Ken L

Sadly no, they are the smaller size. So did I, but now I've only got a couple left.

I'm trying to track down a UK lure suplier that sells 6" Bomber Long A lures at a sensible price. Can anyone offer a suggestion ? If Barlows can supply them at $4.99 each in the States, it kinda grieves me to be asked to fork out almost £9 per lure in the UK.

My dad loves his roach fishing but would never head for the lower river. His choice would be between Bridgenorth and Stourport in the summer with hemp and tares. If you'd like, I can ask about specific swims or stretches.

Australia has implemented law that says that if a bar sells food that requires the use of cutlary, it has to be non-smoking - so you can have as many crisps and nuts as you like with your pint and fag but you can only have a meal in a smoke free zone. I agree though that in the UK, the question of food is a fudge because the proposed ban is suposedly based on health considerations rather than social ones. It's probably just been drempt up by a bunch of MP's so they can snub the government on an apolitical issue. Personally, I'm all for a ban because whilst there may be some considerate smokers out there, the great majority most definatly are not ! As an aside, I had a drink with my father last weekend and the Witherspoons pub that we were in has recently become non-smoking and were activly enforcing the ban. It was literally a breath of fresh air and packed.

It looked as if the image uploaded as per the instructions on the "weighting shads" thread, but nothing seems to have happened. I tried it a second time in edit mode - same problem.

Nice owl. Here's a White Throated Kingfisher that I snapped in India earlier this year, using my S7000. The weird thing is, if I take the full resolution image and zoom in enough on the eye, I can see myself reflected in it and holding the camera out.

Yep, French Poodle. Suprisingly, they're proper dogs - unlike the little yappy bugg3rs that old ladies seem to think look better dyed pink to match their hair !

It's the juice pressed from the meat. Easily available in the UK and as it gets used a fair bit in West Indian (Jamaican) cookery, it shouldn't be that hard to track down in the US.

Easy Laksa. Ingredients: A wallnut sized lump of tomyam paste* - I prefere the Suree brand. 1 can of coconut milk. Half a can of water (might as well wash the can clean) A good handfull of beansprouts (about half a pack if you buy them at Tesco's). A little oil. Rice vermicelli - 1 nest each - this can be substituted with any rice noodles or even wheat spagetti/vermicelli but avoid the heavy chinese egg noodles or udon noodles. Seafood of your choice - for two. I'probably use 10 shelled tiger prawns, 8 greanlip muscles and some squid. Chopped coriander. Method: Add a splash of oil and the tomyam paste to a pan and cook gently for a couple of minutes. Add the coconut milk and water and bring the whole lot up to a rolling boil and then drop the heat down to a simmer - check the flavour and if it's not hot enough, add more past untill you're happy. (prepare the noodles as instructed and set aside/boil a kettle at this stage) Add the seafood to the mix in cooking time order prawns first, then the muscles and the squid should be stired in just prior to serving with only a couple of seconds to cook. drain and place some noodle in the bottom of two bowls. Scald the beansprouts with boiling water (they should be raw but hot) and add those to the bowls. Pour over the soup splitting the seafood so as to avoid a fight latter. Sprinkle with copped corriander. For a real wow, add a couple of raw clams to each dish before serving (but only if you can get them really fresh) its like a smack in the face with seaweed on a hot day - and totally authentic. Again, about 20 minutes end to end but two pans this time. * Thai and indian curry pastes are great for quick meals and because they are preserved in oil, they can be kept in the freezer where they'll stay fresh almost indefinatly and can still be spooned out with a teaspoon when frozen.

We all have our favorite recipies and probably a dozen or so that we keep comming back to because they're quick and tasty. Lets try posting them up with idiot proof instructions and see how we get on. I'll start with "Chicken, Chorizo and Canelini Beans" - Serves 2. Ingredients: 2 chicken breasts 100g chorizo (buy in a lump - not in slices) choped 1 can of cannelini beans - drained - I use the East End brand 'cause they're cheap 2 glasses of dry white wine 2 medium onions diced 3 cloves of garlic chopped 3 or 4 cubes of frozen spinach - defrosted and drained a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil salt n pepper 1/2 tsp of smoked sweet paprika a loaf of nice crusy bread Method: Add the oil, onion, chopped garlic and chopped chorizo to a pan and fry gently until the onion softens - it should have a little colour but shouldn't start to caramalise. Slice the chicken breasts into pieces about the size of your thumb, lay them in the pan (on top of the stuff you've just fried) and cover with the wine. Add salt and pepper and then poach them for about 3 minutes until they are just cooked Break up the balls of spinach and stir them in and then add the beans. Stir gently (don't break the beans up) to coat the beans in the cooking liquor and cover and cook for another five minutes. Dish up with a spinkle of the smoked paprika and serve with chunks of crust bread and the remaining wine. 20 minutes from start to serving, easy as you like and only one pan to wash.

Similar services are offered by Blockbuster, CDWOW and Tesco. Check them out as well before you make a definate choice. Certanly strikes me as a better option than Sky movies, even if you already have the basic package. Unfortunatly, none of them offer CD rental on the same kind of terms.

Reminds me of seeing Reginald D Hunter in Birmingham. He was a little late arriving and appologised for being delayed and "being all disheviled and stuff" when he got on stage. He then explained that he'd just arrived in Birmingham from London by train and there'd been one problem after another with the trip up. His comment about the train company: "Now I know why they call themselves Virgin. It's like they've never done it before !"

Ah, the Sky news article at least makes it clear that she is Jamaican and not African. The first article was trying to be so PC that it actually failed to convey any real information. I actually passed this testerday afternoon and although there were several hundreds of people milling about, along with a couple of dozen police, everything was fairly calm. I guess it didn't get ugly until after dark. I have to say that nothing about this incident suprises me in any way.

Another vote for fresh (still twitchin') makerel fillets dusted in flour, oatmeal or instant mash and then grilled until crispy.

Wollies are currently flogging an 8 LED headlamp at half price - It'll cost you the princely sum of eight quid.

The pic on the left is me, just after landing my best Barramundi ever in April this year. It was taken at night (obviously) on a Bomber lure from a river in India and came in at about 4KG's. You could probably catch them the same way in Australia but you'd most likely get eaten if you tried. BTW, this was a baby. I lost one a couple of nights before this photo was taken that was clearly well in excess of 15KG's.

Oooh. I spoke to soon. Popped out for a couple of hours and now my ugly mug is plastered all over AN. It seems that new avatar's take a while to upload when the software re-sizes the piccies.

Looks like it but I'd have thought that PM's were fairly low priority for transfer and they might pop up in a couple of days. There are a couple that I need access to (one contains SLASHLEY's address) but I'm assuming that I can still go back to the old forum and pull the information out from the olf PM system when I need it.

Hmmm. I put my old avatar back with no problems but now that I've found a better picture, it doesn't seem to want me to replace it. It might just be settleing down so I guess I'll have to try again latter.

Not unless you're growing feathers.

Personally, I use both options. I have a 160GB internal HDD piggybacked onto my machines 40GB disc. There are some minor power supply niggles but it lets me organise my music, photos, video etc easily. I then use an 80GB external HDD as backup. This is usually stored at my parents house and retrieved/updated every month or so. Using both options gives me lots of flexibility but more importantly, in the event of fire, flood or spontanious meltdown of my PC, 99% of my data will be safe - important when that data is family photos and a music collection that has taken me ages to convert to WMA format. With external drives now costing 50p a Gig, there's no reason not to use two external drives if you don't want to mess about with installing the internal IDE jobbie - It can be tricky and I had to get help from a mate because I couldn't get my machine to recognise the new drive. One to use and one for safekeeping.

looping, tangleing and wind knots are definate problems with traditional (as opposed to fused) braids, particularly if you're casting light baits or lures. It really helps if you don't fill the spool quite as much as you would if you were fishing with mono because the slight increase in drag as it's comming off the reel helps to keep everything straight. It's also less of a problem with the newer densly woven braids than it was with the older loose flat profile stuff - especially if you use the heavier BS versions.

No, it's not just you - and it doesn't go away when you put your user name and password in either.

I didn't know that the Trent ran through Clapam Common.

Quick tip. putting all your rubbish into a carrier bag at the end of a fishing session and they tieing it to a tree is NOT an appropriate means of disposal. Stories about the Wombles collecting it overnight are not actually true.