bfishn

Gotta love tailwaters.

I'm not a fly-flinger, but that's pretty cool!

I'm curious... if cold killed off all the bugs, why are there still bugs?

I can tell you where not to hide... under a bridge. The bridge did fine at keeping me dry. As the storm crept away, I pulled anchor and fished the bridge columns, staying close in case it returned. Suddenly the hair on my arms and neck stood up, and I dropped my rod and covered my head instinctivly. Under my right arm I saw an arc as big as my arm snake down the nearest bridge column, a mere 30' away. Then the boom that gave me permanent hearing damage. I was sore all over for a couple days, and have had constant ringing in both ears ever since. I figure it just wasn't my time yet. And the bridge was concrete.

For Jerry's entertainment;

Kewwwll! Finally we know what they're good for.

From a producers point of view, if the goal is bigger fish, you just have to wait longer to get them there. You could have those 10" fish double their mass in 4-5 months with intensive feeding, Feed conversion stays fairly stable till they peak around 2.5 lbs, which takes another year. The last feed I bought in '98 was $35/hundred, it's likely twice that now. Gov, clients probably pay ~$50. If they get a modest 2 to 1 ratio, it takes a dollar's feed to make a pound of trout. 10,000 one lbers or 5,000 two lbers. the feed cost's the same. Space efficiency might dictate you relase half at 10" and give the rest a little room to finish.

If time is no concern, lake raised is the no-cost growth regime, trout feed is expensive. On the other hand, you can grow a 2lb captive fed trout in 30-50% of the time as naturally fed. If they're trying to maintain a balance stock in the lake, X in = X out. they have to stock whatever size is acceptable.

Ironically, you learn so much about the lake, painting the pretty colors, that you don't have as much need for it when you're done. There's a few parts of the lake I've never been that I still "know" pretty well because of coloring the maps. I still fall back to them sometimes. Say I found some fish on 30 ft channel breaks. A quick look at my map for all the spots where yellow meets red reveals all the other similar spots in a flash.

What I learned; Start with at least 200 DPI if possible. Then enlarge the image until the thinnest drawing line is about 2-3 pixels. You still have to manually continue any broken contour lines, but the magic wand or paintbucket takes over from there really well.

I think you're half right. Reasoning is futile, but science is vital. Your 3 day example is a perfect application of science, making observations and modifying your behaviour to suit. Multiply your personal observations by a few orders of magnitude, record it, organize it, hypothesize and publish, and you get fancy science. :-)

Really nice man! Drooling over those Navionics maps. I did my first Beaver map by highlighter on the old Corps plat book one particularly cold winter about 25 years ago. What a huge pain. But I learned. Photoshop became my friend late last century, I did both Beaver & TR in a couple months. Here's a section of TR with the color format I settled on.

Awesome painting Al, and the story to go with just makes it better.

A coworker and his dad have been going every Saturday all summer, with surface temps in the 90s, they have to be operating. They've been doing consistently "OK" (deep with jigs), but no honkers. They didn't go last Sat, so no recent update, but I expect no reason to change.

Water is at its' densest (heaviest) at 39 degrees F. That's why ice floats.

Good question. I had to chew on that one a bit. Had you used 'worthy' or 'deserving' I might say yes. Entitled? No. Not at this point in time anyway. But ACA doesn't work that way anyway. A hard-working, minimum wage Joe might be able to qualify for the cheapest bronze insurance plan, which still leaves him 40% out of pocket. If faced with a common $50K procedure, he'd have to decline, not having the $20K for his share. He could however, possibly scratch up enough to cover his portion of some basic healthcare for the more common maladies, and get some preventative help along the way. Anyone else can still get whatever treatment they or their insurance can afford.

OK, I'll play. Let's see... blog blog blog blog crediting Washington Times search Washington Times site Aaaahhh Wes Pruden, the infamous Kloset Klansman said a Park official said that. If ol' Wes said it, it must be true. Wes, the author of such recent objective pieces as; PRUDEN: A president as clueless as ever Published September 30, 2013 PRUDEN: The bad boy at the party Published September 27, 2013 PRUDEN: Hillary's roots give her away Published September 24, 2013 PRUDEN: Happy to be the doorkeeper Published September 20, 2013 PRUDEN: Laughter drowned in sorrow Published September 17, 2013 PRUDEN: Measuring Putin for Mount Rushmore Published September 13, 2013 PRUDEN: Obama's war with no name Published September 9, 2013 PRUDEN: A legacy for Barack Obama Published September 5, 2013 PRUDEN: The government keeps no secrets Published September 3, 2013 All that in just the last month. He must be the most fit 82 year old gasbag in the nation to write all that and gather the facts for it too. Your turn. Do a Google News search for the same thing. Not a single credible news source played that garbage. Fox wouldn't even touch it.

Actually... ...they're just following the 1884 (amended) law that prescribes action in this very event, the Antideficiency Act. One of the few laws specifically for feds that carries personal liability risk, 2 years & $5,000 fine. In consideration of that, one can see how any park manager might initially err on the side of caution to cover his own butt. The DOD will be recalling nearly half their furloughs (~350,000) because their lawyers subsequently decided it was safe to do so.

No argument there, except that the nearly unilateral adoption by the States of the IBC indicates that it must have something going for it, and it certainly saves each state a ton of $ having to write their own. Not that it's perfect by any means. The '06 IBC incorporated many of Cali's seismic statutes, placing a buildings' "importance factor" way above the longstanding USGS "seismic risk map". Our local architects and engineers don't even have a good handle on that yet. The VA addition we did was deemed a "critical and essential facility", which cost us over $100K just to have the seismic restraints for our piping and ducts designed (by a Canadian firm ironically). Now, that building should survive a tornado, earthquake, or even a car bomb in the driveway, but it's the only one of many on that campus that will. If the existing physical plant goes down, it's all moot anyway. I get your federal/state preferences, really I do. I just know too many people that stand to have their lives enriched or even saved by having access to medical services that were previously out of their reach to wait for Arkansas to do anything about it. In my vision, future iterations could easily fall to the states to implement as they see fit, much like the building codes. Let's accept it and improve it. It's taken 40 years to get the building codes to their still-imperfect state, but the GP is better off for it. You have to start somewhere.

Actually, the states have for the most part adopted the International (skipping right over Federal) Building, Mechanical, and Electrical Codes as their basis, adding only a few lines or items of their own as they see fit. Open any Missouri, Arkansas, or Oklahoma code book, it's disclosed in the first page or two. It was a wise move considering many contractors work in multiple jurisdictions. We don't even bother keeping State codes on the shelf anymore, just the International Codes with a few pages of exceptions for each state. Just last month I tested for my mechanical contractor's license in Oklahoma, and carried in the same International Code books for reference that we use in Arkansas. There's a separate code for residential and commercial too, and each has very specific sections that apply to special applications. For instance, NFPA 99 Chapter 5 specifically covers hospitals, and applies to nothing else. Even it is broken down into 3 levels of detail, one each for surgical, recuperative, and clinical applications.

I share your skepticism Larry, and it's not just the 906 pages of bill text. Like most laws, there are hundreds more pages of existing laws that are either partially incorporated or modified by reference in the Act. To fully grok the big picture, one needs to read and understand all that too. My job in commercial mechanical construction requires me to spend several hours daily searching, reading, inerpreting, and applying engineering specifications and building, mechanical, and electrical codes, so it's not a big jump for me to read law occasionally. I've tried to read the ACA repeatedly, but lost interest after only a few pages every time. But that doesn't mean that the ACA is is unusually long or complex. The spec book for the construction of a new VA clinical addition we just completed was almost 2,000 pages, and it incorporated other codes by reference that exceeded 10,000 pages in the aggregate. It was a huge effort to ensure the details buried in those codes were all incorporated in construction, but each and every one was necessary to the safe and efficient function of a modern hospital. None of the codes that applied were written specifically for that job, they originated back in the '70s, and have been continuously updated and modified to this day. When first enacted, there was a huge industry resistance, and there are still a few die-hards that spout "we don't need no stinking codes". Fortunately, those guys aren't building hospitals. Opponents of the ACA have capitalized on the fact that the public doesn't know what's in the law, fabricating gross exagerations and some outright lies, some of which have been repeated in this thread. I could counter a couple of them, but it wouldn't matter to any significant degree. Minds are made up and lines in the sand have been drawn. I blame the administration for not seeing that coming and countering each falsehood with fact. I watched 3 hours of last Saturday night's last-minute House deliberation live on CSPAN. In a rare cross-examination of an ACA killer, the killer's argument fell to stuttering pieces when he was asked to provide factual basis for his claims. Didn't matter a bit. There's no doubt the ACA has much room for improvement, but there seems to be no interest in taking up that task by the detractors. That tells me the detractors have no real interest in affordable healthcare at all, they are just using it to ensure they 'don't give nuthin' to that uppity nixxxx'.

Bravo!

...or that stuff you use when your eyes get stuck closed.

Shad in Doc's Hollow... Hmm...