As I write this I'm planning and packing for my umteenth Canadian fishing trip. Fishing here at home is great, and if you'd take a full week and do nothing but fish every day, all day, like you do when you go to Canada, you'd probably catch about as many fish, but you likely wouldn't do it.

After about the second day you'd start to feel guilty about how high the grass was getting and by day four you'd be starting the mower instead of the outboard. Besides, my summer doesn't seem complete unless I head north of the border.

Planning a fishing trip is half the fun. You must buy a couple new lures (one never has enough), put new line on the reels (the line that's been serving us well here at home just won't do), and take your reels apart and over-grease them, (if a little grease is good, then a lot has to be better "¦ right?). You also have to pack clothing for every type of weather, because in sub-arctic Quebec, that's exactly what you can expect to get. I've read somewhere that northern Quebec has the most unpredictable weather on the planet ... and I believe it! I've seen snow in the morning and 80-degree heat in the afternoon. Not often, but it can happen.

We're returning this year to Mirage Lodge in far northern Quebec. I had the best pike fishing of my life there last year, and this year we're also planning a two-day float trip on the headwaters of the La Grande River for speckled trout. Five-pounders are not unusual on that river, and there are even some approaching 10 pounds. The really nice part is we'll likely not see another angler. My kind of fishing!

There was a time when we'd have thrown everything into the back of a full-size pickup and had tons of room to spare. Not any more. We'll take my partner's little puddle jumper, which gets 40-plus miles per gallon. We'll have to pack a bit more carefully, but at four bucks a gallon, (probably more in Canada) we'll manage.

UP TO PAR: For the first time in two years, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has a full complement of commissioners. Ronald Weaner, of Biglerville, joined the commission at the June meeting, representing District 6, which includes Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Juniata, Mifflin, Lebanon, Lancaster, Perry, Snyder and York counties. He was nominated by Gov. Ed Rendell in May and unanimously confirmed by the State Senate on June 3.

Weaner is a vocational agriculture teacher and has also been a dairy farmer. He states that he's been a life-long hunter and a student of the game commission. His teaching emphasis, in recent years, has been on wildlife management and forestry.

He replaces Steven Mohr, who'd been a very vocal critic of the game commission's current deer management program. Many hunters felt like they'd lost one of their few friends on the commission when Mohr's term expired. Time will tell where the new Commissioner will stand on the issue.

n E-mail comments to jdsteese@yahoo.com.