jeb2

Not everyone needs to or should root/jailbreak their smartphones. I did it for the free unlimited wifi tethering it gives me. Saves me $20+ a month. And it gives me the ability to use apps I could not otherwise run. But you do risk warranty claims at times on a rooted phone, so there are drawbacks to it, too.

Great to see KTM at the top of the podium! Bubba took another digger. Nothing new there, though.

That used to be true. And he's still creative. But I was kind of surprised when Dungey caught up to him after crashing to let him by. Could be that was the pressure that made bubba go thud, too. It will be interesting to watch as the season unfolds, but I'm not sure he's "all that" these days. Which I'm, again, glad to see. Ricky and Bubba have huge skills and I give them props for that. But when they'd run away with championships, win every race kind of deals, I just did not watch. Not much fun as a spectator when the winner is a foregone conclusion.

If Bubba continues his quest for taking nasty soil samples, I think Villopoto has a good chance. But the nice thing there does not seem to be on dominant rider right now. So all I'm really hoping for a close battle for the championship. Makes the series much more interesting to follow.

Same here. I actually spend about 2 months of the year with my MIL at her summer home, and my wife is usually not there but for about a week of the time. I bring my boat up and fish on their lake everyday, help her with whatever she needs done around the place, enjoy her company VERY much and help her entertain whatever company comes along. We are really great friends. I really do feel for all the guys with awful MIL's. Far too common to read about it. Has to suck.

Just cheapy 1/8oz round, unpainted jig heads and Keitech (sp?) 3.8" swimbaits. A-rig head was 1/2oz, I'd guess. Painted a shad color. Depth varied. I'd let it sink anywhere from a 1 second count to a 10 second count, depending on where I was fishing it. Fish came anywhere from 3' off of the bank to 50' offshore over 40' of water. I need to do a lot more experimenting with it, but it's working well so far with the paddle tails.

Yeah, the 50's are really over lubed from the factory. I put Orange Seals in mine on day one, but we just cleaned the bearings in my buddies 50E. They were full of grease! Never seen that before. Usually they just oil them. Took a lot of cleaning, but we finally got them rolling good. Great little reels once they're all setup. Very little performance difference - if any - between it and my Core 50 (also has Orange Seals).

I soak the filets in water in the fridge for 2-3 days before freezing or eating. Gets any blood that may be there out of the filets. Otherwise, I'd say bleeding them would be a great idea.

I just called the head ranger for my district, over in Eureka Springs AR. They said there is no limit on the number of hooks on an A-rig, at least on Beaver Lake.

My Android phone does not work that way. I hook up via Bluetooth and USB and neither asks questions about granting permissions. HTC Evo, Sprint. Bluetooth is slower than USB, but it's nice to have if a cable is not handy.

Thanks. I'll have to do some more checking, it seems. Can't find any info on it on the AGFC website.

I do it over bluetooth on my Android phone. Super easy and secure.

Fished it for the 2nd time today. 1st time I didn't throw it much and it was after a big cold front. Nothing on the first day. But it kicked butt today, and out of the back of the boat, too. I think it's found a place in my tackle box! It was not as big a PITA to fish as I was afraid it'd be. I don't like braid, and that's about the worst part of fishing it for me. The upside of the 65lb braid is I was able to pull the rig back from the snags I got with it. It does snag up pretty easy. I'm casting it on a 7' heavy action Kistler LTA rod. 5 1/8-3/16 oz jigs with hooks and swimbaits.

I use my kids old T-Ball bat. Lay 'em on the fillet board and give 'em a good whack or two on the head. They may not feel being filleted alive, but I feel better about it if they're dead.

Good job! Now that you've done it once, it'll be much easier the next time. I'm very mechanically inclined and have always done my own reel maint. So easy to do, at least IMO. And once you've taken one apart, the rest are usually very similar. I bought a Calcutta DC a couple of weeks ago. My first round reel. So I was expecting it to be somewhat different internally when I pulled it down for its pre-first fishing day clean up and lube. Pretty much the same as my low profile reels in there, except more room to work.

Owner of our good local tackle store says you can have a hook on all 5 arms of the A-rig here in Arkansas.

Shimano Calcutta TE250 DC reel and an NRX JWR893 top the list. Not a combo, though. Reel goes on a Loomis CBR906, and I'll likely put one of my Steez's on the 893. But the best part was being with the family. Hope everyone had a great Christmas.

The Luck e Strike STX have fished at least as well as my MB110's so far this winter. Give them a shot too, if you haven't tried them yet. Caught an 8+lber on one a couple of weeks ago.

I have been watching the reviews on the MGX's, and generally find what Hooligan says to be true. Seems to be a fair amount of issues with them so far. I have several of Abu's current generation Premier and was all stoked about getting an MGX. But not so much at this point. I do hope they get the issues figured out quickly and the reviews get better.

I think it's important to understand that some companies phones on the Android OS are better than others. It's not like the Apple world where you're stuck with just one manufacturer. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, etc all make android devices with different pluses and minuses. It seems I hear most issues with the Motorola platform. And usually it's the older stuff. I'd guess that's because they were one of the first on the market with Android devices and they had issues with hardware and software, as bleeding edge products often do.

Agreed. Like most of the Apple products. I did some Java development work recently on a high end mac for a small business. Absolutely hated it! Give me a Windoze machine anyday (and I'm not a huge MS fan, either!). The funny part of the whole deal was I was writing Android apps! Odd world sometimes.

Not an issue for any of the newer Android Phones, either. I've heard of those kinds of issues on older phones, but Android seems very stable now from at least 2.1 forward. I've rebooted mine ONCE in the year I've had it.

Pick up this months edition, Dec 11, of Consumers Reports. They did a big comparison on the latest smart phones. They rate them by carrier. Some of the newer phones from Samsung and HTC did very well on the camera front, finally. Rated as high as the iPhone there. That is one area I've been disappointed with in my HTC Evo. Hard to take good pictures with it. That will be a much bigger item to consider the next time I get a new phone. They also have a sidebar on Android vs iPhone. I don't agree with some of what they said. They didn't mention, for example, that there are so many free apps for the Android phones and pretty much none for the iPhone. But still, some decent info in the article.

The Bass Pro shop in Springfield, MO has a GIANT snapping turtle on display in one of it's tanks. My wife won't let me leave until we go watch it for a while. Has to be 200lbs or better. Saw a pretty good sized snapping turtle on the lake in Northern Wisc I spend my summers at. I was surprised to see one that big up north. 20-25lbs, I'd guess. Not huge, but biggest I'd seen that far north.

I'm sure you'll be happy with the reel. But the bearings often come heavily greased in that reel, for some reason. I'd plan on either cleaning them well and light oil lubing (one drop, of course), or just replacing them right off the bat with Orange Seals. Really lets you realize the potential of the reel.