Rock County Bass Anglers End of Season

So I thought I would sum up our tournament season in a little post here. We fished 6 tournaments. If I get the final standings from Aaron I will post. My results are at the end of this post. I'm not sure what my total weight for season was, I gotta get Aaron to send me that. I had a lot of fun, and am already looking forward to next season. I think I might try and talk Charlie into participating as well. The best part is being able to fish other lakes, while adding a bit of competition to the mix. The competition gets the the heart pumping and adrenaline flowing, I know it's just fishing, but competition in general does that. I also think it makes me fish faster, a little to fast in some situations.

In other news we had some more flooding in our basement, it's been raining for more than a week. I think it's almost done now though. Over the weekend we installed new gutters on the house, I'm hoping they take care of our flooding problem, and they look much nicer than our old ones. FEMA may declare Dane County a disaster area in which case we could get some compensation for the flooding. I should probably report our damages today.

I have fished a lot this season it's been pretty fun, I've gotten a couple over 18" but I don't think I've broken the 20" threshold. I think I've picked up more Northern Pike this season than I ever have which is kinda weird. There are still a couple of months left before I have to put the boat away so hopefully we can put some quality fish in the boat. Celly is home this summer so he has spent some time fishing with me, which I've greatly enjoyed. I've also gotten Boo out a couple times, I think she really likes it when we are catching fish anyway. I thought about trying to get her on the boat, but I'm not sure how that would go especially the potty part lol.

Last but defiantly not least, Foxy and I are expecting our second child in March. We found out a few weeks ago and have informed the family and friends. We are very excited. We've had our first appointment and everything looks great. Boo is very excited to be a big sister. First, I'm hoping for a healthy baby, second a boy would be nice :) , we have a lot of work to do around the house in preparation.

Cory's RCBA Tournament Results...

Tue., May 15 Delavan Lake - 0 fish weighed (My first tournament was a bust)

Tue. May 22 Lake Kegonsa - 4 fish weighed (Took first place and big fish)

Sun. June 24 Browns Lake - 0 Fish weighed (Spent most the time taking Northerns off the hook, had one short bass at the end that didn't measure)

Thur. July 12 Rock Lake - 1 Fish weighed (I think it was a 14 or 14.5, I lost a real nice fish that probably would have moved me into 2nd or 3rd place)

Thur. July 26 Lake Monona - 2 Fish weighed (Took 3rd place)

Sat. August 18 Lake Mendota - 2 Fish Weighed (Took 3rd place)

A little less choking, and a little more Winning!!!!

Lots to talk about today, so fishing first. Title says it all, May 22 was RCBA Tournament #2, it was supposed to be held on Waubessa, but due to conflicts with another local tournament we moved it to Kegonsa. I was little worried about that because I had never fished there. So the Sunday prior I headed down to the Keg for some prefishing. I Fished a bunch of docs, probably covering 1/4 - 1/2 of the shoreline. I caught a number of fish, but only two or three that measured. The Yahara river connects right where the launch is, so I swung up there and had a number of strikes. I decided that on Tournament day that's where I would focus on. My idea paid off big time. I weighed four fish 15, 15, 16 3/4, and 18 inches, for a total of 160 oz. (not for sure on that total). I ended up winning the tournament and recording big fish, total winnings of $125. OH YEAH!!!!! I was pretty excited, my move paid off for my boating partner as well, as he came in second place. All but one fish was caught on Watermelon YUM dingers (including the big girl) and the other on a white Zoom Horny Toad. I have a pic of the 18 that I will post when I get some time. Next Tourney is on Browns, it's an early morning one, so be fun.

I took a half day last Friday and headed to Monona for a couple hours. I thew a Yum Dinger under a dock, first cast a nice legal fish. Then zero'd for the next hour or so. I moved over into Turville Bay and started chucking a Zoom toad, and picked up another 5 or 6 fish. Nothing too exciting but it was fun. The weather turned south pretty quick so I had to cut the trip a bit short. However, I made it home just as the rain was starting.

Lastly, summertime is in full swing and so are the projects. Over the past month we've painted the living room and hallway, rota tilled a section of lawn with bad grass and replanted, added an addition to our vast deck which is now close to 850 sq ft, and had a ginormous Silver Maple removed from the front yard, also removed the two remaining pine trees in the back. Talk about busy. This weekend we have parties up the yin yang. Although it will be nice to take a break from house projects. I'm pretty excited about going to Devil's lake on Sunday. Planning on wetting a line anyway, and I think we'll try and get Boo some fish as well.

Pictures...One thing I lack are pictures we have lots of them, but they are stored in digital heaven generally on the camera or buried on my hard drive at home. I'd really like to purchase a USB hard drive and start storing our media on it. I think it would make organization easier as well as back up easier. I also think it would be easier to get them onto a Flickr account. I'm going to watch some tech sites and when I find a good deal go ahead and purchase one. I'm running out of space on my PC so I feel like this might be a good option. Not only to free up some HD space, but create a fairly portable way of storing my pictures and possibly music. I do need to replace the hard drives in my computer as they are about 6 years old.

I choked! :(

First, lets talk about the opener. I went fishing both days on opening weekend. Saturday I headed out to Monona, and ended up with 3 LM bass. All males and avg size around 14 inches. Sunday, I went to waubessa and boy was it windy. I tooled around waubessa along with, oh I don't know, 50,000 other boats, and really couldn't find anywhere good to fish. So headed to Upper Mud to give it a try before calling it a day. I got on a weedline and in 30 minutes had boated 3 bass and a decent northern. The bass on Saturday came on a Boggie Bait and the bass on Sunday came on a Shakeyhead Worm. Not bad for the first weekend of fishing, especially considering the millions of people out.

The next week, Foxy decided it was time to paint the living room, and had taken a few days off of work. I had a conference Tuesday and Wednesday, and decided to join the painting fun Thursday and Friday. It was pretty nice since I had about week off of work anyway. Well, I had an opportunity to head out on Friday afternoon. I headed to Monona, the weeds are really up and the bass spawn was really on. I boated 7 bass caught on Boggie baits and Shakeyheads. I also pretty much slimed my boat at the launch. Which kinda sucked, in fact I still need to wash it off.

So then we come to the choke fest. My first RCBA (Rock County Bass Anglers) club tourny was on Tuesday at Delavan lake. I was a nonboater fishing with another guy, who actually has a really nice alumicraft. We headed to some docks off of a steep drop. Saw lots of bass, but couldn't get anything to commit. We fished there for about an hour. Oh yeah, it rained then stopped, then rained, then stopped, then SUPER rained, then stopped. I was aware of the fact it would be raining and ended stopping at Farm and Fleet and purchased a fairly nice rain suite. Good call. Anyway, we moved over to this Marina in hopes of getting out of the weather. Turns out, pretty much the other 3 boats in the tourny had the same idea, only from the get go. So it was pretty well fished out. My boating partner landed a 21" beast. Which turned out not only to be big fish, but also the biggest fish anyone had ever gotten during a tournament. In the end, I caught a northern, and missed probably 3 bass. So basically, I choked. Oh well, I'm boating in the next tournament, which was supposed to be on Waubessa but we had to move do to another tourny going on there. So we will be fishing the Keg, which I've never fished. If I find some time this weekend I might prefish it, but we'll have to see how it goes.

Two Days and Counting...

Two more days until the May 5th game fish opener here in the land of cheese. I'm pretty pumped, we've had stable weather for the last week. With temps in the mid 60's to mid 70's. In the meantime I took the 'ole bass tracker out on Mendota and landed 3 nice gills the largest of which measured 9" and two crappies one of which I kept. I actually KEPT fish, not only that I cleaned them when I got home for Foxy. I pretty much butchered them however, it was my first attempt at cleaning fish. My grandpa gave me an electric knife which worked pretty good and being the geek I am, I had the laptop setup next to me with fish cleaning instructions. GG Internet. Anyway, temps on Mendota were in the 59-63 degree range so the opener is looking spectacular. Downside to this is the lakes are going to be busy and fishing pressure could lead to a tough bite. Only time will tell.

On another note, I would first like to apologize to my beer mates for the verbal flogging I gave them about my distaste for the band Radiohead and the music production software ProTools. New rules, don't argue with Cory about music, politics, or religion after he's had a few...lol. Anyway, I still stand by my statement that Radiohead is probably the worst band in history and that Thome Yorke is pansie, pretentious, faux musical genius, that has been shoved down consumers throats (or into their ears) for far too long. Whoever paid off of some record exec to promote Radiohead as gods gift to music should be publicly ostracized and hung out to dry. Seriously, they are terrible and we as consumers of music have been lead to believe that poor, pathetic Thom Yorke is some sort of phenomenal, musically superior, gift from on high. BS. This is guy is a fake and all you radiohead faithful just ate it up. Face it the band is bad, Thom Yorke is a chump, and a roving band of rabid chimpanzees could make better music with their eyes closed. I sorry, that's my opinion. Take it or leave I won't change. In the end the worst part about radiohead is how people are so devout to them as if their music cures disease and ends poverty, I'm sorry Thom Yorke but the world already has one Bono and that's plenty. Believe me this isn't my first argument over the sorry bunch whiny brits, and it probably won't be my last. Believe it or not radiohead junkies, I'm not the only one who doesn't like this band, do yourself a favor and google radiohead sucks and you might learn a thing or to.

Until next time...Tight Lines and RadioHead still sucks.

Well over do....

So I decided I was well over do for an update here. So here is the latest and greatest from the MadGator household. First off, Foxy and I purchased a new car a couple weeks ago. It's an '05 Malibu Maxx, which is a hatchback. It's all pimped out, in fact it has just about every option you can put on it. Including a DVD player in the rear console. It's a pretty fun car to drive and gets almost 30mpg. I've taken over control of the Equinox and Foxy gets to enjoy the heated leather seats in the Malibu. Boo likes the new car and we haven't even showed her the DVD player yet. I have yet to sell the Bonneville, but it's only been in the paper since last week, and sounds like I may have some good prospects over the weekend. Either way, we all seem to enjoy the new vehicle, heck it's almost worth it to be able to listen to Boo say Malibu cause she says it funny.

Next, I got the boat out and after a $300.00 trip to Pharo marine she's ready to go for the season. In fact, I took my brother Celly up to the Dells this week on Monday. We fished a section of the river between here http://www.dellsriversedge.com/ and the Dell's dam. The nice part was the boat traffic was light, the bad part was the fishing was horrible. We have had about two weeks worth of awful weather and it's really shut the fishing down. It was only about 38-42 degrees up there and the water temp didn't go above 38 degrees, which is just not warm enough. That said neither of us got skunked, Celly got a short Sauger and I caught a sturgeon of all things. The sturgeon was about 20" and it's the first one I've ever caught, not saying it was worth the trip, but definitely helps. The area there is really cool, in fact this is where you go if you take a Duck tour or jet boat ride. Hence, during the summer it's an awful place to fish. We did see a couple boat tours, including a Duck that nearly ran us over. It's an interesting place, I'd like to take a trip there again, hopefully we can catch some fish next time.

Lastly, FGAW asked me if I'd like to join his bass club. I accepted his offer and we had our first meeting this week. We will be fishing 6 tournaments through out the summer, the cost is $170, and the payout goes as follows... 1st Place $100, 2nd place $50, 3rd place $25, big fish $25. If we have ten guys fish the 2nd, 3rd, and big fish go up $25. The lakes include, Delavan, Waubessa, Browns, Monona, Rock, and Mendota. I'm really looking forward to this, it's low pressure and a chance to try my hand at tournament fishing. My goal is win one tournament, which I think I have a pretty good chance of considering we are hitting 3 of the Madison lakes and rock lake which I fish on occasion. Other than that, May 5th can't get here fast enough. Till then, tight lines.

Barcamp Madison 2007

So last weekend I attened Barcamp Madison with Christian and his cousin Cade. It was a pretty good time. I presented two topics, one on Freely available windows security tools and the other on Fishing Technology (of course). I also particiapted in the Wii Fight tournament and came in second, sniff sniff I guess wanting it more than anything wasn't enough. Below are a couple pictures from the event and a link to the Wii fight video. I know it's dorky, but it was fun.

Wii Fight Video:
http://tinkernet.org/2007/03/03/wii-fight-midwest/

Here are some links to some other pics I couldn't upload...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicfork/409031499/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicfork/412822210/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicfork/412822220/in/photostream/

Christian and I Geek'n out!!!

Me giving my talk about Windows Security tools.
The Final Round!!!!
Proof I am the second best Wii Fighter at Barcamp!

YAY NEW CAR...almost!!!

Foxy, Boo, and I took our annual trip to the accountant on Monday. This works out pretty well, because grandma and grandpa watch Boo while we do our business, plus the accountants office is about 5 minutes for their house. So we have dinner and learn that my Uncle is trading his '04 Malibu in on a new Impala. We have been looking at Malibu MAXXs and figured we could get a good deal. The car in question was thought to be a MAXX with leather, sun roof, power everything, remote start, the works. So we were pretty excited, the catch was that we would have to complete the deal by the end of the week. So the following day I ring my Uncle, he was a bit concerned that he had pretty much committed the car to the dealer (in writing). So he called the dealer, and that was in fact true, however we were promised first crack at the vehicle by the salesman. So I mention we had been looking at the MAXX for a little while and this would be a great deal. WAIT HOLD THE PHONE...A MAXX...No No No, we have the sedan. AHHHHHHH BOOOOOOO!!!! While still a good deal, we are really interested in the MAXX which is a hatchback. So alas the search continues.

In other news, the fishing show is this weekend, I am going with Charlie. There is really only one seminar presented by Pro Bass Angler Larry Nixon that I am interested in. I would like to pick up a "Crappie" rod, I have an ultra light but it's short and would like a 6'6" - 7' Ultra light rod. So we'll see if I can find anything. Other than that there isn't much I want or need from the show. Heck, maybe we'll bust out early and go fishing.

Lastly, I am signed up to do two presentations in the next few weeks. One is for the Madison Barcamp which is an Open Source conference. It's free as long as you present or help in some way. Basically, a social networking type of thing. I am presenting Five Windows Based Security/Forensics tools. Should be pretty cool, if interested check it out at http://www.barcampmadison.com. Christian is also presenting on Screen Scraping. I'm pretty excited about it. Secondly, I am presenting for the WiscNet Security Workgroup. My presentation will is Getting Started with a Security Assessment. We are performing a Security Assessment at work and I am heavily involved. So I hope that this is helpful so some of the other organization within WiscNet. I have a feeling that this will lead to another presentation at the WiscNet ITMC conference next fall.

Tight Lines!!!!