Posted by Paul on 29 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: What I'm doing currently
Half way home.
Left this morning at 7:30, stopped in Upsala, Thunder Bay, Marathon, Wawa and Sault Ste Marie. Mood in the car is generally amicable. Lots of kielbassa, cheese and triscuits.
Staying in Sault Ste Marie for the night.
Toured the waterfront. It’s nice. Tried the casino. Lost $10 playing “deuces wild” video poker.
Home tomorrow afternoon. Can’t wait.
Posted by Paul on 28 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Music, Photos, scenery
Well I made it, I’m officially done for the year, and ready to go home. I’ll be leaving tomorrow, hopefully getting home sometime Tuesday afternoon. I am heading to my cottage on Thursday and after that the entire month will go by in a flash, I’m sure.
Right now, it’s raining outside, and it’s rained all weekend so far.
I managed to accomplish another little life task on friday, I successfully (96% written, 92% practical) passed my firearms safety course. I already have my hunting licence and I passed the hunting safety course back when I was 15, but the rules have changed since then. To anyone who has considered taking this test, If you have any prior knowledge of firearms, I would recomend challenging the test and not re-taking the entire safety course. I studied for a day and that was enough to easily pass. Truthfully, I lost most of my marks on the practical test because I didn’t look down the barrel of the gun when proving it to be safe, and yes that’s something you’re supposed to do. Hopefully the paperwork will be cleared in time for moose hunting.
Thursday night was an end of the year camping excursion with some of my co-workers to Butler lake park. It consisted of a 1.5 hour boat ride followed by campfire, burgers and sausages and guitar playing. It was a lot of fun and a good way to tamely let loose before we all break for the summer.
Some scenery from where I tried fishing. I caught 2 pike, both small. I was hoping for something big. I didn’t want to be too unsocial though because noone else was fishing. I’m hoping to do well at my cottage next weekend.
More scenery
My first campfire of the year.
Driving home, there was still a lot of light at 10:30. The light you see at the bottom of the photo was the headlight from the houseboat.
Mobile – Montreal calling
Rush – Red Barchetta
Metric – Gimme Sympathy – Got no time to take a picture, I’ll remember someday.
Posted by Paul on 21 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Fishing, Photos, Pike, Rollerblading
When you criticize someone for not knowing something you often say they don’t “get it.” I think for the longest time I didn’t get the whole tagging thing with this site. My tag categories weren’t specific enough and quite often I didn’t take the time to actually use them. I follow a handful of other blogs and they have a list of tags that runs 20+ deep, and if you want you can just click on a tag and see all the relevant posts of that subject. I’m going to start trying this a little more, starting… now.
I also didn’t really get flickr. Well, that is to say that I tried it once, it took too long for me to upload my photos and I just quit using it. I think now I know that flickr is to be used for my best work only and I should really only be uploading 1-3 photos at a time, at most. I think flickr is a place that I could post random photos that I think are decent for the world to see and not have the umm… well lets say exposure of posting them on facebook. I don’t know, I think it’s a case of the medium being the message and flickr does a much better job of sharing photos in high quality to an audience of people who are seeking out such work. We’ll see how that goes, I’m not starting right this minute.
Random note of the day – if you do a google image search for “allanburg bridge fire”, two photos from this site come up on the first page. Now that’s impressive. What’s not impressive is that the reason they show up has to do with me posting photos of rollerblading near the allanburg bridge and being a firefighter. The truth is I wasn’t a firefighter the night a boat hit the allanburg bridge. I am looking forward to getting back on that rollerblading trail next month. I had the blades out for the first time yesterday and things were fine, a little rusty but that’s to be expected.
Yesterday/Today were the longest days of the year. Longest days of my life, in fact, as daylight lasts longer here in Dryden than it did in Thorold. 5:02 am- 9:22 pm to be exact, compared to 5:36 am – 9:00 pm in Thorold. Oh, the perks of living in northwestern Ontario. I celebrated yesterday by fishing until the sun went down, back at my favourite spot in Wabigoon.
Aerial view. I do have to cross an active rail line to get to this spot but the train starts blowing its horn about a kilometer away so I think I’ll be safe.
This is the view walking from the truck to the lake
My first catch. As you can see by the size of my hand, this was the smallest pike I’ve caught lately. As I was landing it, a fellow in a canoe paddled by and asked “is the fishing as good as the weather?” I said “mind your own business, old timer.” Actually I was polite in my response but wouldn’t that have been awkward? Notice the lump in this fish, I’m thinking it might have been something it ate. It swam away.
This made the day worthwhile, a 4 lb, 14 oz specimen. I was given a digital scale this year and this was the first fish I’d tried it on. I love catching big pike. This one gave a pretty good fight, so I was excited to land it. Caught on a Len Thompson #1 spoon, white and red. Seems the pike here will bite any red and white spoon, and I’ve had the most success at this spot with these lures. According to their website, eppinger still makes daredevle lures, but I haven’t seen one in a store for a while. Maybe just in the US? When we eventually get married, I’m really going to push for an awesome wedding momento. I wonder how much they would cost.