Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
Frying pan to the frieezer
- Ma (mm mm)
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- cardinal (Lar Savage)
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well done to you ......

Lar
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- JohnH (John)
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You're a mad man!
That was some challenge alright, even more than my greatest ordeal, falling into a freezing lake before a Fishing Match started (ice in the margins - the whole winter thing) - then sitting freezing cold in an Easterly wind for the five-hour match because I had been brought there as a passenger and couldn't get home!
I'd like to say my "perseverance" was rewarded and I won the Competition - but I didn't! I did have one bite that day - but I was too bloody cold to respond to it!!!
The things we do in the name of "enjoyment".
Well done!
John
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- Ma (mm mm)
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The real test is the hole in the ice after the sauna. Better get me courage pump out for next year

Pump Pump Pump.
Hey John, it was only a few secs, that hours on end suffering is not for me and you seem to do it "just for fun", or as the swedes try to say "yoost fur fon"!!
The missus's dad is proper hard, he does this ice thing weekly, some Finns are stung out on it.
Really depressed to be Irish seeing how they run Finland, really is a start contrast to the calamity we call public services health care education. Sad really.
I think I got the easy way out matey:)
Mark
P.S. We all know the "real" hard ones say nothing at all

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Mark
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- Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
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Good stuff man, bet it took a while for the b**ls to drop again after that.
Jay
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- JohnH (John)
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Hey John, it was only a few secs, that hours on end suffering is not for me and you seem to do it "just for fun", or as the swedes try to say "yoost fur fon"!!
Mark, That was a lifetime ago - we all used to take the Fishing Competitions very seriously in those days!
Nowadays? - I would be away, regardless of having no transport! (Not sure how, but anyway I wouldn't be fishing now in the sorts of conditions we used to endure then - life's too short!).
John
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- Ma (mm mm)
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Thats a long roundabout way of saying "I am an old sod" is it I am reading? maybe it's just me :0
@Jay
I seem to remember hearing of a certian chap, ahem, cough cough, sitting in the morning cold azz winter sea as part of the morning festivities some time back, wonder if that activity had anything to do with your, i mean his current aquatic addiction :O
Mark
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Jay
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@John
Thats a long roundabout way of saying "I am an old sod" is it I am reading? maybe it's just me
What an evil and scurrilous attack!!!
(But true...)
;o)
John
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- fourmations (NIall SMyth)
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even more than my greatest ordeal, falling into a freezing lake before a Fishing Match started
hiya john
were you in a club?
i used to be mad into match fishing for years
rgds
4
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- JohnH (John)
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JohnH wrote:
even more than my greatest ordeal, falling into a freezing lake before a Fishing Match started
hiya john
were you in a club?
i used to be mad into match fishing for years
rgds
4
4,
I was, but that was back in England - before my 'defection'.
There is a bit of a Match Fishing scene around Portumna/Banagher but I'm afraid I'm a bit 'past it' now, carting sacks of groundbait etc to the pegs, many of which are literally miles - well, a long way anyway, are beyond my capability...sadly.
I reverted back to my first love of Pike Fishing, but am afraid that Pike Fishing in this area has unfortunately become a very 'hit-and-miss' affair - nothing like it was when I first used to come over. Not the least because of the 'abuse' they suffered (and still are suffering) from so-called "anglers" from Europe.
A real pity, but that's the way things go, I'm afraid.
John
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- sparky (sparky)
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Congratulations! have to say, I really dont think i could do it! I'd get as far as opening the robe, and think 'To hell with this' and head straight back into the sauna!!

But thats just me! Fair play tho!!!
-Brian
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- Ma (mm mm)
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feels like rum in your veins after the initial pain subsides though I was that cold that when I went back to the sauna I put on lots of water on the stones, not feeling the heat yet went a bit mad with the water and of course burnt my mouth nose & hands trying to breathe

Mark
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