I think I talked about this already a couple of years ago, but for those of you technically–minded folks who may be interested in how we generate and publish our Woman Lake Reports, here's a rather lengthy discussion. However, this really is not about fishing and certainly not about catching at all, and I advise you to ignore it. Go back to the Woman Lake Report itself. But if you're determined to press on with the grungy details, well, here they are.

(Incidentally, the writing style of the above paragraph is lifted directly from a famous Muskie writer, George Sandell. He wrote a book, "Muskie, Muskie, on the Wall," that's a delight to read. If you can find it on eBay or Amazon, buy it! I enjoyed it tremendously. As it turns out, I plagiarize the writing styles of many famous authors. It took me 10 years after I read Bill Gardner's "Time on the Water," to quit writing his way and start writing my own. I once showed George something I had penned, some years ago. He looked me in the eye. "You're copying Gardner, aren't you?" I reluctantly nodded my head. I didn't tell George that I copied him also.)

First, we take pictures with digital cameras, pretty much exclusively. Both Rick Zieman and I have Kodak DC–4800 cameras, Jerry has a Nikon Coolpix 995, and Hugh Perry has something even more expensive and fancier. All of these cameras use "Compact Flash Type II" memory cards. Then, I have a "Card Carrier" that accepts the memory cards and plugs in either directly to my Macintosh laptop (see below) or connects to Jerry's PC (also below) via a "Lexar Multi–media" card reader.

The process is that I collect all the pictures taken during the day, sift through them, and select the ones we want to publish. I generate a text file with the "picture captions" on my Mac, and put the selected pictures and text on a memory card. I give that to Jerry, who reads the card through the Lexar Reader and stores it on his PC.

Jerry then generates the "HTML" document with the pictures and captions, using Macromedia Dreamweaver software, and uploads the file to "addr.com's," web server that hosts Jerry's walleyes.org web pages via a DSL connection through his ISP, ARVIG.

His home Local Area Network – LAN – has a DSL modem, a router, and an ethernet hub. His PC interfaces to the Lexar Reader and internet via the hub. My Mac also has an ethernet interface to the LAN via the hub, which gives me internet access and I can do emails, etc.

One small complication is that when I send out the nightly Woman Lake Report email I can't go through Jerry's ISP's E-Mail server for various obscure technical reasons. These have to do with e-Mail protocols, sizes of address spaces in emails, firewalls, the phase of the moon and other things which neither Jerry nor I understand. So when I send out the WLR e-Mail, I dial in directly via telephone to my minn.net ISP.

The production process is that I try to do the pictures and captions throughout the day in between fishing outings and naps, or early in the evening. Then, when we come in after the evening's fishing I write the report during and after dinner. I make sure that I don't get done before that or else I would have to help the rest of the crowd with cleaning up and washing dishes.

After dinner, Jerry generates and uploads the picture file. When he's done, and we check out that the link is good, I send out the WLR itself.

It seems that we can't get done with all that before midnight, at which point I fall exhausted into bed. (I actually sleep on the couch – a twenty-year-old tradition.) This WLR thing is hard work, but the pay is good.

If you got this far please send me an email with the subject line "GOTCHA!" and your name and address in the text of the message and I'll send you a check for $10. Limit one per customer, first five responses, British subscribers paid in US funds.

Juris