3wt

Hudon's corer is in the park. It's the first access to the fly only area from the hatchery road side. It's where the old concrete chunks with rebar sticking out used to line the bank. We called it the concrete hole. Rebar makes a good anchor for a stringer. I'm not sure there's a crabtree creek, or any creek between hudsons and the spring.

I'd make sure you listen to the advice about nitrites (or nitrates?). Salting alone is not always good enough for something you are going to cold smoke, especially for any amount of time. Get the "cure" stuff from morton or a butcher (I think they call it pink salt.)

If you're interested in birding, I'd spend as little as you can get by with on the body, and spend as much as you can on the lenses. Imaging is gettign so good between the big 2 or 3 that your real limitation, especially for telephoto stuff is gonna be the lenses. Get a package with a simple 50mm or so, and upgrade to a good telephoto (I don't think variable "zoom" lenses are generally as good as a fixed length.) To do this you'll probably exceed your budget unless you can do the spotting scope thing. Or look around at used stuff. Canon and Nikon are probably the best bets as they are common and the potential of decent used accessories should be a little higher. I assume we're all talking dSLR's here. I wouldn't try to take long range wildlife shots with anything that takes 2 seconds to actually engage the shutter.

Not to join the hendrix hate-fest, but these days you have to be nuts to not have a legit looking website out the second you put a product on the market. It makes you LOOK illegitimate even you have a great product. The first thing most people do is google a product they've never heard of. If nothing comes up, or if it looks fishy (not in a good way) it's a no-sale. I hope that hendrix does well, and look forward to seeing their product. But with zero information available, I'd have to withold judgement until one was in my hands. I think there is a big hole in the market for inexpensive quality reels, so if they get their act together I think they should do well. And TFO is made in Korea, I'd hardly call it crap. Korea isn't china, but you get the idea. PS, no offense to Terry. I'm sure you hear about the website alot. When that info is out there I'm sure your job will be a little less of an uphill battle.

I've had more luck with RIO than anything else. If there is a problem with QA, then I have avoided any problems spools. I like RIO's color and tie-ability. If you can make a good knot, you have a better chance of good lubrication and proper knot closure. It is true that if you just cinch it down like mono, your break offs go way up. And I seem to have trouble with surgeons loops with flouro. Could be a flaw in that knot for flouro. I'd be interested in some real apples to apples comparison on the major factors that affect tippet performance. How are wind knots a susceptibilty problem? The line has to pass over itself to knot. It if does unless you are lucky, a knot is a done deal regardless of whose product you're using. And I thought flouro was stable for hundreds of years, so I'm not sure what a born on date will do.

I'm really not trying to be a jerk. But your statement further shows that you really don't know what you're arguing. The viruses are used at the cellular level to infect dna into corn cells that then are grown to produce seed that produce plants. The viruses are not swimming all around the plant or it's kernels in the field. And they aren't viruses that infect people, just plants. And the pesticide that bt products have is considered to be one of the safest out there. It's what organic growers use so I guess you can't eat that stuff either. My point is that you can call it common sense, but it's nonsense. People at one point would have said that common sense says not to bring a deadly energy into your house that could kill you. But then we wouldn't have electricity.

They're not a charity dude. How many products/services do you give away for free? It's business. You don't have to like it, but it's no conspiracy that they're looking ot make money. And seed saving is effectively a thing of the past for farmers (not for gardeners.) Hybrids and clones are the trend. You can't save those seeds. This is propoganda. The problem is not even a new issue.

Okay, well I am educated (formally) in molecular biology and genetics and I work in the biological science field. I have real non-propogandized knowledge of this subject.. I don't have a problem with copy/pasting information. Yours was just a poor citation. It's dated and poorly argued, and sourced from people more interested in transendental meditaiton than medicine. Please don't accuse me of propoganda. There's a difference between propoganda and fact based information. When I use the term ignorance I don't mean any offense. It's just that arguing from agenda and emotion is different than arguing from information. I'm not going to defend everything Monsanto does, or absolve them from reasonable and accepted safety testing standards. It's just that it has to make sense, and too much of the anti-GMO stuff is absolute nonsense.

Because despite arguments from ignorance, there are positive things we can achieve...like feeding people that are going hungry, decreasing cost, improving output, avoiding crop loss due to drought disease insects etc, decreasing chemical fertilizers and pesticides, did I mention feeding the starving. Something that hasn't been mentioned is pharmaceuticals. They can be made cheaper, cleaner, and in a more stable supply than other methods. Not to be overly mellow dramatic, but lives are being saved and changed because of biotechnology. It has almost certainly improved your own in some way. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Just because you don't get it, and don't trust it doesn't mean it shoudln't be trusted. See a list of horrible things being done via genetic engineering here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharming_(genetics) Evil cancer drugs, insulin and vaccines.

Oh and most of the stuff in the copy/paste are good reasons to not save seeds from transgenics.

Uh, dude, your expert is from the Maharishi school of management. Which has been called more of a cult than a university. Just realize that most probably would not give that much credence. I won't go into a point by point critique of your data dump, but most of it is not technically wrong, but misapplied. You can talk about position shift problems, unintended changes, etc with transgenic organisms, but these are problems of research, not really problems that plague successful outcomes. They are things that make it tough to develop a transgenic organism. Seriously look at the study dates. 1986, 1994, 1995. The world of biotech is a different place since then. This is like looking at articles on the dangers of computers taking over the world from the 1950's. Sure they probably made good points, but most of them have been studied and we are quantum leaps from those days. You couldn't even transfer credits in biology classes from those days anymore. The state of life science is literally completely different than it was then. Further, the conclusions he reaches are fuzzy at best. To say that there is a possibility of unknown toxins is true (or possible) but we would know. We can determine what is in food, and as far as I know, nobody is finding toxins that will build up in us if we keep eating the crops. That's like saying that if we discovered a new fruit, we would have to study it for 100 years before we could sell it. NO. We would test it and see what's in it and deterimine if it's safe. This really is propaganda and infromation to scare the ignorant. I'm not accusing you of anything or trying to start a flame war, but this is not very legit information.

And google golden rice some time. Ignorance at it's best. It's better to let kids die than to feed them a crop modified with nutrients that would save them. Did anybody bother to ask the dying kids?

Turns out monsanto isn't a charity. Whether or not you like the fact that they make money is irrelavant. Buy a product if you like it, don't if you don't. Farmers like the product, they see the benefit. If they want more of the same technology then putting Monsanto out of business dosn't make much sense. I'm all for fair marketing of engineered crops. I'm not so sure that the health "concerns" are anything but a reaction of ignorance, but it's everybody's right to do what they want. Why shouldn't genetic material be patented? Do you understand that it's not natural genetic material, but engineered? They're not just claiming something in nature to be their own, but they are combining genes from one organism into another. If you can't patent that, nobody will ever do it - and all fearmongering aside, there are benefits to the world that you would throw away. This argument has to be more than wanting monsanto to put up a ton of money and work (that nobody else could or did do in the beginning) and then expect them to give it away and go away. Seed saving is a thing of the past and has been since f1 hybrids. This is a non issue for just about anybody that is not trying to steal. I feel for the guys that get sued for incidental seed spillage or hybridizing engineered genes from normal pollination, but blame the government. If monsanto doesn't protect their patent against all violators, they will loose the right to protect it at all. It's the way it works, and they didn't invent it. And yes mammalian is a word like reptilian, avian etc.

Nope you don't own it. They own the rights to the genetic material, and rightfully so. If you think Monsanto is trying to trick people so they can sue them, then you are nuts. They have to protect their intellectual property against big guys and small guys. If they let the little guys go, they won't have legal standing to protect themselves against big guys. It's the way the system works. They have no interest in putting their customers out of business. This isn't a conspiracy. It's a company making a product that people want, and selling in such a way that they can actually cover their costs and make a proffit, and invest in R&D to make the next product. If they let people collect seed they would have to charge a cost that would never be marketable. R&D cost money. Genetic engineering costs money. Growing seed in such a way as to avoid hybridizing from other natural plants costs money. QA to make sure the seeds are genetically what they are supposed to be costs money. This isn't a ma and pa seed operation. It's high tech stuff, and if you want to benefit from it, they you have to pay the price that makes it all reality.

If you didn't want to do any research and spend a middle-ground amount of money and probably never have to spend it again, I'd say go with a Ross CLA. Good drag, machined, tend to stand behind their product. You can go cheaper if you are picky - there's some good bargains out there like the Cabelas reels. The Konic I believe is a cast reel (??) which to me takes it out of the "long run" category. But Lamson seems like they have great stuff.

I know a couple people with TICA ultralight reels (cetus is the model I think) and like them. Pretty smooth and reliable for the money.

Yup, electroshocking. I believe that they also do it to move some of the browns further down so they don't end up treble hooked with power bait in the park. And I'm not the one that has participated.

I know carbon fiber to generally be strong and light, but is it potentially brittle to impact?

a fish

Calling carbon fiber plastic is like calling your flyrod plastic. Not too bad of a price if you're in the market for a fancy reel. How much does a used Konic go for?

My quick google-ing seems to indicate that only tiny trout have UV receptors, and they switch to blue receptors at something like 0.4 ounces. I'm not so sure it's worth the effort to seek out UV materials for trout.

I have to admit that cell service somewhere in the park would be nice. Last time I camped I had to drive a good way to find the cell service to check upon my pregnant wife (actually if you turned towards Salem you could find the 20' stretch of service that was only a few minutes outside the park.) I just hate the idea of sitting around the campfire having people talking on the phone and texing.

Parker is pretty close isn't it?

Cell service and fishing just feels wrong. I might push the first person I see texting and fishing into the river...

The one time I stumbled across the Whitefly hatch was at Cardiac in September, not long after returning to college for the semester. Wasn't prepared for how late it would go, and had to stop fishing and get out of the water while it was still safe to wade...so bring a light...and a friend.