Free Republic

All he did was ask to go home. The last time the Burmese slave made the same request, he was beaten almost to death. But after being gone eight years and forced to work on a boat in faraway Indonesia, Myint Naing was willing to risk everything to see his mother again. His nights were filled with dreams of her, and time was slowly stealing her face from his memory. So he threw himself on the ground and roped his arms around the captain’s legs to beg for freedom. The Thai skipper barked loud enough for all to hear that...

'I've never seen this before': How a family outing took 'totally bizarre' turn after dolphin lands in boat, breaks woman's ankles. For a few moments, it was pure bliss as dolphins swam alongside the Frickman family’s small boat, leaping toward the sky and doing flips. The Frickman family had been enjoying a sunny afternoon June 21 – the first day of summer, Father’s Day and also Dirk and Chrissie Frickman’s 18th wedding anniversary – when they came across the pod of dolphins as they were heading back to the Dana Point Harbor. Tristan, 12, and Courtney, 16, edged toward the...

BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) -- 10-year-old Lily Hornish loves fishing. So her family took her on a trip to Ketchikan, Alaska, in the hope of catching a halibut. But the shy angler wasn't expecting to catch one so big. "It was the first bait down, then my pole was tugging," Lily said. "I started reeling it in and then my dad helped me. And then a big fish came out." A big fish that weighed 333 pounds, to be exact.

Across Northwest Wisconsin there has been much discussion about the decline of the walleye population. In response one of Governor Scott Walker’s initiatives has been stocking lakes with larger “extended walleye” versus small fry in the hopes that the larger fish have better chance of surviving and then reproducing. However, Governor Walker in his proposed biennium budget has also proposed cutting some key Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) scientists in the Bureau of Science Services, scientist behind the extended walleye initiative and who also created the modeling for the three-bag limit of walleyes using length as the critical factor...

“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.” This rhyming lore has been around for at least a couple millennia, serving seafarers in port and on the open ocean when they needed something that passed for a forecast. And while we may discount it in today’s modern world – what with all of our high-tech satellite imagery, anchored weather buoys, Doppler radar and suites of computer forecasting ensembles – there still is some truth to the saying. I’m no meteorologist, but the nut is that it has to do with areas of high pressure being...

Indonesia yesterday sank a large Chinese vessel as well as 40 other foreign boats that had been caught fishing illegally in the country’s waters, a move likely to spark a strong reaction from Beijing and other regional capitals.

To avoid overfishing and aid in sustainable exploitation, the status of the fish stocks has to be monitored regularly. In many cases stock assessment is based on fishery-dependent data generated from fish markets or creel surveys. The assumption is: the lower the catches in a certain unit of time, the smaller the stock of fish should be. The scientists Dr. Josep Alós and Prof. Dr. Robert Arlinghaus from the German Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have now shown that some fish species show enhanced gear-avoidance behaviour in regions with high angling intensity compared...

Taco flavored Doritos And my orange life vest Dad caught a hundred pound sturgeon On twenty-pound test -- Primus, "Fish On (Fisherman's Chronicles, Part II)" Yerhart has caught only one sturgeon in his life. But it was the sturgeon of a lifetime. On Friday night, Yerhart, a 34-year-old truck technician from Brownsdale, Minn., found himself in a Hemingway-esque struggle with a prehistoric monster: a lake sturgeon as long as he is tall, and perhaps twice his age and 10 times the weight for which his rod and reel were designed. Once nearly wiped out by overfishing (caviar is sturgeon...

Trolling for Dummies A dummy's guide to trolling — from picking lures to setting up your trolling spread. By Erik Landesfeind In last week's So Cal Scene, I touched upon the subject of trolling while discussing fishing kelp paddies. Apparently I should've spent a little more time on the subject as I've received several emails from readers with questions like, “What colors and brands of lures should I use?” “How exactly should I set up my trolling spread?” and “How do I go about trolling that spread?” My honest answer to most of them was, “I don't know, but I'm...

A fisherman got the fright of his life when the catch he was reeling in was attacked and stolen by a great white shark. Filmed in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand a man can be seen fishing from the side of a boat – his rod bent under the pressure. Struggling to reel in the seemingly huge fish, the man states ‘he’s not happy about coming over here anyway.’

A stingray weighing nearly 800lb has become the largest freshwater fish ever caught by rod and line. The gigantic flat fish, which was 8ft wide and 14ft long, took nearly two hours to reel in. It was caught by American TV nature conservationist Jeff Corwin on the Mae Klong river in Thailand earlier this week.

Scott Walker is killing it with Republicans. The Wisconsin governor is one of his party's rising stars—thanks to his ongoing and largely successful war against his state's labor unions, a fight that culminated Monday with the signing of a controversial "right-to-work" bill. Now (for the moment, anyway), he's a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the Conservative Political Action Conference a couple weeks ago, he polled a close second to three-time winner Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), beating the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by a significant margin. It probably won't...

a driveable ice shack

".....Yuma,Colorado, a farming town of 3,500 people near the Kansas border, celebrated last month as homegrown Republican Cory Gardner was elected to the U.S. Senate. Gardner, a high school football player and the son of a farm equipment dealer, defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to help the GOP gain control of the Senate in the second-most expensive congressional race of all time.Gardner represented Colorado’s 4th Congressional District for four years, an expansive territory that covers the mostly flat and rural eastern third of the state. Farmers there mostly grow corn to feed cattle, and water comes from the quickly...

Federal regulators slapped a six-month ban on most cod fishing off New England this week and are threatening to cut next year’s catch by up to 75 percent, in a move some say will destroy the livelihoods of fishermen across the region. ... NOAA announced several measures, including the ban which expands no-fishing zones, on Monday. But fishermen whose livelihoods rely on catching cod, as well as the coastal communities that depend on money coming in from that industry, worry the new regulations will devastate them.

Montana wildlife officials are dropping a proposal to keep confidential the names of hunters and trappers who kill wildlife in Montana. ... That information is now available under the state's right-to-know laws. Some hunters and trappers had claimed they were being harassed by people who had obtained the information.

After decades of paranoid hemming and hawing, last month the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management finally approved oil exploration in Federal waters along the Atlantic coast from Delaware to Florida.‘The announcement is the first real step toward what could be a transformation in coastal states,” says the Associated Press report, “creating thousands of jobs to support a new energy infrastructure. But it dismayed environmentalists and people who owe their livelihoods to fisheries and tourism.”Alas, this “dismay” afflicts only the greenies from Delaware to Florida. From New Jersey up through New England the greenie hysteria against offshore oil exploration prevailed....

Every week CBS News travels America fishing for interesting stories. And, once again, we've hooked a good one. A trout's brain is no bigger than a lentil, yet when it comes to outsmarting fly fishermen, it's enough. Which is why truly obsessive fishermen, like Randy Brown, seek any advantage they can -- like splurging on a $4,000 fishing pole. "It's just a pleasure to fish with. There's just no other rods like these," says Brown. "It's the best stick there is." The rods he's referencing are designed by legendary rod-maker Tom Morgan. If fly fishing is a religion, this is...

I shall rend the heavens soon in a new way for all the Earth is about to witness and taste of My glory as I (( ( Roar ) )) out salvation over the children of My creation and Now in this Valley of Decisions I shall rise up the mountains that choose Me and have chosen Me . So watch and see for The Latter Rain is about to flourish My Lilies of The Valley I AM about to dress in My Glory Isaiah 64:1-4 64 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains...

A new grant program in Michigan takes extra money from hunting and fishing fees and distributes it to private landowners. The state Department of Natural Resources recently announced 12 wildlife habitat grant winners for the "Deer PLAN" (Private Land Assistance Network). This grant is available to private landowners in six counties in northern Michigan ostensibly to improve deer habitat. One hunter wasn't thrilled about the program. Tom Wills is an outdoorsman from Quinnesec in the Upper Peninsula. "I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that Michigan DNR is giving my license fees to a dozen private land...