My dad just retired, moved to Florida (Daytona Beach area) and  fulfilled jis lifelong dream; bought a fishing boat.  It’s a really nice  Proline Sportsman 210 with a 200 HP Yamaha, Loran, etc.  My dad loves to  fish, and so does the rest of the family.          Here’s the problem:  After fishing all our lives in lakes and  rivers in western PA, the ocean is a bit of a big place to fish in.  We  started out on the ICW to break the boat in, but got tired of catching  catfish and having the bait stripped by crabs.  We finally ventured out  onto the open sea to catch some slightly sportier fish.  Armed with our  Loran, and the trusty chart that came with it, we headed for a spot marked  on the chart that looked like as good a place as any: a man made reef a few  miles out.  We fished off the bottom with squid all day long, to no avail.  We’d been out on some of the charter boats before, and never had any lack  of fish when using this method.          So what I’d like to know is, does anyone out there have any good  fishing spots out on the ocean in the Daytona Beach area, less than say,  40 miles out?  I don’t want to horn in on anybody’s secret spot, but I  can tell that my dad is getting discouraged that his $20k investment won’t  pan out.  Even some general tips would be great.  We’ve read books and  magazines, but nothing they suggest works.  We check solunar and tide tables,  but not a nibble.  Bottom, half-way, trolling; far out, close in, at the  jetty, nothing seems to work.  I’d really appreciate any advice, because  I’d like to catch some fish too!

I had posted earlier to this group about recommended rod and mono combos for  fishing for walleye and northerns in the Boundary Waters area of Minnesota,  but I will be fishing from a fishing boat so I have a little luxury of taking  some extra tackle for the trip.      Again I was considering bringing along a 7′ medium action casting rod with  10 lbs mono and possibly bringing a heavier duty rig, a 5′ 6″ MH rod and 17  lbs mono for northerns.  Do these choices sound like reasonable choices?    Would a 6′ medium rod with 14 lbs mono be a better choice for the northerns?    Also what should I bring as far as lures?  I am a southern bass fisherman  looking for some suggestions from you all from the north!  I am guessing that  the smallies can be taken on similar lures that we use to catch  largemouths….am I right here?

Question
At the latest Federation meeting, we were told that Ranger is very displeased with BASS and will parting with BASS after 2000 due to the new BASS boat racing/bass fishing tournaments.
Anwser
Ranger Maintains Its Focus On Fishing. Due to the recent scheduled roll-out of the World Championship Fishing (WCF) Series sanctioned by B.A.S.S., combining racing and fishing, Ranger Boats will cease all negotiations to renew their official B.A.S.S. sponsorship. Although Ranger plans to fulfill all existing obligations under their current agreement, they believe the WCF concept is not in the best long- term interest of the sport or the safety and well-being of the fishing community. As a result, Ranger has decided against participating in the WCF or any similar activity. Citing conflicts with the direction WCF is taking bass fishing, Ranger President Randy Hopper said, “The WCF is an obvious change in strategy by B.A.S.S. management. For over a quarter of a century, Ranger and B.A.S.S. have shared philosophies with regard to the future and growth of bass fishing. Working together, both have been instrumental in the implementation and adoption of many key initiatives that are commonplace today in promoting conservation and boating safety. With WCF, emphasis has been taken off fishing and placed on racing.” Case in point – the made-for-TV BASS Quest held last August on Rend Lake in Illinois. Unlike ordinary tournaments, BASS Quest combined traditional bass fishing with boat racing. In the racing segment, anglers were timed as they raced their boats over an unorthodox watercourse featuring long straight-aways and narrow twists, turns, and switchbacks. In direct contradiction with WCF, Ranger feels bass tournaments do not need to add racing to the format to create more excitement, and does not agree with changing the fundamentals of the sport for the sole reason of appealing to a larger TV audience. Noted Hopper, “We feel there is nothing wrong with thinking “outside the box” to grow the sport. We do, however, have a problem with this concept that changes the essence of the sport. As one angler stated, just imagine a golf tournament where 60% of one’s total score was based on a round of golf and 40% was based on racing a modified golf cart through a planned race course. We believe fishing in and of itself is exciting and is on the rise with its best days ahead. We don’t have anything against racing in its proper context, we just feel there is no place for it in bass fishing. Fishing and tournament fishing are wholesome sports, good for the family and good for the country.” Ranger Vice President of Marketing, Bart Schad voiced his concerns, saying, “Frankly, the WCF promotes unsafe boating practices. Especially at risk are the young and impressionable. They see the pros racing and performing these extreme maneuvers and think it’s all right for them to do likewise on open public waterways.” Added Schad, “The promotion of racing and the glamorizing of irresponsible driving is a recipe for disaster. ” Commented Hopper, “Ranger has always prided itself on manufacturing the best quality fishing boats possible, cutting no corners – with safety, stability and fishability in the forefront. We have built our company on these principles and firmly believe that a departure from our foundation to place an emphasis on racing would prove to be a significant disservice and disappointment to our customers. At Ranger, our customers come first.” Ranger Boats, headquartered in Flippin, Arkansas, is the nation’s largest manufacturer of premium fiberglass fishing boats, including a line of more than 40 freshwater boats, and a popular saltwater series. With emphasis on building the best boats in the world, Ranger Boats is still building legends…one at a time.

Question
I understand that their were a great many cultural misunderstandings during WWII, especially between the US & Japan. For example, for what I’ve read the Japanese did’t exactly _reject_ the Potsdam Declaration, but instead ” Mukusatsu ” it. But this distinction seems to have been lost in the translation. Other things too, like how the fall of the Tojo Cabinet (in the previous year, after the Saipan/Philippine Sea disasters) was supposed to be a signal that Japan was ready to work out a deal. Unfortunately for the Japanese leadership by this time the US was clearly winning the war and had no interest in making a peace offer, but they didn’t even seem to know that the fall was supposed to make that signal. My question is why? Didn’t they have experts at the time who could deal with that sort of thing and explain the differences to the pollicy makers? I can better understand that the Japanese failed at this, being a dictatorship they were more uneffecient, but why didn’t the US policy makers better understand their opponents? It doesn’t seem like anything that couldn’t be learned from an hour talk with a Japanese History/Culture/Language/etc Prof.
Anwser
I think there are two issues involved: first, the “opening” of Japan to the West (or vice versa) was a recent event, less than a century before the opening of hostilities (except for the odd missionary or two). Not that millennia of cultural and academic exchange among the European powers was enough to forstall hostilities or misunderstandings. Admiral Yamamoto attended school in the US after WWI (when Japan was still an ally), and his “awakened a sleeping giant” quote (apropos considering how the US outproduced Japan) suggests that he “got it” where the Army-dominated government did not. Second, in the US at least, Isolationism wasn’t restricted to Capitol Hill. It pervaded all strata of society, academia included. Asian Studies departments were concerned with antiquities, long buried rulers of dynasties that existed only in porcelain and lacquer. Contrast this with the post-war prevalence of Sinologists (and Kremlinologists) in universities and think tanks, concerned with intentions, not antiques. I find your question a good one, considering that this hasn’t really been resolved: consider the dissonance between the CO of the GREENEVILLE’s apology to the families of those lost when the sub sank the fishing boat (an apology was seen as an “admission of guilt” by US lawyers, but closure by the Japanese families). Or for that matter the crew of the EP-3 forced down by the Chinese last weekend. So, why didn’t the Japanese have their own Native-American Studies scholars before or during the war? Those Navajo code talkers would have been out of business in a week. Didn’t the Japanese have linguists? Or was it a bigger world back then, before satellites and trans-Pacific cable? There were still parts of the world connected only by flying boat or steamship back then. That “hour talk with a Japanese History/Culture/Language/etc Prof” you refer to is just a phone call/e-mail/fax away *now*, but back then even *radio* was deep voodoo: “Dr. Zarkov, calling from Planet Mongo”. Trying to understand 1940 in Year 2001 terms is a cultural misunderstanding in and of itself. Differences in time become greater as differences in space shrink (albeit slowly).

Question
I have been an owner of a Mark III Zodiac for 27 years and it has been a very good boat. The last two years I have flown it out for extended trips in the NWT. What I am wondering is if anyone has experiences with the newer Zodiacs with the inflatable floors. the Mark III is great, but it is getting pretty heavy for me as I get older. They have one that weighs only 63 pounds called the cadet fastroller that would seem to be ideal to carry in my truck for fishing.
Anwser
Yes i just got one for a tender on my 24′ sports fish boat that we fold up and put into the cabin each nigt when we go fishing. the air floor speeds up assembly time (20min)because you can leave it attached while it is deflated. Skipper and first mate are big boys and can easily stand on the floor when casting lures. You do loose a bit of performance with the more flexible floor but our 3.4mm cadet fastroller which has a 15hp Honda pushes both lads like a rat up a drain pipe.
Associated Inflatable Fish Boat Question:The Feedback section at the back of New Scientist is given to more silly stories. They’ve recently changed the writer of the section I believe. I saw the story below and my UL sense tingled not just because they admit the possibility in the story, but because I thought I’d seen similar references in this group. Google searching reveals that Lara found a similar story in early march. I found nothing on Snopes or in the archive. So of course I set out to see if I could validate or debunk this myself.. Hotbot searches, CNN, BBC, Google Groups in general, Ask and then I decided to move onto the Vetinary sites. I find no abstracts and some very difficult to navigate sites and literally the two stories below. 3 years apart and the BBC one which passed through the Sun *cough* newspaper seems to have originated in Reuters. I’m unable to find anything in the intervening three years. Is this one going to crop up in Honk Kong in 18 months or is my spidey sense on overtime?

• Anwser:I snipped the hell out of a decent post with two instances of the dog swallows cell phone tale. I only wish to point out that ten stone would be 140 pounds or close to 65 kilograms. I am pretty sure that bloodhounds do not run that big, although, in a pet there are possibilities of massive obesity, not so likely in a working hound pack .Bigger than the merkin bloodhounds that track by scent used for hunting prison escapees, as in the movie ‘Cool Hand Luke’ not to mention deer, seen that done in South Carolina, the local rednecks with their hounds happened to drive a deer right up to the mouth of my pistol, I was stationed at Charleston AFB and had only a 45 auto target pistol I bought for killing people. It worked fine, and I thanked the local guys for helping me get a target. I shot the shot at about twenty feet. The bloodhounds they had were more like half the weight. I was back to back with a local cop when I fired, we were covering a road, and I got the shot. Cop gave my deer a ride to the chow hall were I had made arrangements with the cooks in the unlikely event. One of the hunters joked about Yankees with guns looting Dixie one more time, and I said I was born on the Gulf coast and dragged North as a baby. I was wearing my utility uniform, battle dress, but I joked that I actually had a blue uniform, but that I wouldn’t wear it off base with a gun in my hand, we try to respect the locals. These were bloodhounds they had, they said so. I am sure this exact breed was developed in the US, and I am curious exactly what kind of dog was in the story. I know the term originated with ‘blooded’ meaning having a pedigree, bred to the job, as opposed to just mutts, and as opposed to having killed, no longer a virgin as it were, another known meaning of ‘blooded’ There seem to be three sizes of poodle and I wonder if the dog was a variation on what merkins call a bloodhound, or something different, or journalistic bs about the weight or the breed. I suspect that it is another breed entirely, that this is a difference in the language. I checked with my mother, and confirmed that bloodhounds are half the size. She would know. She has my late uncle’s truck in the driveway, I don’t know what happened to the dogs and guns. He was a bobcat hunter, and he had bloodhounds, and a couple of killers to keep the cats off the hounds. They idea is that the dogs catch the cat who climbs a tree, and gets shot by the hunter when they catch up. She said that a hundred pounder would: ‘ be too fat to get his rump off the turf, let alone hunt.’ So what kind of blood hound gets that big? Language pedants want to know. Did I say that looked like a nice bit of research? Perhaps these hounds were bred for high speed chases, hunters on horse with spears, crossbows or guns, I don’t really know. They would not resemble merkin bloodhounds in that event, they would be much longer legged, and a greyhound would be good for high speed chasing of deer. Maybe that is what the invented greyhounds for, I am not a dog expert, to say the least. Greyhounds are not that big, but my point is that there is more than one way to use a dog to help you hunt you can have more than one kind of so called hound in the same pack. I did see a couple of horse trailers among the dozen trucks the locals had. I couldn’t hang around, I had this dead deer and it was a warm day already. at 9 in the morning. It took me about forty five minutes from the time I got my gun out of the locker to get the deer. I should have quit winners, it usually isn’t that easy. I could have had any number of deer since, of course, saw one at six feet sitting on the crapper at my other house, open window, and I was packing a pistol, but they were out of season and all. All the trees in my yard are flat on the bottom from deer, they are vermin here, and I see them nearly every day. No hound needed here, good fields of fire out the windows and a good opportunity every few days, even without bait. Easy as rabbits around here and many places locally and all over the US. Man changed the environment in favor of large numbers of deer, and we have far too many whitetails in the US, most nearly everywhere they are found at all. I need to watch the thrift shops for a book or two on dog breeds, still don’t have copies of every good ref there is, and I can’t remember every fact I ever heard, to say the least. Dogs is a weak point, as you see. May have to bit the bullet at B&N, Buggery and Nastiness, where the costs me twenty dollars to driver past it without going in. Gets worse if you take money and go in, and if you have a bit extra on you, or think you do. I buy books faster than I can read them once, let alone the twenty it takes. I almost know how they build steel and aluminum boats. I am looking into this Bristol Bay gillnetter, faster than a battleship, twin 315 hp Cummins, jet drive, 32 foot, TRAILERABLE, aluminum, for sale http://yachtworld.com/boats/view_all.cgi.en?url=&offset=0&limit=30&un… and it could be easily launched and beached on the lake where the parents have had the cabin for 45 years and a 16 foot 125 hp gas jet drive boat for 40. Tenth jet drive watercraft built and sold in this country. If I bought the gillnetter I would get a two ton diesel jet drive rigid hull inflatable to carry on it for a tender, as well as a couple of tiny 9 foot punts for around the docks and so on. Fast enough to outrun weather and get the last spot at the dock, or the last table at the lobster house. The sixteen fish boxes will hold 8 tons of shopping loot, I am sure. All the coastal used book stores will be within reach, and Halifax is doomed. They better have a fast fish boat, the jukebox quarters or a good chickenout ready, one of the three. If the mounties or somebody that actually knows, would email me with the going rate of savage duty and excessive taxes to legally import thirty cases or so of Trinidad industrial ethanol I could use the information. I tried to find it on the net. I found lots of Canadian web pages with snow in all the pictures, and they were trolling for tourists. Do juke boxes actually work reliably in Halifax, the net sucked there, the last time I gave up, but in fairness, it was a temporary problem. I didn’t find anything, very few seedy waterfront dives on the net there. I don’t even know what Trinidad Light Rum retails for in legit liquor stores in Halifax.