BREAKING: New Record Brown?

The Ludington Daily News is reporting that a Grand Rapids angler caught a 41 lb 7 oz. brown trout from the Manistee river this morning. DNR biologists have verified the weight. This would top the current world record by more than a pound. Certification of the record is pending...

Cute Overload

Cuteness is a quality relative to scale.

The University of Victoria is taking a soft approach to get rid of a warm and fluffy problem — the hundreds of feral bunnies that call the campus home.

School administrators are looking for someone to trap and sterilize about 150 of the rabbits and put them up for adoption as part of pilot program.

The rabbits, which come in a variety of colours, appear to be the pet store variety, not the wilder Peter Cottontail sort. According to university staff, however, the lives of the estimated 1,500 campus rabbits can be dangerous, difficult and short, with cars, dogs and the occasional sadistic student bringing things to an abrupt end.

They are also a nuisance, digging holes in sports fields and gnawing their way through gardens in surrounding neighbourhoods, according to Patty Mack, president of the Mount Tolmie Community Association.

"They are awfully cute, but it has gone to the point where there are just way too many of them," Mack said.


The rest.

And if the foster-bunny plan doesn't work, we are approaching the season of tailgate cookouts...

Diver Down

Man found lurking in toilet again


By LORNA COLQUHOUN
New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent
Wednesday, Sep. 2, 2009


Four years ago, Gary Moody explained his presence in the bottom of a pit toilet on the Kancamagus Highway by saying he was retrieving his wife's lost wedding ring. Now Moody -- who dodged jail time in that incident -- is facing three new charges related to incidents at a campground toilet in the White Mountain National Forest.

The rest.

"Again"? And I thought I'd met some odd people in campgrounds...

Happy Labor Day; Au Sable 9/4

Being free myself from the chains of labor last Friday, and surmising that the day might provide some first-rate fishing, I made a day trip to the Au Sable.

I planned to spend most of the day on the big water below Mio, but I remembered heavy trico hatches on the north branch over a labor day weekend a few years ago, so I went there first. My car thermometer read 41 degrees when I pulled into an access above twin bridges just before 9AM. Tricos did come, around 10:15, but the hatch was very thin. Feeding activity was lighter than when I'd fished the same stretch in July, and the fish that showed were exceptionally spooky. I put down the first two pods of fish I cast to after two or three casts. I approached a third on hands and knees, setting up behind a large sand ridge that ran between a weedy backwater and the run where the fish were rising. It was difficult to get a good drift over the fish, since there wasn't room for a backcast that would load the rod (even my whippy 4 wt) and generate enough forward power straighten the leader. Kneeling and catching the water with the elbow of my rod arm when I cast didn't help with accuracy either. But I did manage a few good drifts and didn't put the fish down with the bad ones. During the twenty or so minutes the hatch lasted, I managed a couple of smaller brook trout and a shiner.

I headed downstream to Mio for the afternoon and evening. Bob Linsenman told me that white fly soft hackles were still the ticket, so I hopped downstream from access to access fishing one in tandem with other nymphs or emergers. The midday action wasn't red hot, not even as good as it had been the Friday before. I took three planter rainbows, lost a few others.

That wasn't the most regrettable part of the afternoon, though. While fishing in front of the Davis rest area, I heard a roaring coming from upstream and I turned around to see two jet skis rounding the bend. They weren't moving fast but they're kicking up a wake that could easily (and possibly did) swamp a canoe and making enough racket to drown out every drunken tuber on the river. After they passed a cloudy ribbon trailed along the river's edge for almost five minutes, erosion from their wake breaking on the bank. Soon they were headed back upstream: more noise, more silt. I hope jet skiing isn't becoming popular on those waters.

Around 4:30 a nice BWO hatch began and fish began feeding avidly. Over the next hour and a half I caught about 10 trout, 10-14" long. When the bwos faded, I went to the McKinley bar for a quick supper and got back on river a bit before 7:30. The white fly hatch began shortly, and using an emerger, I took 8 or 9 trout about like those I'd caught on olives. When they stopped hitting the emerger, I looked down for spinners and saw none.

Last year on a superb night of white flies, I switched to a spinner pattern far too early and missed a lot of trout I should have taken, but didn't switch back because I didn't want to have to re-tie the spinner on in the dark. Last Friday I decided to keep the emerger on until the spinner fall was obviously in progress, but a succession of trout ignored it. When I did see the first spinner, I immediately went to change flies, but I fumbled tieing on the spinner in near darkness (there's a stretch between twilight and full dark where the vest light is of limited help). I only heard about two rises once I was ready to go, and my casts in their direction produced nothing. But having done well earlier, my regrets were mild.

I sometimes feel guilty about these day trips, burning a lot of money and gas for a single day of pleasure. Sometimes I don't even catch much. But this one was worth every penny and every pound of C02.