Tokyo Tony

Wow, beautiful fish :-)

I wish I went to high school in 1959. Except for the fact that I'd probably be dead now.

McClintock "Badges?, We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges." I admit I had to look that up: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, originally. I just wanted to quote one of my favorites. Main character sees a guy throw his cigarette on the ground... "Hey ringworm. Yeah I'm talkin' to you you toxic waste of life. You gonna pick up that butt or do I have to glue it to the end of my shoe and stick it up your big fat pimply a-hole?" "Hey man, it's just a cigarette." "Yeah? (holds up fist, clenching slowly) Well this is just a fist. But when I start throwin' it around I can leave one hell of a mess. Let's dance." (cue drum beat) ;D

Party pooper ;D

I'm an analyst in annuity operations for a big insurance company. Not awesome. I'm a quarter-century, although when asked for my ID at the liquor store the other day, the guy asked how old I was and I said 24. Didn't realize until I left. Is 25 too young to be forgetting one's age?

Nothin' like having $100K in crisp $100's in your briefcase. I would think...

Why? Because we (humans) have a history of making mountains out of mole hills. Chicken Little syndrome. Global warming? It's CFC's. Fish kills? Gotta be poison. Weird sex organs in fish? Gotta be birth control. We want a simple explanation for every event regardless of it's complexity. We have such a short view of nature in general... in the context of time that is. 1000 years ago we were, for the most part, living in huts and eating bugs and stuff. Now we know why the planet is warming up and why bass have some weird organs. As a whole I consider us very pretentious in regards to our environment. We may mean well, but we actually know very little... and we are darn quick to accept simple answers (especially those which fit agendas). My two cents. You don 't buy the birth control pills theory ? dude didn 't you read what a fish farmer replied ? how about reading what a veterinarian says about what hormones can do and are used for, I also worked for several years at Mexico 's fish department, we used hormones ( testoterone ) to grow an all male tilapia population in fish farms. We know when the gonads ( sexual organs ) of tilapia and other fish differentiate ( turning males into males and females into males ) and we can manipulate them to do what we want to do, in this case, we want them all to be males and that what we get after feeding them with testosterone, scientific fact with a very practical purpose. Fit agendas ? whose agendas ? or it 's just another of those conspiracy theories ? To play devil's advocate, the agenda I'm sure he's referring to is the environmentalist agenda that goes something like this: evil humans are polluting the rivers which is messing up all the poor fish. That's the agenda, and to me, it seems to be the case, but who really knows? No one can prove it at this point, I think. By the way Raul - the term "genital infantilism" made me chuckle. I think I need to grow up.

A Few Good Men "Hey, Lama! How about a little something, you know, for the effort?"

Some of these pictures are pretty funny ;D http://peopleofwalmart.com/

You guys would want to eat lunch with LD? Man, it would likely turn into a very embarrassing experience It would be interesting though.

Well, just as I figured. I just know I'm gonna turn 40 or 50 and wonder where the time went. Fortunately, I'm 25, and I know a bunch of you guys would love to be my age again ;D

Hey guys, that 9/9/09 thread got me thinking. I remember when I was a little kid, my mom would make me take one-hour naps before we would go do something fun, like an amusement park or something like that. At that time, an hour seemed like the longest thing in the world. Now, an hour is nothing. Since I started full-time work in 2006, the time has flown by. A week, month, year, whatever, SEEMS like a lot less time than it used to when I was younger. I believe this is at least partially because as you get older, any given unit of time is a smaller percentage of your life than it has ever been, so it seems shorter. My question for you all is this: as you get older and older, does the time keep passing by seemingly faster and faster? If so, that's kind of depressing to me...

Nice I'll have to look into those bottles. If you don't feel comfortable carrying a gun, you should at least take a slingshot. I think a slingshotted ball bearing to the nose would be enough to deter a black bear. Or are those restricted too? I actually wouldn't be surprised.

Is it stupid that this actually makes me kind of sad? All I know is that tomorrow, like other weekdays, I'll go to work, think about fishing all day, get home, drink some Octoberfest, then go to bed only to start it all over again on Thursday. Maybe the Octoberfest will tase especially delicious on 9/9/09? ;D

A couple questions - what do you do for water? Do you take a purification system out there, or can you just drink the spring water? Also, do you take a gun with you for protection from some of the wildlife?

Amazingly beautiful. Keep posting your trips, please!

Fishizzle - you need to get a new pic man. I'm sick of looking at that trout 8-)

I'm jealous man. You've had some great hikes and fishing trips this year. Nice post.

Everyone has a pawpaw. Worst joke of the day :-[

TMI, seriously 8-)

If you think about it, those of us who post regularly are actually pretty darn famous :-) All of these thousands of lurkers know us but we have no idea who they are. Maybe they have nothing nice to say, so they don't say anything at all.

I used to have a higher tolerance for spice when I was younger, but now I still enjoy it, I just don't overdo it. For my money, nothing beats Tabasco, especially on your breakfast eggs and home fries. Great way to start your day. Unfortunately, a very small amount of Tabasco or buffalo sauce will really get my sweat glands going, so I try not to eat too much spicy stuff in public because people start staring at me. By the end of a really spicy meal, it looks like I just got out of the shower ;D

Nice fish! Please tell me you were fiddling with your camera phone and not texting :-)

Great report Paul, and some nice fish there :-) I need to get a better depthfinder for my canoe, like the one you have. Seems pretty nice for a portable one.

Hey guys, Just wanted to share my girlfriend's PB smallmouth with you all. We went out to my home lake this past Sunday for a couple hours of fishing, and it started off very slow. The water level has dropped about 8 inches in the past few weeks which is significant on this lake because that's enough to pull the bass out of the submerged bushes near shore into about 10-12 feet of water where they school up on the grass flats and terrorize the schools of baitfish. This is my favorite pattern on the lake by far. Unfortunately, we weren't able to spend much time honing in on them because of the oppressive heat, dead wind, and the fact that we forgot sun block. Anyway, we spent some time dropshotting for smallies in 35-40 fow before going shallower, and Nicole hooks up with a nice fish. This thing rose probably 30 feet or so immediately before rocketing about two feet above the surface while perfectly executing a cartwheel and a 360, then tried to dive back down a couple times while pulling some drag. I've never seen her so excited about a fish - she was laughing the whole time :-) I figure the fish was between 2 and 2.5 lbs, but it was the biggest smallie she's caught to date, and it sure fought like a champ. Can't wait to get out there again this weekend :-)