hoglaw

Are you talking about the Arkasnas browns? I think our browns are naturally reproducing, but I could be wrong.

You're as good a judge as anyone. If it's stable, dependable, and durable, I don't see why it would be a problem. I'd hate to be in the middle of a 20 mile overnight and spring a leak, but if you're confident in it I'm sure it's just fine. Practicality is all up to the user. The boat in my "fleet" that gets the most use is a pelican canoe with all the seats and supports stripped out. It's basically just a shell of ram-x or whatever the hell it's made out of. It doesn't track nearly as well as a decent boat, and I may get a few looks form some of the buffalo or old town users. But I have a camping chair that's a comfortable as can be for it. On really easy water, I'll even take the chair with the leg rest. I have a trolling motor mount for lake fishing. Plus, I can store more gear than you can shake a stick at. It's the most stable canoe on the water...I have no qualms about standing up and walking around in it. Personally, I don't care what anyone thinks about it. It is a platform for fishing, and it has more miles on it than just about any boat out there.

I married my wife in May of this year. We are both young lawyers in Fayetteville, and met in law school. We cheated a little, and moved in together during our third year of law school. By the time we graduated, we were pretty certain we were going to stay together, and we bought a house together (the offer was contingent on both of us passing the Arkansas bar exam, which fortunately we did). We couldn't wait to get a spot out of town in order to get dogs as soon as possible. We have two dogs, Sam and Lucy. They are both pound dogs, and we've had them since they were puppies. I thought Sam was going to be a pure bred lab. He looked like one and acted like every lab puppy I ever had growing up. He still looks like a pure bred lab, he just stopped growing at 35lbs. I wanted a big dog, ergo Lucy. My wife picked her up from the Eureka Springs Animal Shelter. We thought she was going to be a German Shepard....she isn't. She grew up to be a black and tan Beagle mix, also 35lbs. Lucy was pretty much the pound mascot. When my wife went up there to look, they had her out of the kennels and roaming around the front office. She had free reign over everything. That should have been sign number one. Lucy has continued to lead a charmed life. She is a princess. She is useless in every since of the word. She is allowed on all the furniture, and pretty much gets away with anything. She ate two of my wallets. She likes wet dog food, but really enjoys large denominations of cash. Sam and Lucy are an inseparable pair. Sam likes to canoe and chase after my wife on her runs or bike rides. Lucy likes to watch football with me. Last night, my wife came home from the gym around 8:30. As usual, Sam and Lucy ran in front of her car as fast as they could, only do dodge it at the last minute. Lucy must have slipped on the wet ground as my wife ran her over with the back tire. A trip to the dog ER and a bunch of money later, they told me her pelvis was broken in five places and that the fractured illium was going to impair her bowel functions. Surgery was the only option. There is only one person in Arkansas (Russelville to be exact) that does this surgery. He quoted me $4500. We had all but decided to put her down. Do I have the cash? No. Can I raise it or borrow it...yes. But how much is a pound dog really worth? I spent the day trying to figure out what else I could do. I talked with a vet-relative in San Diego, I called the U of M and OSU teaching hospitals, and I finally found a guy in Tulsa who can do the same surgery for half the price. My vet assured me that the guy is indeed competent, and that he referred many cases to him...he just didn't know he did this surgery. We bit the bullet and set up an appointment for Monday. Once we made the decision to commit to the expense, we both felt like we had never been happier. It's funny how much these dogs have impacted our lives. I get teary just thinking about having a Sam but no Lucy. I'm not even sure why I'm posting this. It's been a long and emotional 24 hours. I haven't slept. Lucy is finally sleeping, heavily medicated, on her bed right next to me. She's been crying most of the night. I went through dogs like crazy when I was a kid. Strays would come and go, and losing a dog was just a part of life. Now, I have these two worthless pound dogs and they're an integral part of my young family. Makes me wonder if I could ever handle having children. I just don't know how you dads can handle the stress of a sick child or a child who's living outside of his or her value system. Anyway, no big trips or new gadgets for me for a while. I suppose part of growing up is realizing that the money we make doesn't equate to new toys all the time. We're really excited about our decision, and Lucy is expected to make a full recovery after surgery and a new pelvis. If this dog was spoiled before, I shudder to think what her sense of entitlement is going to be like in another year or two. Even if no one reads this, its nice to have a place to vent. I'd talk to my wife, but she passed out at 8 and won't be up until her morning run. I think Lucy and I are going to sleep in

Not sure why you're catching flak over this Michael. Neat idea and awfully generous of you.

I didn't really mean to offend anyone with the "fishbowl" comment. I should have thought more about that before I posted it. I'm blessed to live in (Fayetteville) and be from (Little Rock) an area where I don't usually have to share my fishing waters with others. I'm not a big trout fisherman, though I'll do it from time to time and on the occasional trip up north or out west. I used to enjoy the Norfork, but the crowds out there seem to be getting worse and worse. My family has a place on the Little Red just downstream from Lobo, so I grew up fishing out there as well. I've only made two trips to Missouri for trout. One was to roaring river, which...in short... I could do without ever visiting again. Just not my cup of tea no matter how big the fish are. The other was to the North Fork in March. I have to say it was pretty cool. I just see all the posts about the crowds on Tanney and the size of the fish caught up there, and I guess I have an ignorantly formed negative impression of it. I suppose I shouldn't knock it until I try it, so I apologize for ruffling any feathers. I'm sure my wife would love to visit Branson, so maybe one of you guys can prove me wrong sometime. Tell you what, for every 24" fish you put me on, I'll gulp a goldfish as penance. I'll bring the goldfish.

Wow, great 7th post. Welcome to the board.

If I'm not mistaken, the last three world records have come from Arkansas. Rip's 40lb 4oz fish near Lobo on the Little Red, Mike's 38 and change fish (on corn I believe) near McClellan's on the Norfork, and the previous one came from the White I thought.

Taney seems a bit like a fish bowl to me, but then again I don't fish it. Would it be possible for a fish like that to swim around for years and years without someone noticing it?

I'm changing jobs at the end of the month and will have a week off. If I stay close to home, I'll probably hit the buffalo for a few days. However, the possibility of a trip to the Crested Butte area has recently become an option. I've been to Colorado for fishing trips twice. Both times I went to the Creede area. The fishing has been a little disappointing. The locaitons that were impressive (and we did fish two creeks that were extremely impressive - some of my most memorable fishing ever) were VERY hard to get to, but otherwise it seems like we were on heavily pressured small streams fishing for small fish, or the Rio. What's the fishing like near Crested Butte?

I posted about this a while back. There's an annual drum tournament in Smackover Arkansas called the"Drum Rodeo." It's not the sort of thing you show up to uninvited, but it's a really great time. We didn't weigh our fish because we saw much bigger ones coming up from the ramp, but we caught one about every ten minutes on eating size live crayfish. I think 35 or so pounds won it (3 fish). After the "tournament," there was a 1600lb crawfish boil. Now that's my kind of party!

When I was in boy scouts, we poured parafin wax over dryer lint for portable fire starters. Never heard about birch bark though.

We're in Fayetteville. Arkansas (I guess it's the whole state, may just be this area) has a database called "Leads on Labs." Whenever you purchase pseudofed, you get put on that list. If you make two or three purchases in short order, particularly at different stores, you get flagged. What happens after that is probably a little bit more secretive, but we do have a database that tracks purchases.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm in the process of changing employment. I'll stop working with my current firm on the last Friday in September, and will start with the new firm on the first Monday of October. As it happens, this leaves me with 9 days off. I'm thinking of spending 3 or 4 of them on the lower with my dog (water permitting). I'll probably avoid a weekend, though I may go camp at Rush on Sunday night and start floating on Monday. If anyone wants to join up, I'd be glad to have some company. Note - I don't drink alcohol while canoeing, but I fully intend to have a good time at camp each night. I won't have a schedule, so if I find a carp-rich area, I may spend an entire day there with a flyrod. Otherwise, I'll fish conventional tackle all day every day interspersed with those hard headed minnows you catch with the throw net, and may see if I can find one of those old flatheads during the course of this deal. In any event, if anyone thinks they can swing something in that time frame, just let me know. I'll be leaving form Fayetteville with my own canoe and trailer that's set up to carry two boats. Let's just pray for some water between now and then.

I keep meaning to switch to braid on my smallmouth gear. For the most part, I use berkley XT in low vis green for all my river stuff. The buffalo isn't the place to go ultralight. Aside from breaking off fish, you can't set a hook if you don't have the gear to back it up. I'm the kind of guy who rocks the canoe on every hookset, so I don't play around with the light stuff. I use a 6'6 G Loomis baitcast rod with medium power and extra fast action. I'm looking to cross eyes, not to finesse these guys.

My "must haves" always include peanut butter, a water purifier (or pre-frozen bottles if you're carrying a cooler), a functional tent with rainfly or tarp/air mattress, multiple sources of flame in multiple locations, a cell phone, ibuprophen, and some kind of drug to put me to sleep at night if sleeping conditions get uncomfortable. Sunblock and hydrogen peroxide wouldn't hurt either. Of course, this is canoe survival. Out of curiosity, when is your trip down the buffalo? I presume you're doing the lower wilderness. As it happens, I've accepted a job with a great firm and the change of employment will leave me with 9 days to myself at the end of September/beginning of October. I intend to do the lower during this time, water conditions permitting.

You are indeed correct about the 2 liter bottle method of cooking. My wife is a felony prosecutor, and they're seeing quite a few of these. Nevertheless, it still requires substantial quantities of sudafed for anything other than personal use. The systems in place for tracking sudafed are doing a pretty good job of catching these folks. Meth cooking as we know it has become very difficult and most of the stuff on the street is now imported from mexico. Not sure about the huffing methane thing. I suppose there are people out there who will try anything, but that just seems crazy. Then again, most of the stuff these people put in their bodies is crazy to begin with.

I have a citica that casts like a dream, reels and pays drag as smooth as silk, but when a fish gets on it, it BINDS UP COMPLETELY. This pisses me off to no end. There are times when I'll hang it on a tree in the yard and play with it, and I'll feel like the tight tolerances have ground themselves out, only to take it out on the water and have the exact same thing happen again. It almost wound up at the bottom of the Buffalo after I hooked a great largemouth only to have it wrap itself around a limb because I couldn't take up any line. I guess these are what they're calling the shi-bindo's, but I got the thing used for a song and now I know why. I can't believe how well it casts - first day I fished it I was throwing weightless trick worms right before a monster cold front. The temp dropped 20 degrees while I was fishing and the fish were going ape $&%*. Even in the heavy winds that came with the front, I didn't backlash the thing once. Unfortunately, I was just as well off hand-lining each fish I hooked. It was a miracle I landed any of them. I had to have slack in order to get the thing reeling again. I don't know how to fix it, and I'm sure it's not under warranty since I'm not the original owner, but I don't have much in it and wouldn't mind paying for a decent fix. Anyway, I just got a gift certificate to Southtown and I'm about to go grab a new baitcaster for my starting rod (my JV rods are adequately outfitted). I want a premium reel, but I do my fishing either wading or canoeing. My reels inevitably get wet. The greatest reel in the world isn't worth a thing to me if it turns to a heap of crap when it gets splashed. Anyone have any models they would reccommend?

Joe, if you're stuck on a service contract, a material change in the rates you're charged for the same service may provide enough room for termination without a fee. Just an idea as I am (was) an Alltel customer for years but I'm about to switch over to AT&T for the iphone. The GPS feature integrated into Google Earth was enough to sell me. That thing is absolutely awesome.

I have a hole about the diameter of an eraser in the bottom middle of the keel of my Coleman Ram-X. My solution is to stuff a sock underneath the support bar and pull it through with pliars on the other side. Shows you how much confidence I have in patching on that stuff.

Can't believe I never thought of this before. That's a hell of an idea.

If possible, maybe you could put a few wraps of mono or your same thread color between the bead and they eye? Seems like that might give it a bit of a cushion.

River will likely be unfloatable. Wading is feasible on the upper, and most of the hiking is up there until you get into the leatherwood area, but a float on anything above Tyler is probably not a good idea unless you like carrying canoes. Bobber should weigh in on this.

Russ, I know those girls. They told me that they paddled by your place in a hurry because you kept insisting to sit on the "middle seat." What was that all about?

Should make you think twice about wading in Chaco's (sandals) though. I was catching bait in clear creek one time when I caught some movement in my peripheral vision below me. I looked down and there was a monster snapper with his neck extended waaaay out about six inches from my feet. He was staring at my little white toes. I jumped back and so did he...we looked eye to eye for a second and he just stood there as I nearly drown trying to get away. Never had a snake scare me that badly.

shadman - What ever happened with your trespass charge?