood shed. For snow depth comparison, that facer board along the top is a 2x8. I can’t even see my barn right now it’s snowing so hard.

Ours just came back on a few min ago. Guess we can have something other than hotdogs for Christmas Eve dinner! ( not that hotdogs are bad, just nice to have options ?).

Looks like I get to shovel and blow snow again tomorrow, and by the way is coming down right now it’ll be just as much as this morning if not more.

Well we have two dogs and three cats, so I guess both?‍♂️. I’d say I’m more of a dog person than cat, but I don’t mind our cats, they do all have very funny and different personalities. One thing about a cat is you can leave them alone a bit longer than a dog, unless your dog can use a litter box of course?.

We’re very lucky here as far as power outages go. It does go out a fair bit, due to us being in the woods and being quite a ways from the main transmission line, but usually it’s only out for several hours at the most and occasionally a day or so. We have a generator big enough to run everything we need to in the house, and our whole place is primarily heated with a wood stove, so we’re nice and toasty no matter what happens.

Thanks, but it’s not a big deal, just winter in Ontario. Been a lot worse than this over the years.

Same here for last night and all day today. Our power went out about 9:30 last night, crazy winds here. Still off now. I had to snowblow a trail from the barn to the house just to drag the generator out, and did the end of the driveway cause the bank was about 4’ high. We’re not planning to go anywhere for the next couple days, but I didn’t want to not be able to escape should we need to. That window in my barn door is about 5’ off the ground. Fairly good bet to say we’re gonna have a white Christmas.

That’s one heck of a lizard! Closest thing to that size we have up here is a bull moose, but they can be dangerous too if you get in their way during the rut.

I’m in the “eye” of this thing right now. Been snowing most of the day but we only have about 2” or so, and hardly a breeze (so far). Still about a degree above freezing right now too, but it sounds like the real cold and wind is gonna hit tonight and through tomorrow. Fine by me, we’re not going anywhere for Christmas so we’ll just keep loading the wood stove and filling our bellies. I’m about where the green dot is in the pic.

As someone that spends a lot of time on roofs fixing and building chimneys, I’d never walk on a roof of any sort with metal spikes like that. Not saying it would completely ruin most roofs, but metal spikes can sure tear up shingles especially with a lot of use, and make a darn good mess on a steel roof. When I’m building or fixing a masonry chimney, I always have to cover the shingles with carpets to not damage them. I find asphalt shingles to be quite east to walk on, especially if there’s some snow up there, unless it’s steeper than about 8/12 or so. Then you have to be more careful. As for @gimruis question, one side of our house is fairly steep, so I don’t walk on it in the winter, although I can walk up and down it when it’s dry. I go up a ladder to the other side, it’s only about 4/12 pitch. If you have a dish that collects snow, get a snow rake. We have one that is a three piece, snap together one that’ll reach 20’ easily to scrape off snow, I use it to get the roof edges sometimes, as well as our internet dish when it gets snow covered.

Took a couple panoramic pics today. First one is from the roof of a cottage I was working on, it’s about 500’ down to the lake from here. Second is my roof, was up there clearing a bit of snow off before the weather gets worse.

So now after a couple years, other guys get your stink! ?

Years ago I was jigging for lake trout right after ice out on a cold morning. Set the hook and my spinning rod slipped out of my hands, and started the 75’ vertical drop to bottom. Luckily I had a big heavy spoon rigged on another rod on the deck, grabbed it and free spooled the spoon to bottom and managed to hook the lost rod in only about 2 min from 75’ down. Still have that rod, and use it often in the summer for smallmouth.

It’s just below freezing so todays and last nights was fluffy. The 8” we got on Friday was definitely heart attack snow.

We have about 16” total on the ground now, and another dump of it coming by the looks of the radar. Wasn’t too bad today though. The sun was shining a good portion of the day, with heavy snow off and on for just a little bit at a time, and it’s right around the freezing mark with no wind, so at least you can go outside and not be too uncomfortable. This was what it looked like an hour ago or so.

Like @12poundbass, we’re getting a dumping here as well. No squalls or wind to speak of as of right now, just good ole snow coming down. Good husky weather through!

I can barely play the radio, but my wife and all her family are ridiculously good at many instruments. Her dad used to play in a band, and family gatherings feel more like a concert sometimes than a dinner with family. She plays pretty much anything with strings, played wind instruments in high school band ( our high school band was one of the best in the country back in the day), and plays the heck out of a piano. We have a whole wall of our house that’s covered in guitars, fiddles and mandolins. She has an old Gretsch electric from the 60s that was her dads. It’s a Chet Atkins Tennessean, that’s worth a mint!

You keep giving that spinnerbait a proper chance, you’ll get on em with it yet ?. We got about 8” of “heart attack” snow here last night. I hit the end of both my driveways with the snowblower before I went to work, just to get the bank from the plow chopped down before it froze. Even the blower didn’t like it, it was so thick and packed. Finished the driveways this evening before it all froze, now we’re supposed to get up to another foot over the weekend, but at least it’ll be colder so not will be fluffy stuff that’s easier to move.

Around here, most ramps are either concrete, with a dock to one or both sides, or gravel depending on the size of lake and if it’s in a larger town or off the beaten path a bit. Never had a problem launching at any ramp here, they’re all pretty well taken care of, but even some of the tougher ones are not bad, and usually worth it cause that just means they don’t get hammered by fisherman as much. My favourite one though is a little concrete ramp, with a small dock to the side of it. Just so happens to be on my back yard lake, probably about 45 sec from my driveway.

Well to be fair, that trailer does look like it has wheelbarrow sized tires ?

Mine wasn’t so much of a huge risk, as much as it was just a major change, that I knew was gonna come eventually. I grew up in a family of stonemasons, I’m the fourth generation to do it. Worked for my dad pretty much every summer through school, then full time once I graduated. When he finally retired, I had basically two choices. Go work for someone else, or go out on my own. The actual physical work part of the job was easy peasy, as I’d had literally a lifetime of experience in it, but the business side of things were a little scary, as I hadn’t truly “ran” anything like that myself. I chose to do my own thing, and it was definitely the best decision. I’m my own boss, I can pick and choose what projects I want to do, who I want to work for, and how much work I actually want to do. 12 years into it, I’m as busy as I could ever want to be, and because most of my projects are more like commissioned art than just regular construction, I get to pick and choose the jobs that I really want to do for people.