jeb

But the cost of installing those systems is high. So unless you're going to be living in that house for enough years to make it pay, they are not cost effective. And there's a lot of discussion about the net gain of solar panels too, from a dust to dust impact on the environment, if that's your concern rather than just saving a little on the electric bill. Agreed. At least it's technology we know works.

Jeez. It was a figure of speech. Lighten up. That's different though. We did have problems with pollution that needed addressing. That's not really the case anymore. Emissions from cars, power plants, etc are far, far better now. And even if you believe the drive toward a "cleaner" source of power is driven by pollution concerns, we won't know if that actually is true of the alternative until we get a viable one to analyse. And no matter what we do, the China's of the world are NOT going to follow suit. So jobs like making wind energy parts will continue to go there where they will be net horribly more polluting. The current regulations we have are a big contributer to jobs leaving now. Making life even harder for businesses here is certainly not going to make that any better. I don't agree. That used to be the concern when we thought our oil supplies were dwindling fast. But I'm not really sure what the push is anymore since we have plenty of oil and coal and they are so much less polluting these days. Are they perfect? Heck no! Do we need abundant electricity and energy? Heck yes! Is there anything that even comes close to replacing them (besides Nukes, which all the greenies seem to hate)? Heck no! The emporer simply has no clothes. Yet. Maybe he will someday, but it ain't right now. So there's no reason to give them incentives. We just don't NEED them, IMO. If they want to replace the current sources, they should do it on their own. And it becomes an entitlement program. Like with ethanol. Now that everyone is seeing the huge downsides to our current ethanol production scheme, many are calling for the subsidies to be stripped. But nobody can get it done. So it remains tax payer funded. I do agree with funding some research, though. I agree it would be nice to be leaders in alternative fuel technology, even if the lions share of any jobs go overseas.

Yes, I view it realistically. Unless you have a way to magically grow sugar cane outside of it's zone. Maybe switch grass holds some promise. Personally, I love that stuff. Awesome pheasant cover. But that's going to have major drawbacks, too. If farmers switch a lot of their lands over to that, grains like corn and soy beans are going to be heavily impacted, driving up the prices for us and probably causing even more hardship and starvation in 3rd world countries. It's not like there are vast new lands to plant it on. Most everything in our developed nation that is good for crop production is already being used for that. I see you're dealing with this on an emotional level rather than being realistic. So I probably should just let it go. But I did not say that. I said let's continue to invest moderately in the advancement of the technology. But we should not invest in some future direction until a) we're sure it's viable and b ) we're sure it's cost effective.

Which is the smart thing to do right now. There are no viable alternatives at this point. And I'd be fine with stripping subsidies away from oil companies, as long as they're also stripped from all alternative sources. Level the playing field, see who survives.

You are much more optimistic about it than I am. IMO, any big breakthrough that we may come up with will be built overseas. Just like solar and wind products now. Why would you think it will not be the same with any form of energy? I agree. If and when we ever find a viable alternative. Until then, it makes NO sense to invest in any kind of bridge at all.

If the market won't do it, it's not going to happen. Spending our grandchilderns money trying to force it down our throats serves no purpose at all. Worse than that, really. The current govt does want to mandate what kind of energy we use. They are on record as saying that, many times. But as I said before, I agree with investing in future technologies. I strongly disagree with trying to force it with subsidies and monstorous loan supports. I'll be in the cheering section when we become energy independent and don't have to import any oil from outside of America. Nothing I'd rather see than most of the mideast on the bread lines. But I'm realistic enough to know you can't replace it with rhetoric.

Figured you were talking about Brazil. Good for them and all, but hardly a model that many countries can reproduce. Hard to grow much sugarcane outside the tropic regions. So not really a good example. It's like saying we should all be using more earth thermal heating because it works in Iceland. Yeah, but....

Thanks for the reports guys. Wife and I will be camping at Viney this weekend, but I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth bringing the boat. I'm sure she won't want to get up early enough to get in on the good fishing, and boating on the Rock on weekends sucks with all the big boats and wake board boats (as it does here on Beaver as well).

I didn't know we were in an energy crisis? But anyway, it is what it is. It's like the supporting the Arab's arguement. Nobody likes where oil comes from in some cases, but there are no better VIABLE alternatives at this point. And most of still need to put gas in our cars.

Please be specific. Where exactly and what energy source exactly are you referring to? Easy. Money. It makes no sense to be in the lead on an energy source the public won't buy becuase other energy sources are cheaper. And that's the way it should be. Market driven. If the govt forced us to use energy that was more expensive than our competition, it would drive more and more of our jobs overseas. Again, until it makes economic sense, it just won't fly. It doesn't pay to be leaders in something that just doesn't sell. Take the subsidys away from all energy production, and I wish they would, and almost all those "green" sources would collapse overnight. Maybe someday they'll make sense if the price of oil continues to rise and there are dramatic break throughs in technology. But that is just not the case now.

That's true. And I support some publically funded development. But you can't force fit the technology, either. If it's not clearly economically viable on it's own within a forseeable amount of time, all it does is makes us less competitive on the world stage. It looks like that is a LONG ways off. An interesting development of increased oil prices is that it's also driving development in the oil extraction world, like oil sands in Canada. The long term outlook on oil supplies, given the newer technologies, is very good! Hey, I hope we do make some technology break throughs that make so called green energy sources viable. I'm looking for the day when a car battery storage capacity can be put in a watch battery sized package that will never need replacing. But until then, oil and coal makes the most sense, especially in our economically challenging times.

Like Jeff said, we had some rude fishermen yesterday. One guy pulled in an easy half cast away! We've kind of just started really fishing the rivers more, and maybe that's more the norm up there. I've never seen it that often on the main lake. But fishing weekends is just not much fun this time of year. Too much traffic!

I didn't get to drag any catfish slime on QB's new boat yesterday, but one of the bass I caught on Table Rock did shat on the outside rail of it. I was nice and wiped it up, though. Very nice boat for sure!

When I shop online, TW is for sure one of the first places I look. They do customer service right, and have a tremendous inventory of name brand stuff.

I don't think there are kick backs, per se. They're trying to get you to stay at Johnny Morris' facility on Table Rock. He/BPS owns the Big Cedar Lodge complex.

I've never had much luck with flukes. I prefer SK's Caffiene Shad for finesse applications, or Keitech swim baits for paddle tails.

We did hit a few spots on the way down, but didn't much spend much time at any of them. Either cathcing dinks, or just not feeling it.

We had a great day. Quillback was tearing it up on that small jig. He hooked twice as many fish as I did. Fun for sure. It's been an interesting 3 days on Beaver. I went by myself on Wednesday. Well, except for my 2 "girls" (German Shepherds). Went mid-lake PC to Coppermine and did well. 22 black bass and 2 legal Walleyes from 5am to 10:30. Good depth finder readings, figured the bite was on! So Quillback and I tried to duplicate that on Thursday, but it just was not there. Not seeing the fish on the depth finder, and they were just not biting. Same basic weather, too. You can read Quillbacks other thread to see that we ran down the War Eagle and did pretty well, So, as Quillback says, we went back to WE today. Forget it. Just not happening. Blow on down the White and find some nice fish. Just goes to show what any long time Beaver fisherman has to learn. Just because a pattern works today, it is not likely it will work again tomorrow. Even if the days seem identical. At least for black bass. BTW, Quillback is hard core! He just bought a brand new bass boat. He had it all ready to fly today, but knew he'd have to burn the day breaking the motor in. So rather than do that, he said he'd rather just be fishing so tagged along with me. Awesome drive to rip lips! If it were me? Forget about it. I'd be out on my new boat burning it up. So he deserved the great day he had.

We went most of the way up, past that camp area. It was a pretty good run, but that's why big motors make sense on lakes like Beaver. Water was for sure more stained down there. I don't think we caught a spot all day, for sure no smallies. So nice to find the LM's.

Wow! I'd have had the manager called and chewed his butt, too! Do they really think they're going to make a sale using shock tactics like that? Driving customers away is all that will do. I shop at the Springfield store, too. I've never had one of those idiots go over the line as I walk, but they are like vultures in their little area between the fishing/boating area and the rest of the store.

No kidding. I'm always amazed at how no matter which direction the wind is coming from, it blows up or down every cove on the lake.

Thanks for the report. What time did you quit? I had decent success this morning. Started out about 5:30 in the PC cove, but not much was happening on my usual early morning patterns of topwaters and c-rigging shallow points. Couple of dinks is all. Went to some main lake humps and points in the Ventris/Shaddox area and found active fish with the graph first. Then hit them with drop shots, swim baits and even suspending jerkbaits. Most productive was the drop shot. Caught 8 legals, 3 over 2lbs. All spots except one of the "big" ones was a smallie. On the trailer at 10:30 as the wind seemed to shut it down.

I worked around the house all weekend trying to catch up on my RV and dirt bike maint. I live on the hill between Prarire Creek Cove and Avoca Cove. I could hear an almost constant stream of boat traffic both days. Which is why I was working on stuff around here instead of being out on the lake! Thanks for the report.

Thanks for letting us know. I'll be keeping an eye on out for that group!

I hate TR on the weekends in the summer. So much boat traffic! I complain about it here on Beaver too, but it's way worse on TR. Sorry to hear about your tough day.