Hooked-in

Who likes your fishing reports on Hooked-in?

Ever wonder who has voted for your fishing reports on Hooked-in?  Guess no more... Now you'll see the list of members who liked your post. You'll find the list just below the vote counter to the right of your catch report.

I hope this makes it more fun for you to vote and gives you credit for doing it. Likewise, you'll know who else has voted for your postings.

Also, while we were under the hood, we made some minor cosmetic changes to the way links show up to make the pages more readable - the underlines will only show when you mouse over.

Hope you like the changes!

Monster 45-pound catfish posted on Hooked-in

Check out this monster 45-pound catfish caught by Keith Anderson at Olathe Lake in Kansas. Keith reports, "Caught this bad boy after some heavy thunderstorms with a dozen nightcrawlers on a 5/0 kahle hook."

Winni Derby 2009 day 1 fishing results

Above are shown the fishing results from day one of the the 2009 Winni Derby. The top salmon weighed in at 4.12 pounds and the top lake trout at 8.42 pounds. The top junior salmon tipped the scales at 3.26 pounds.

Today started slow, with many fishermen showing little for their efforts. According derby coordinators, there were two factors contributing to the slow start: (1) a light wind from the east and (2) a halo around the early sun. Either of these will shut down the fishing and we had both today. No one knows why this happens, but experience has proven it causes the effect.

However, it was a wonderful day on the water and the fishing picked up later in the day. The "hot spot" throughout the day was south of Rattlesnake Island.

Of course, this will all change tomorrow and there are two days left in the derby ;-)

Hooked-in is now connected to Twitter

Earlier this week, Hooked-in got a system upgrade. Part of that upgrade was not completed because Twitter's Oauth user access control was down at the time.  Doh!

But OAuth came back up this afternoon and we were able to finish the job.

Now, you'll notice that new fishing reports posted on Hooked-in are also posted to @hookedin on Twitter. In other words, you can now "follow" Hooked-in on Twitter.

That was just phase 1 of this project. The real goal is to allow you (optionally) to "tweet" your fishing reports under your own Twitter account. This is a great way to share your fish stories with your friends (and "followers").

This should be completed in the next week or so... stay tuned!

Fishing pole video game controller

Check this out... I'd rather be outside on the water, but I think it's cool that video game designers are creating a virtual fishing experience for the living room with this "realistic" fishing pole control:

This will work with a game call The Strike coming out for the XBOX 360, Wii, and PC later this year.

Read more at "Fishing Pole Accessory for Xbox 360" and "The Strike - Hands-on Preview"

Hooked-in fishing reports upgrade completed successfully

Thanks to Adam Parrott and our good friends at RailsMachine, the upgrade to the Hooked-in Fishing Reports website was completed successfully with no downtime. For you geeks out there, we upgraded to the latest versions of Rails (2.3.2) and Ruby.

We also laid the groundwork for connecting to Twitter through OAuth. Unfortunately, Twitter's Oauth implementation had been down for the last 14 hours, so we can't totally finish that new feature right now.  Coming soon!

Enough of the geek talk...

What's this mean to you and other Hooked-in users? First of all, a faster website with more capacity.  I.e. more fun.

Also, if you are also a Twitter user (or want to become one), Hooked-in will (soon) automatically "tweet" when you post to Hooked-in. A great way to tell your friends/followers about your latest fishing triumph!

Hooked-in to be upgraded this morning

Happy Earth Day! Doing some spring cleaning and expanding capacity for the 2009 fishing season... the Hooked-in Fishing Reports website will be upgraded this morning (April 22, 2009). The work will start at 9:30 a.m. eastern. We don't anticipate the system being down for very long if at all... but you never know!

Fingers crossed... hopefully the next blog post will declare a successful upgrade.

New Alabama state record crappie... almost!

Terry Davis just posted a new Alabama state record crappie on Hooked-in... or so he thought. As reported by the Birmingham News, In the excitement of the weigh in at the Leeds, AL post office, Terry thought the scale said 4 pounds 13 ounces, when it actually read 4.13 pounds (4 pounds 2 ounces). The state record is 4 pounds 5 ounces. So, this is not quite a state record but a trophy fish for sure. Congratulations, Terry!

See the fish on Hooked-in here: http://www.hooked-in.com/catches/show/2707.

Follow Hooked-in on Twitter

With all this chatter about Twitter, I've been wondering how the members of Hooked-in can use Twitter to share fish stories... I think I've figured it out.

The main idea: Hooked-in makes it easy to post pictures and stories about your fish. Twitter makes it easy to tell the world about it. Wouldn't it be great if Hooked-in tweeted on your behalf every time you posted? I'm working to add that option and it's coming soon!

In the meantime, I've been manually tweeting some of your posts in our new @hookedin Twitter account. Follow Hooked-in here: http://twitter.com/hookedin.

LineDancer - anyone try it?

I just learned about a new product LineDancer from @mylinedancer on Twitter. It looks like an "as seen on tv" gimmick, but has 2 patents and seems like a good idea.  Has anyone tried it?  Does it work?

Here's a video: