When Andrea and I agreed I was going to fully enjoy the pleasure of being retired for a year I had wonderful visions of a golf season fully enjoyed, a hunting season to remember for a lifetime and ice fishing the days away on Lake Minniwasta for crappies until my hands were permanently cramped in the shape of a rod holder.
The golf season was not bad, we (especially me) enjoyed a great part of the season at Oakwood with a great trip with Rebel and his son in law to play Granite Hills, what a course. I was happy to move and pickup where I left off in Oakwood at our new course in Winkler, that pleasure was short lived as the moving company broke my Callaway driver during the move. It was replaced after the season ended but it put a real damper on the end of the season...
My hunting season was well chronicled on here in other blogs but it definitely left memories that will last a lifetime, mission accomplished. My only regret was Noah not getting his first deer but there is always next season!
Icefishing has been spectacularly disappointing, the weather this season has been nothing short of horrendous, many days of -40 or more of wind chill, even days like today when the temp gets up into the -18 to -20 range the windchill is -38. It is manageable in the shelter with the heater going but not today. Overall the fishing seems to be a disappointment this year, all the guys are complaining about the weather and the sporadic fishing so I am not alone.
I went out one recent Monday with Rebel to the world famous Lockport, I caught one small sauger fishing from about 10 am til 4:30 pm, he caught three I believe. For a days fishing that was a real letdown, but seeing a friend for the first time in months was a real bonus.
I had seen an article in the local paper talking about the Mayor of Emerson MB talking about how the icefishing was better there than Lockport / Selkirk (Selkirk is known as the catfish capital of the world) and boasted that walleye, sauger, goldeye and catfish were plentiful there. They had even gone so far as to put in a new boat launch to help the icefishers access the river. Andrea and I were excited a wonderful opportunity very close to home, Saturday was to be a decent day and we packed up the family and went to spend the day fishing the Red River right on the US - Canada border. We arrived in town and I drove to the boat launch (clearly seen on google earth) and the road was not plowed??? We drove around town trying to find and access point close to the railroad bridge that the local shacks were located near. Andrea used her phone to search for information and found some info so we drove in that direction. We finally found river access but it was no boat launch. We could have drove on but thought we should walk down and explore it first - a good thing, there was two feet of snow in places but even more concerning was water on the ice under the snow. I went back to the truck and got the auger while Andrea grabbed a shovel and her flasher so we could check for likely fishing holes. The first hole I drilled revealed three feet of water, we kept moving until it was revealed the best we could hope for was 10 feet of water, still very concerning as the was water everywhere and only about 12 inches of less than stellar ice.
I drilled several holes each, we hauled out our gear and proceeded to fish for several hours, the sun was out, we were sheltered from the wind and it was a glorious day to be out in the fresh air. After a few hours the wind shifted so it was coming down the river in our faces, the sun went into hiding and we were faced with a choice, go get the tent and heater out of the truck or pack up. We packed up, we had been fishing hard for several hours and not even seen a fish on our flashers, a waste of time and no threat to Lockport and Selkirk as fishing hotspots. (several locals confirmed article was a joke to them the fishing there sucks)
Tuesday afternoon seen me getting shack wacky again and even though the temperatures were extreme and the wind blowing 40+ out of the NW I loaded up the gear and hit the lake for crappie. A good four feet of ice so no fear like the river had posed, I set up my flip shelter in minutes and was marking crappie from bottom at 28 ft at times right up to 18 feet. The wind was flapping my shelter like crazy, there were time I wondered if it was going to survive, the heater was great when the wind was not lifting the frame a foot in the air and sucking all the heat out. I tried I am not sure how many combos but not a bite, I may have to try live minnows this weekend as the crappies are not biting yet.
Anyway, I am off to see the sawbones about getting my left rotator cuff fixed, scheduled for surgery on the 24th of Feb. Looking forward to having it done, not so sure about the recovery period though.
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Sunday, 12 January 2014
Warmer Weather – January Thaw or Just a Tease
Thursday ushered in a long awaited spell of day time highs
in the single digit minus Celsius range…it had been reported on the local radio
station that we had basically been suffering from abnormally cold temperatures
since mid-October. Not that I keep a record but from what I remember of the
pond at our hunt camp, it was froze over early October so that would seem to
make sense. I guess Sharon went home just in time.
After suffering through a stomach flu for the bulk of
Christmas and New Year’s, Andrea and I had become caught up in a large amount
of chores to get cleaned up. Right before Christmas her custom pantry had
arrived and I installed that and prepared the trim for her to stain. Between
the packaging for her pantry, her fish tank and various other Christmas
presents my side of the garage was overflowing with cardboard, even broken down
it was an impressive pile. I was backing my truck into her side of the garage
as soon as she left for work Thursday morning and started filling the back of
the truck. It literally filled the back of the truck to overflowing and I was
glad to get that dropped off. There was a pile of other chores that needed
attended too as well so that encompassed my Thursday morning.
After a nice lunch with Andrea, I headed to Morden’s famous
Lake Minnewasta to chase crappies for the afternoon and to trial my new ice
shack if required. I started to fish in 10 FOW (feet of water) and was marking
fish like crazy, there were crappie everywhere on my flasher but I could not
entice a bite no matter what I put in the water, I tried every type of jig,
tail and scent I could muster over the course of several hours and nothing. I
moved to deeper water, 17 FOW, this time and tried again, the fish were not as
plentiful but were active the same as the other depth, they would come in to
the flasher cone as soon as a presentation was dropped into the water and
investigate it, even follow it up the water column for up to five feet and then
take off. No amount of teasing to this point would entice a bite. As dark set
in I packed up and headed home, these crappie have so much natural forage there
is no need for them to take a jig and although I am “trying to match the hatch”
no luck so far. There is a chance that small minnows may work, if I can I will
try some Tuesday. My ice shack had proven to be perfect, although the
temperature had reached -8, there was a stiff wind blowing across the lake and
the new flip helter proved to be the perfect solution, the bulk of the
afternoon I spent just using the flip as a wind break, fishing in a pair of
jeans. I did after the sun started to set take the extra minute and extend the
poles and take complete shelter. It is a rather simple affair to use and
provides a plethora of space for angling, hard to beat that.
Friday morning saw me leaving as Andrea headed to work, I
headed to a place known locally as Patterson Pits, it is known to have very
large Rainbow trout, and also has Asian Carp and suckers. The depth is varied
as can be expected from a working drag line pit but is at least 75 feet at its
deeper portion. I was headed across the ice hauling my new flip sled by hand…not
the easiest through the deep snow but worked really well on the packed snow and
ice. Shortly after drilling holes trying to find the right water depth I had to
setup the shelter as it started to pour freezing rain. After a couple of hours
of freezing rain it quickly switched to wet snow for a few minutes as the sun
struggled to break through. Another day fishing and seeing fish on the flasher
with no bites, oh well it beats sitting around the house.
Andrea and I spent this weekend just hanging around together
and having fun. I am heading to Lockport, North of Winnipeg early Monday
morning to meet up with Rebel, we are going to try and catch something, might
only be sauger but I really need to feel a fish on the end of my line…I have
caught nothing since the trip to Lake Metigoshe, speaking of which I had a note
from Josh today that he went back there yesterday, caught one blue gill a few
perch and pike so not great there either…
Still running a skunk with the new Abu Garcia I got for
Christmas, if we get on some sauger tomorrow I might break it out and see how
much fun those 16 – 20 inch fish are on an ultralight rig with 2lb test in the
heavy current of the Red River…if we get into Walleye it will stay in the rod
case…
So the next report will be about my trip with Rebel…
Sunday, 5 January 2014
Shack Wacky Thoughts
Today once again we are sealing with wind chills in the -44 to -50 C range, this makes for great fun as it is just no fun spending all your time on indoor activities.
Admittedly I do have the gear to get out and go ice fishing, I have good boots, good clothing, shelters and heaters, it can be done. What I do not have is something that cannot be purchased...friends (other than my lovely bride of course). Friends or at least fishing buddies are important in weather like this, too many things can go wrong out there to not have a second truck or at least someone close enough to come provide assistance if something goes wrong out there.
When I first was introduced and taught the basic skills of ice fishing it was by my friend Doug in Kingston, we never ice fished NB in the meagre two years in NB, we had lots to do and family to do it with but had we stayed longer that family would have been introduced to the sport as well.
When we arrived in Manitoba we found the cold comes early so by Christmas the first year we were looking for ice, things have changed a lot since that initial trip...we arrived at Whitefish Lake on sunny cold (likely -12 C range) day with the following gear -
- a six inch hand auger
- 2 or 3 basic icefishing rods
- a plastic scoop for cleaning holes
- a few small jigs like we used to use for fishing perch in ON.
That honestly was all we had, and other than a couple of better quality rods all one needs to get started in Southern ON or points East. We quickly learned that was not going to get us very far here in MB unless you really enjoy working really hard to get now where fast....a hand auger will not even get through the ice by the time winter is over for the most part, our hand auger is limited to 48 inches...last winter we were drilling closer to 60 inches than 48 inches. And really do you think drilling several holes through more than 4 feet of ice in cold weather by hand is a good way to go enjoy a relaxing day, well have fun with that...
We were as nervous as anyone could imagine, never having driven on ice before when we first arrived at this lake...it is about a 9 km drive from where you access the ice to where you fish on this lake...we chickened out, quickly realizing we did not have the requisite knowledge to take this risk. We followed the tracks onto the ice for all of 50 yards before pulling over and deciding this was enough.
There was another truck pulled over close by so we figured this would be a great place to start our ice fishing adventure..well sort of right but mostly wrong. Anyway we jumped out and grabbed our hand auger and I went to drill some holes, I was drilling and drilling and drilling...well you get the idea. About 24" of ice and hard...the gentleman from the nearby truck came over with his auger and said he would be happy to drill us some holes, the difference was his auger was gas powered, 8" holes were soon appearing in the ice like magic...awe inspiring, jaw dropping and envy inducing...Andrea quickly voiced we have to have one of those, she knowing the strain hand auguring holes placed on my neck and shoulder was all over that idea.
We promptly started shopping, that meant researching and I found a couple of good resources to guide us in our ice fishing journey..we learned that if we were going to chase walleye we needed different gear, gear we had never even considered and the best part was we would be able to use most of that gear for the other types of fishing we do.
This list included:
Shelter - we bought a 6 man ice fishing shelter at Costco, even though they call them 6 man they are good for three comfortably, six can squeeze in and fish one hole. Additionally I was given the HT flip over shelter pictured in my last blog, we took it for a trial run, it works marvellously. It fits perfectly in the back of the truck, holds all the gear, is easily unloaded and loaded alone and provides wonderful space for fishing alone, it is quite comfortable for two fishermen. A bonus for this particular model to me is the detached chairs, most flip shelters have fixed seats, this one has two folding chairs that sit in the sled, however this is great for grabbing one, fishing outside in the best part of the day and then ducking back under cover anytime conditions dictate.
Flashers - Flashers are essentially stationary depth sounders that show quickly how deep your lure is and if there are fish in proximity, once you learn how they work they become essential...
Rods - generally fishing for small pan fish does not require much variety in your rod selection, the preference being for quality rods with soft tips and good backbones, Andrea and I "exchanged" beautiful Abu Garcia 24" ultralight combos for Christmas,
we each have a shorter rod as well, mine is an HT, hers is a Frabill.. Walleye fishing does require some variety, most serious walleye fisherman carry at least four rods and many six. Some use rods as long as 34" that are very heavy for ripping large loud hard body baits as attractants, and a variety of other rods pre-rigged with their favourite jigs and spoons to save time switching from one to the other. My heavy rod is a 30" as I find that is plenty long in a shelter, I usually carry a max of three rods in addition to that when I am fishing, Andrea does not go quite as hard core, using typically three for walleye.
Tackle - I am not even going to get into the variety of tackle required, if one were to take everything that seems to be recommended you would need an additional truck. I will say though I found a jig supplier, http://www.wonderjigs.com/ that has proved to be far cheaper than any local tackle store. If you remember my last blog about the short shanked jigs out fishing the long shanked and the glow jigs producing aggressive hits later in the day, we went to get some in Winnipeg, it was 5.00 or more for two jigs. I ordered 64 jigs from wonder jigs to my door for just under 30.00.
That is a considerable price difference, < .50 cents vice >$2.50 each. All the jigs pictured are glow jigs, two different types of hooks and they appear very sharp and strong for their size. I of course have already flattened the barbs and cleaned the eyes...much easier sitting home than while trying to use them on the ice.
Auger - being me and finding a sale it seemed like the right thing to do when I found the Eskimo V71 series with a 10 inch flyte at an affordable price, I remember the first time I fired it up on the ice (we bought it on our way fishing). I was standing on the bare ice, an area that was polished as smooth as an ice rink. I proudly assembled the flyte on the auger, filled the gas tank and prepped the auger according to directions, it fired on the second pull....that gearing on a large motor sure has a lot of torque...I was wearing old green insulated rubber boots that were really worn out years ago, but 3 inch treads would not have helped...I had not inspected the auger prior to use. The throttle cable was stuck 3/4 open, the auger was 8 - 10 inches down into the ice and the force required to drill was more than the grip supplied by my boots...can you see the picture, this grey haired chubby guy that does not dance being waltzed in a circle mercilessly by a shiny red auger!!! Andrea was of course laughing as she tried to figure out how to help, it had to have looked funny but as she tried to get close I would come spinning around again threatening to knock her flying across the ice as she reached for off switch...I of course did not dare let go, a brand new auger spinning out of control unmanned was more than my mind could comprehend in that minuscule amount of time..we did of course get it shut off and with my gerber multi tool managed to get it sorted out. After the remainder of that winter and all of the following ice season we noticed a new technology becoming more popular among the less hard core fishermen like us. Eskimo launched a new line of augers under the Ion brand, they run off a 40V lithium Ion battery and come with either a 6 or 8 inch flyte. We sold the large eskimo at the start of this season and purchased the new battery powered 8" auger...the difference is astounding, 22 lbs, no stress or tourque on the body, no yanking on pull cords, no messy gas mixes, no gas smell on your hands...a nine year old girl used mine the first time out to drill a hole in 18 inches of ice with no effort.
Heat - yes heat, out here heat is essential for a comfortable long outing on the ice, we have two heat sources - a double sunflower heater run off a 20lb propane tank, like this
We also each have a little buddy catalytic propane heater -
The little buddy heaters are very portable, great for hunting, ice fishing etc, we even ran them a couple of really bitter nights in the hunt camp. The down side to these heaters is small amount of heat they output for large spaces and the fact they run off disposable tanks, they are good for about 5 hours per tank, which is under a dollar per hour so they are cost effective in the right circumstances.
Now that we have moved again, walleye fishing is going to be a rare event, but that is OK with me, I love fishing for pan fish.and that is what we have down here...as well as some trout in a quarry that are reputed to be up to 3 feet long...I will be chasing those later this week if all goes well.
In addition to everything else we learned and acquired for this Manitoba ice fishing adventure we also met a gentleman named Rebel, we lived a good hours drive apart but made several ice fishing trips, meeting at set points and chasing "eyes", something Rebel is passionate about and very good at. (At some point I will write a blog about the day we were blessed with in his boat).
Anyway, equipment aside which we have in spades, the weather which has been abnormally cold this year, the fact that fishing buddies are few and far apart, we just have not spent any time fishing so far this year. It is supposed to warm up to seasonable or even a little above by the end of the week. This means that I anticipate some hardcore fishing time coming up soon!!! We could get up to 2 weeks of decent weather before the next cold spell interrupts so things are looking up.
One thing we ran into that has been a continuous battle is space, when we started acquiring all this extra gear we had the house in Richer, it was blessed with a 20 X 24 detached garage, a 24 X 26 detached shop, a 16 X 16 and 12 X 12 set of insulated wired outbuildings and a 12 X 24 tarp building for storing the boat. Here we have less than an acre of land, an attached 22 X 24 garage and that is it. We brought the tarp building, set it up and it was promptly destroyed by a summer storm with 50 MPH winds, given the wide open space here it was collapsed in seconds when the storm struck. I did salvage enough of the ribs to build an arch frame for under the boats tarp, seems to be working very well so far... We intended to build a shop storage building and may at some point, but that money went whirling away to purchase our hunting property...a decision we do not regret in the least.
One of the methods we have come up with to deal with this storage is to build things like this shelf - it sits off on a wall of the garage completely out of the way.
My next project is to build horizontal overhead storage for our open water rod collection...it will actually be mounted at near ceiling height, at about 9 ft, above the garage door tracks completely out of any usable space.
I think I will do another blog shortly on my gun room, and reloading gear.
Admittedly I do have the gear to get out and go ice fishing, I have good boots, good clothing, shelters and heaters, it can be done. What I do not have is something that cannot be purchased...friends (other than my lovely bride of course). Friends or at least fishing buddies are important in weather like this, too many things can go wrong out there to not have a second truck or at least someone close enough to come provide assistance if something goes wrong out there.
When I first was introduced and taught the basic skills of ice fishing it was by my friend Doug in Kingston, we never ice fished NB in the meagre two years in NB, we had lots to do and family to do it with but had we stayed longer that family would have been introduced to the sport as well.
When we arrived in Manitoba we found the cold comes early so by Christmas the first year we were looking for ice, things have changed a lot since that initial trip...we arrived at Whitefish Lake on sunny cold (likely -12 C range) day with the following gear -
- a six inch hand auger
- 2 or 3 basic icefishing rods
- a plastic scoop for cleaning holes
- a few small jigs like we used to use for fishing perch in ON.
That honestly was all we had, and other than a couple of better quality rods all one needs to get started in Southern ON or points East. We quickly learned that was not going to get us very far here in MB unless you really enjoy working really hard to get now where fast....a hand auger will not even get through the ice by the time winter is over for the most part, our hand auger is limited to 48 inches...last winter we were drilling closer to 60 inches than 48 inches. And really do you think drilling several holes through more than 4 feet of ice in cold weather by hand is a good way to go enjoy a relaxing day, well have fun with that...
We were as nervous as anyone could imagine, never having driven on ice before when we first arrived at this lake...it is about a 9 km drive from where you access the ice to where you fish on this lake...we chickened out, quickly realizing we did not have the requisite knowledge to take this risk. We followed the tracks onto the ice for all of 50 yards before pulling over and deciding this was enough.
There was another truck pulled over close by so we figured this would be a great place to start our ice fishing adventure..well sort of right but mostly wrong. Anyway we jumped out and grabbed our hand auger and I went to drill some holes, I was drilling and drilling and drilling...well you get the idea. About 24" of ice and hard...the gentleman from the nearby truck came over with his auger and said he would be happy to drill us some holes, the difference was his auger was gas powered, 8" holes were soon appearing in the ice like magic...awe inspiring, jaw dropping and envy inducing...Andrea quickly voiced we have to have one of those, she knowing the strain hand auguring holes placed on my neck and shoulder was all over that idea.
We promptly started shopping, that meant researching and I found a couple of good resources to guide us in our ice fishing journey..we learned that if we were going to chase walleye we needed different gear, gear we had never even considered and the best part was we would be able to use most of that gear for the other types of fishing we do.
This list included:
Shelter - we bought a 6 man ice fishing shelter at Costco, even though they call them 6 man they are good for three comfortably, six can squeeze in and fish one hole. Additionally I was given the HT flip over shelter pictured in my last blog, we took it for a trial run, it works marvellously. It fits perfectly in the back of the truck, holds all the gear, is easily unloaded and loaded alone and provides wonderful space for fishing alone, it is quite comfortable for two fishermen. A bonus for this particular model to me is the detached chairs, most flip shelters have fixed seats, this one has two folding chairs that sit in the sled, however this is great for grabbing one, fishing outside in the best part of the day and then ducking back under cover anytime conditions dictate.
Flashers - Flashers are essentially stationary depth sounders that show quickly how deep your lure is and if there are fish in proximity, once you learn how they work they become essential...
Rods - generally fishing for small pan fish does not require much variety in your rod selection, the preference being for quality rods with soft tips and good backbones, Andrea and I "exchanged" beautiful Abu Garcia 24" ultralight combos for Christmas,
we each have a shorter rod as well, mine is an HT, hers is a Frabill.. Walleye fishing does require some variety, most serious walleye fisherman carry at least four rods and many six. Some use rods as long as 34" that are very heavy for ripping large loud hard body baits as attractants, and a variety of other rods pre-rigged with their favourite jigs and spoons to save time switching from one to the other. My heavy rod is a 30" as I find that is plenty long in a shelter, I usually carry a max of three rods in addition to that when I am fishing, Andrea does not go quite as hard core, using typically three for walleye.
Tackle - I am not even going to get into the variety of tackle required, if one were to take everything that seems to be recommended you would need an additional truck. I will say though I found a jig supplier, http://www.wonderjigs.com/ that has proved to be far cheaper than any local tackle store. If you remember my last blog about the short shanked jigs out fishing the long shanked and the glow jigs producing aggressive hits later in the day, we went to get some in Winnipeg, it was 5.00 or more for two jigs. I ordered 64 jigs from wonder jigs to my door for just under 30.00.
That is a considerable price difference, < .50 cents vice >$2.50 each. All the jigs pictured are glow jigs, two different types of hooks and they appear very sharp and strong for their size. I of course have already flattened the barbs and cleaned the eyes...much easier sitting home than while trying to use them on the ice.
Auger - being me and finding a sale it seemed like the right thing to do when I found the Eskimo V71 series with a 10 inch flyte at an affordable price, I remember the first time I fired it up on the ice (we bought it on our way fishing). I was standing on the bare ice, an area that was polished as smooth as an ice rink. I proudly assembled the flyte on the auger, filled the gas tank and prepped the auger according to directions, it fired on the second pull....that gearing on a large motor sure has a lot of torque...I was wearing old green insulated rubber boots that were really worn out years ago, but 3 inch treads would not have helped...I had not inspected the auger prior to use. The throttle cable was stuck 3/4 open, the auger was 8 - 10 inches down into the ice and the force required to drill was more than the grip supplied by my boots...can you see the picture, this grey haired chubby guy that does not dance being waltzed in a circle mercilessly by a shiny red auger!!! Andrea was of course laughing as she tried to figure out how to help, it had to have looked funny but as she tried to get close I would come spinning around again threatening to knock her flying across the ice as she reached for off switch...I of course did not dare let go, a brand new auger spinning out of control unmanned was more than my mind could comprehend in that minuscule amount of time..we did of course get it shut off and with my gerber multi tool managed to get it sorted out. After the remainder of that winter and all of the following ice season we noticed a new technology becoming more popular among the less hard core fishermen like us. Eskimo launched a new line of augers under the Ion brand, they run off a 40V lithium Ion battery and come with either a 6 or 8 inch flyte. We sold the large eskimo at the start of this season and purchased the new battery powered 8" auger...the difference is astounding, 22 lbs, no stress or tourque on the body, no yanking on pull cords, no messy gas mixes, no gas smell on your hands...a nine year old girl used mine the first time out to drill a hole in 18 inches of ice with no effort.
Heat - yes heat, out here heat is essential for a comfortable long outing on the ice, we have two heat sources - a double sunflower heater run off a 20lb propane tank, like this
We also each have a little buddy catalytic propane heater -
The little buddy heaters are very portable, great for hunting, ice fishing etc, we even ran them a couple of really bitter nights in the hunt camp. The down side to these heaters is small amount of heat they output for large spaces and the fact they run off disposable tanks, they are good for about 5 hours per tank, which is under a dollar per hour so they are cost effective in the right circumstances.
Now that we have moved again, walleye fishing is going to be a rare event, but that is OK with me, I love fishing for pan fish.and that is what we have down here...as well as some trout in a quarry that are reputed to be up to 3 feet long...I will be chasing those later this week if all goes well.
In addition to everything else we learned and acquired for this Manitoba ice fishing adventure we also met a gentleman named Rebel, we lived a good hours drive apart but made several ice fishing trips, meeting at set points and chasing "eyes", something Rebel is passionate about and very good at. (At some point I will write a blog about the day we were blessed with in his boat).
Anyway, equipment aside which we have in spades, the weather which has been abnormally cold this year, the fact that fishing buddies are few and far apart, we just have not spent any time fishing so far this year. It is supposed to warm up to seasonable or even a little above by the end of the week. This means that I anticipate some hardcore fishing time coming up soon!!! We could get up to 2 weeks of decent weather before the next cold spell interrupts so things are looking up.
One thing we ran into that has been a continuous battle is space, when we started acquiring all this extra gear we had the house in Richer, it was blessed with a 20 X 24 detached garage, a 24 X 26 detached shop, a 16 X 16 and 12 X 12 set of insulated wired outbuildings and a 12 X 24 tarp building for storing the boat. Here we have less than an acre of land, an attached 22 X 24 garage and that is it. We brought the tarp building, set it up and it was promptly destroyed by a summer storm with 50 MPH winds, given the wide open space here it was collapsed in seconds when the storm struck. I did salvage enough of the ribs to build an arch frame for under the boats tarp, seems to be working very well so far... We intended to build a shop storage building and may at some point, but that money went whirling away to purchase our hunting property...a decision we do not regret in the least.
One of the methods we have come up with to deal with this storage is to build things like this shelf - it sits off on a wall of the garage completely out of the way.
My next project is to build horizontal overhead storage for our open water rod collection...it will actually be mounted at near ceiling height, at about 9 ft, above the garage door tracks completely out of any usable space.
I think I will do another blog shortly on my gun room, and reloading gear.
Thursday, 2 January 2014
AQUARIUM SUFFERING
Friday 20 Dec 2013
Andrea’s custom aquarium was shipped from California by
FedEx Ground, she has been anxiously charting its progress across the US. It
was confirmed in Fargo, ND yesterday and was scheduled to be delivered to
Connies Depot in Walhalla ND. She was restless last night, up early and
checking the tracking frequently. What, it is not deliverable, FedEx showed
that Connies was closed??? What, Andrea quickly checked and Connies was open 10
– 6 so quickly on the phone to FedEx. They were great to talk to, very helpful
and confirmed that when they called prior to attempting delivery early in the
morning they could not confirm anyone would be there to take delivery so it was
left in the FED Ex depot. The next delivery would not be attempted until Monday
and if there was no answer when they called…you get the picture…so Andrea asked
if we could go to Grand Forks and pick it up ourselves. They said no problem
and arranged for one of their drivers to meet us at the depot.
We grabbed our passports and headed to Grand Forks a two
hour drive on a good day, this should be a good day right, O degrees Celsius,
blowing 40K NW, a ton of snow packed and icy roads from the blowing snow, full
of optimism we headed out. US customs, no problem ND highways very nice, and
life was good, we made the FedEx depot on time and they sent one of their
drivers to meet us. The pallet was a little rough, a corner block was broke off
and there was damage to the outside but they opened the shrink wrap and checked
what we could see. Everything looked fine so we headed home, a quick stop at
Canada Customs to pay the taxes and we were home.
The un-wrap went well, we cut the strapping and Noah and I
started to slide the top box off, we could hear something bad!! This was the
cabinet, what the hell could be broken glass in a cabinet made of wood. No way
to tell in the yard, it was dark and cold, the whole thing wrapped in cardboard
so in the house it went. There was no way to describe the look on Andrea’s
face, she had been waiting for weeks to get her aquarium and something is
broken…
We brought the package in and carefully stated unwrapping
it, as soon as the top was off she was looking down the cut out in the top,
only to find the sump had been shipped loose in the bottom of the aquarium. (A
sump is like a mini aquarium that houses all the cleaning components, refugium,
heaters, and so on. Essentially the big pretty tank is useless without it.) Now
try and imagine who would place a glass box in a wooden box loose and ship it
from California to Manitoba. Seriously we ship guns with more protection than
that glass box had in that wooden cabinet. Anyway to the point the sump was
smashed, Andrea’s heart was smashed along with it. She quickly fired off a
quick phone call to one of the CAD Lights sales reps she had been dealing with
to tell him about the sump and we headed back out to get the rest of the
aquarium.
Interestingly enough the wooden cabinet with the loose sump
in it had been shipped on top of the glass aquarium; not sure of the logic
behind this as the design when in the house full of water is for the glass
aquarium to sit on the wooden stand but I am only the guy paying for it I
guess. Anyway we opened it enough to check that there was nothing inside the
aquarium itself, it was empty so into the house it went. We finished unwrapping
it and took a blue light LED flashlight to inspect it. There was nothing we
could see, it looks like an awesome tank that will be setting on our living
room floor half unpacked for who knows how long.
Worse than even the broken sump is the fact that she ordered
a complete setup, a basically ready to fill and run salt water tank with all
the essential components included except a few individual pieces which she had
dragged me into my least favorite of all Canadian cities so she could buy everything
else last week. We were to have everything setup and the tank filled Saturday
night allowing hours for landscaping the tank. NOTHING was there, none of the
additional components she ordered was there except the light hangers, no
plumbing, no pumps, no filter and so on. We have a useless 48” long 24” deep
and 24” high hunk of glass sitting on out living room floor taking up space…it
is though a beautiful hunk of glass though.
Jan 2 2014
They are building a new sump and looking for the missing
parts so I am sure it will all end well.
We have actually been down with a stomach flu for the last
few days, even though we are now seeming to come out of it we are still very low
energy…thankfully in one sense we have had little motivation to go out – it has
been a barrage of -40 to -50 C with the wind chill and even my passion for ice
fishing knows those are limits not worth risking an accident in.
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