Saturday Stuff

Just some stuff because I have extra time.

Kayak Fishing
Amazingly I did get up at 5am and made my way to the river for about 6am. Reader Watchtower wanted to see how I rig up my kayak, and of course I always go the extra mile for my readers (unlike some other blogs!). Here she is about set to go fishing this morning (click for bigger picture):

The particulars:
-Kayak: Ascend FS-10 offered by Bass Pro Shops. Cool little boat and it has various rod holders front and rear so it is very well set up for fishing. When I am using the wind and current to drift fish I can set the rod in the front holder and sit back to relax until I get a hit.
-The black thingy in the front is a Hummingbird remote sonar system. It is wireless so I just tie the little green thing near the end of the boat to the rear clip and pull the transducer along with me. It sends the information out to the monitor up front. Not too bad, but I have a much better unit for the Quabbin trips.
-I strap in a milk crate to the rear section which was made especially to hold a crate. I put water, supplies, and the camera back there.
-I use a 10 pound hand weight for an anchor, though I usually will drift fish rather than set up at one spot.
-I use St. Croix rods; they are the finest rods you can get in my opinion.
-I fish mostly Yamamoto Senkos these days. The fish eat them like candy. It will outfish live bait most times! I use a mix of 3 inch "fat" senkos and 5 inch regular senkos to target any fish in the area. The black and pumpkinseed colors work best for me.

I think that about covers it all. And no, I have no affiliation with any of the product makers mentioned. If they would like to sponsor me I will gladly accept any money or products in exchange for my pumping their items!

Quotes from Last Night
I see, without Google help nobody could get the quotes!

Here are the solutions:
"You're just lucky we are in Uncle Jessie's House!"
"Well then you're unlucky; Cus we can always step outside."
-Episode of "The Dukes of Hazard" when Bo and Luke get in a fight.

"It’s not a payoff, it’s a gift. You already let me go."
-at the end of the film "Midnight Run"

"It was almost time to be reborn. He knew. Why else could he suddenly do magic?"
-from the novel "The Stand"; this was the introduction of Randall Flagg "the walking dude" and the last line of the entry was the line above.

"There's no going back, there's no going anywhere"
-From the film "Underworld". If Kate Beckinsale would like to call me, I have no problem with that!
CALL ME Kate!:


Random Stuff
Just some stuff I came across in my travels on the internets.

I stumbled upon this really well done remake of the trailer for the film "Excalibur". This film has so many big time actors in it!:

I love that flick.

I remember the Spring 2000 race at Atlanta Motor Speedway when Dale Earnhardt beat Bobby Labonte by the thinnest of margins:

After Dale died it was a rough time for me. I always loved the guy. Kevin Harvick took over the RCR car and in only his third start he wins at Atlanta Motor Speedway by beating Jeff Gordon, again, by the thinnest of margins! When Kevin won this race I can tell you honestly I was sobbing like a baby from the end and all through the post race tribute to Dale:

Still gets me!

Have a good night.

Long Weekend

I feel so out of sorts!

Long Weekend
If you checked out the Friday post you will know that I had a great day of river fishing on the kayak. Saturday was occupied with settling on the new counter top material, which by total luck they had a slab that was ordered be cancelled, which is the last one in the state and of course my Wife just HAD TO HAVE IT! It's called Wild West and I like it quite a bit myself. Every slab is different, but here is an idea how it looks:

Hopefully we will get final construction details this week for after 4th of July.

Today I hit the river again on the boat and did very well but I forgot the camera! You will have to trust me!

I was online a total of an hour this weekend and while it was nice, I feel out of sorts. I did cook MEAT this weekend and so you get some pictures of Saturdays cook.

Two NY strip steaks for the wife and mom in-law and I had a T-bone. I grilled up some corn right on the grill which I thought would not work, but it came out amazing!

Here are the items in a double layer on the Big Steel Keg:

About ready to pull off the grill:


Ever since I got the new grill the Pug goes INSANE any time I cook beef. Not sure if the smell id different or what. Anyways, I let him chew on the T-Bone after I was done but it became an issue to get him to let it go! He was clamped on there something fierce!:

Up close and personal with the Pug:

What a maniac!

This week will be light on material. I am off Thursday and Friday from work and have a big day trip planned for the Quabbin Reservoir on Thursday. I have a ton off stuff to get ready including my brand new full color fish finder for the rental boat at the Gray Lady. I am very excited!

Have a good night.

Friday Night Bonanza

Make sure you scroll down and check out the fishing pictures from today that I posted. What a great time. No work and no things economic was so relaxing, except when the fish were biting!

Links
There was plenty of stuff out there, much of it very important, but I cannot pretend I am even into it this evening. Here are some stops you should make:
-Housing Doom picked up a Businessweek article that showed agency paper (FNM, FRE) trading at 106 cents on the dollar, that's right, 6 cents over full value! No idea what this means and too tired to bother.

-FED to go QE 2.0 to the tune of 5 Trillion? Why not, the first attempt has worked so well I can only imagine how great the second will go. Surely this means gold will collapse.

-It is always something from out of the blue that starts a big panic, so here is Romania for you.

-Did budget director Orszag quit because he works for idiots? Probably. Seems a recurring theme as of late.

-Well, we have been told all this would happen, but did you bother to read?

-Don't click if you do not want to get depressed, but here is Alabama waves rolling in with additives.

Friday Night Bonanza
I came across a ton of cool stuff tonight so this is going to be fun!

Best of YouTube
How about a spider crab molting its shell in time lapse? COOL!

Why a lady is playing the RockBand game while naked in front of her kids I have no idea but its worth a look.

Clips
Tuesday and Wednesday night I read the book "The Last Great Fight" by Joe Layden which recounts the story around the Mike Tyson vs. Buster Douglas fight back in 1990. The book was amazing and I really can recommend it. It brought back memories; I watched that fight live and was in total shock. Here is the last 3 rounds with the 8th round knockout, I mean knockdown by Tyson and then the brutal end in the 10th:

Wow.

The intro to John Carpenter's "Christine". Gives me the chills:


Rock Blogging
We need a little music to really get this weekend going and so here it is.....

Watchtower asked about the April Wine song "I Like to Rock", which I had never heard. The song was so great I can allow the crap at the end to slide:

That was a great one, thanks Watchtower!

Lurker would like a little "Blinded by the Light" from Manfred Mann and I had not heard this one in a bit so here it is:

Nice.

Gawains was looking for some KISS and Firehouse, but that got me in mind of my favorite KISS clip, a live version of "I Was Made for Loving You":

What a great live version! Plus plenty of hot ladies in the audience, not that I was looking, I am married and all.

Ok, maybe a little old school heavy rock overload so far. How can we change it up?

Maybe slow it down with Bon Jovi and "Always"?:

Your welcome ladies!

This song can be complex to play, and my Dad played a nasty good one on 12 string guitar that was amazing. I wish he had played electric! Anyways, here is Dolly Parton with "Jolene":

Great stuff.

Two more then I have to go, I was paddling up a river all day, but I did have a paddle, obviously!

How about a little "Rocky Top" for Tennessee:

Also very good on a 12 string!

Last call! Have a great weekend! Now what to close the show with????...

Ok, I had this one over a year ago (9/26/08) but it really is a great tune and so I send you off for the night with Adrenalin and "Road of the Gypsy":

"You know it don't come easy.." You said it brother!

Have a good night.

Gone Fishing

I will have the usual Friday night stuff up later on, but I had such a great time fishing this morning I thought I would post about that.

Gone Fishing
As soon as I could walk my Dad took me fishing and I think I have spent the better part of 25 years fishing the Merrimack River myself from shore. Over time I have been able to find about 30 or so spots that are sure things but I always dreamed of being able to get out on the river and see what I could find away from the shore. Besides, poison ivy is never fun!

I was a bit apprehensive about taking the kayak out on the mighty Merrimack because it really is a good sized river and the current moves medium fast. I also have very limited experience fishing from the kayak. Seeing that I am totally dumb, I just went right ahead and did it today! I am glad I did.

There is a nice boat launch right near where I live and it is located in a region that I wanted to try with a boat, so that made it easy. I was supposed to get up at the regular time (5am) and be out on the water by 7am. Of course I went out with the wife last night for a while and then came home and stayed up too late! I was slow to get going, but I was on the water about 9am. What can you do? Here is a shot looking back at the river:


There were tons of fallen trees in the river from shore erosion, and I targeted these fall downs as I passed them. Smallmouth bass will not relate to wood structure unless they have nothing else, but largemouth bass love trees. I tried about 6 places and nothing happened. A couple of taps, but no fish. Here is one spot I tried:


I was not worried, I knew I needed rocks! Smallmouth love rocks, the bigger the better! I kept paddling along for a while and I was getting nervous as I had not seen the type of rock strewn bottom I was looking for. After travelling for about 20 minutes I finally found what I wanted. Only One problem, these pesky ducks came in from the shore and would not leave me alone!:


You can see the boulders in the water at the right hand side of the picture.

Things picked up, but sunfish kept grabbing my senko lures as soon as they hit the water! Here is a good sized sunfish:

Here is a really awesome colored pumpkinseed fish:

I was fishing 3 inch fat senkos but I switched to 4 inch regulars to get rid of the tiny fish. Of course, then I caught a bunch of tiny smallmouths:

and

This one had great color and the darkness of the fish clued me in that the bass were in much deeper water. If this guy had not been caught, several big fish would not have been caught either, HAHAHA!

I backed out a ways, about 50 feet and there the water was about 12-18 feet deep. I switched to 5 inch senkos and stayed right on the bottom. I could feel big rocks as the lure bumped bottom, so I knew this spot was going to be very good. I was slowly bumping the senko back when a small tap made me give some slack line. The line started to move against the current so I slowly reeled in and applied pressure to turn the octopus hook up and WHAM!!!!!!!!! It was on! This fish stayed deep, right at the bottom and was so strong. River fish are way more powerful than lake fish due to having to swim in current all the time. This was a big one. It took about 6 minutes to get the fish ready to come in the boat. It was a bruiser river smallmouth, about 4 pounds:

See how big this fish's eye is? That's how you can tell a big smallmouth!

I put the fish back in the water and it took a minute for it to get going. I did not take anymore pictures of fish because they were all pretty good sized (2-4 pounds) and after the fight they were really done so I wanted to get them back in the water as soon as possible. I caught 12 total in about 2 hours.

At some point my anchor (a 7 pound hand weight on a rope) got wedged in some rocks so I had to cut the line. I used the wind to drift fish the area and it seems I have found a great 15-25 foot deep rock strewn flat teeming with big fish. Unreal. I will be going back, count on it!

UPDATE:
My friend Mark had this to say:

Why do we call skipping work or school "playing hooky"?

Perhaps it is based on the word hook? I'm just trolling for fresh ideas. Just angling for a new spin. Spawning some thoughts. Weighing-in with my opinions.

Have I hit bottom? Is the jig up? I feel a backlash. I'm bobbing and sinking here. I should probably stop now before I cast off some real barbs. That would be a real drag. Some just don't appreciate puns and would likely throw a few carping remarks at me! I'm almost baiting them!! I need to learn to shut my large mouth!

Oh buoy. I've crossed the line. The lure of streaming puns was just two great lakes. I've hit my limit. The pun reservoir is dry and I can't restock it.

True talent is rare in this world, enjoy it when you see it!

A good day away from work and the markets.

Pictures and Real Estate Reporting

We have rolling thunderstorms going through right now. Hopefully it will end soon so I can go out and cook. I may have to add a dinner picture should I be able to get out there.

Just a few pictures, a guest post, and some thoughts on deck.

Guest Post: Reader Gawains
On Friday I offered up the blog to anyone that would like to put together a guest post to be featured here. We shall see how many are interested. It is my belief that I have the best audience out there.

Reader Gawains offers plenty of great inside information about real estate in the comments section. A real "on the ground" type of reporting that you will not get most places. I think Gawains will submit a few posts and I will be glad to publish them. I did get an email from Gawains showing me how bad many homes are after foreclosure. Here is Gawains:

There is a reason why most realtors (80%) don't work with repossessed homes. Because they don't have the money or don't want to do the work. It was 100 degrees outside today as I wandered around this house taking pictures, and I haven't even attached half of them. Broken door frames, missing sockets, trash everywhere, sheetrock damage, missing water heater, broken circuit board, missing a/c, missing cabinets, missing kitchen sink, missing commode, it's a disaster zone. I figure it's going to cost at least $20,000 to fully repair this house. And that doesn't include lawn maintenance, utilities, marketing and advertising, or selling commission. See what I'm talking about?

I was provided with a set of pictures that were just unreal. I had no idea grass can grow to be about 6 feet tall! Also, and you have to take my word for it, the interior of the house in question was ransacked and damaged. Due to confidentiality concerns I cannot publish the photos, but it was an eye opener.

More from email exchange by Gawains:

A couple of years ago, we would have had to hire contractors to clean this mess up. The entire lawn not only has to be mowed, but the cut grass and plants bagged and hauled off. Then there's all the trash, which as you can see is a lot. That has to be hauled to the dump. Then the house has to be cleaned.

These days the mortgage company uses a field asset management company to handle all that. Which is good, as it saves us the billing expenses. Still, cleaning up this house is going to cost several thousand dollars.

And then there's the repairs. Are you kidding me? The circuit breaker destroyed, water heater and a/c stolen, electrical outlets and sockets ripped out, kitchen cabinets and appliances taken, commode stolen, door frames broken, sheetrock damaged, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars here.

If this property were to be sold as is, only a cash investor could buy it.

So you see the severity of the problem and the depth of the crisis. There is no way a profit can be generated by the resale this house. Think of the costs involved (the delinquent taxes must be paid by the seller at closing, for example). It must have been abandoned at least two years ago--how long does it take grass to grow six feet tall?--and was only recently repossessed. This is part of the shadow inventory. Only God knows how many properties like this--and I've seen worse--are on the banks' balance sheets.

While I have often tried to illuminate just how bad things are in the mortgage area, this insider look should really be more helpful. Thanks Gawains!

Monster Fish
On Saturday I was able to get out on the water in the kayak between rain storms. I had a small spinnerbait on one fishing rod and as I was tying a lure on another rod, this massive bass grabbed the spinnerbait as it dangling over the side of the boat! I was almost pulled into the water by the force of such a lunker fish:

Big fish, HA!

Things You Can do if You Are Nervous
On Friday I noted that I am now officially nervous and the reasons why. I am prone to being down on things economic (really?) but Friday was really ugly. I think that if this week does not go well in the markets a rout could ensue as there is nothing underneath stocks. But it could all be fine as well! Now I want to be very clear here; I do not think the world is going to end and we all will be living in caves. What I think is about a 1 in 10 chance right now is a situation where people start to panic and we get all the dumb behavior that would come with that.

Things like bank restrictions on withdrawals could happen. How do you think the average person would react to that? If you consider just that item it leads to other issues like grocery store mad dashes, gas runs, and related things. I think it would be short lived, but not fun at all.

So what can you do for peace of mind? Everyone is different but few things to consider having on hand are:
-Cash. Maybe $1000-$2000 in cash, preferably in smaller bills ($20 and smaller). If we get bank withdrawal restrictions you do not want to be in a spot where you cannot pay for things.
-Food. Canned goods in a pantry so that you could avoid having to contend with a store run when everyone is going nuts for a few days. Better to stay at home. Water you should always have quite a bit stored no matter what, water mains break all the time.
-Fuel. Well unless you are able to store gasoline safely this one is a tough spot. Just keep your gas tank on full for a while whenever you get the chance.
-Medical. If you or someone in your home has medication needs talk with your doctor about getting extra up front just in case a break from access would mean you would run out.

Now I am not trying to scare anyone, I just think we could have a 3 day to one week departure from the normal should things go bad in a hurry.

What about gold and silver? I did not mention them because if the 1 in 10 event happens they will not be useful to you at the time, but they should go higher in price!

Plenty of discussion about gold and silver as of late and I think it is good. All I can do is speak for me and I believe gold and silver will at some point become integrated into a new money system after the fiat paper ones all do their printathon thing. This will mean much higher prices. Both could also collapse, just like any other form of investment. Long term metals have maintained purchasing power, and I expect them to continue to do that. A good suit cost 1 ounce of gold in 1900, and today you can get a damn fine suit for an ounce of gold. How does paper money compare?

Some of my useless silver crap that will be worthless soon that I have on hand (the rest is buried in my neighbors yard, please keep it quiet!):
10 Ounce JM Bars:

1 Ounce JM Bars:

Pre-1965 US Quarters and Dimes known as "Junk Silver":

I have a soft spot for these gorgeous Phoenix Silver bars and will buy them whenever I find one, so if you have any that you want to sell....:

At least they are shiny, better than stocks any day, HA!

Have a good night.

Friday Night For a Long Weekend

Way short on time so here we go!

Kayak Fishing
Obviously I did not drown! That is a good start.

It was really fun. I had a bit more trouble getting the boat on top of the wife's (you did not think I was going to load a kayak on my G35X did you!??) Toyota RAV-4 was harder than I thought. I think I may have pulled my back out a little. I will just ignore it.

The boat was easy to use and very stable. The fish were in a biting mood and I caught some bluegills, a chain pickerel, and the biggest black crappie I have ever seen up here. 8 inches from nose to tail! I switched from shallow flats to deeper water old river channel fishing in the mill pond and I hit some really big largemouth bass. Two were easily over 4 pounds which is pretty good up here. No issue in getting them to the boat. All fish released unharmed, I even use pliers to push the barbs on the hooks down to help the fish.

I will be doing this much more.

Friday Night Entertainment
When in doubt, lay it out!

Random Stuff
Anything goes!

Just in case you wanted to know:
How to Make a 46,000 Calorie Kit Kat Bar
I'd be on that like a rat on a cheeto!
Thanks Ran!

I know I missed this in the film "Back to the Future" and I think you may have too:

Twin Pines Mall becomes Lone Pine Mall! Awesome!

Fun with Pictures
Visual aids for your perusal.

Not quite the film "Vision Quest":

Nasty!

I should not have this one up considering I just started kayak fishing:

I only do freshwater, for obvious reasons.

Poor thing:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
It will grow back little lion!

I feel the same way about the "Twilight" fanatics:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Yup.

Rock Blogging
Unleash the wave of sound!

Leading of is a request from my friend in Michigan, Fleetwood Mac and "Rhiannon":

You knew I would find a live performance.

Fitting in with the horrific graduation Cambridge traffic this week is Lurker's request for "Schools Out" by Alice Cooper:

Nice!

Gawains wanted some Rolling Stones and I had never heard "Shine a Light" and it is a really wonderful tune:

I like it.

The fall of Guns N' Roses was really a bad loss. The newer album Chinese Democracy was pretty bad. One song had some promise but missed by just a little bit. Best song from that album was "Better":

I think 60% of that song is great, but that other 40%....

A band that has very few (any?) bad songs is The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Try out "Californication" for example:

"The sun may rise in the east, at least, it settles in a final location"....NICE!

Two more, what to play, what to play.....

So I like Bryan Adams music, sue me! My favorite is "Run to You":

That one is really good.

Last call! Anyone with a back that still works can you please grab me a beer??? Please????????!???!?

The last time I played this song was last summer. In that post I offered a writing sample based on a Depeche Mode concert I attended. Feedback was good to not so good (thanks Illargi!) but I have indeed been writing a short to maybe long story based on something I drew (with colored pencils) out of thin air as a young kid. Not much more to add at this point, but say extreme emotions can imprint a "memory" whether it be electron spins, residual changes in substance molecular makeup, or just the latticework of the extreme feelings pouring out. Well, what if there was a "device" that could tune into this history? How useful would that be, say in solving crimes? Other applications? Enough teasing, I am working on it.

One of EconomicDisconnect's favorite songs, "Karma Police" by Radiohead:

Just beautiful.

Added
Added by a reader, nice live performance of REM and "Losing My Religion":


Have a good night.