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I was biking with my daughter this morning along the Bow in Inglewood and noticed a dude with 2 rods, one on the ground pointing upwards with a bell attached to the tip while he was rigging up another. It was obviously someone who was fishing with bait. I called it in, and a conservation officer was there in 15 minutes. He watched from afar with binoculars to make sure he had enough evidence, just in case the guy snipped his line. I just received a follow-up call and he said that this guy was caught last week by another conservation officer in Strathmore... 4 illegal walleye. The conservation officer said this is a perfect example of why we should ALWAYS call in poachers and bait fishers. If it's a father-son out fishing and making an honest mistake, then the officers deal with them differently with a warning. However, with a repeat offender like this guy, they will definitely be a bit more harsh. It was great to see these guys at work and how much they care for the river. This officer is an avid flyfisher so he's quite passionate about protecting rivers like the Bow. One less bad guy on the water!

Got the opportunity to head up to Aniak River Lodge in Western Alaska. Home to 12 species and some of Alaska best mousing for big Rainbows. We were pretty lucky weather wise, only 5 minutes of rain on one of the days, rest of the days were very comfortable. We got a goldilocks week, as we were the only paying guests, there was the dad of one of the guides and Todd Moen and Brian O'kiefe were up there doing some filming for the next issue of Catch Magazine and IF4. If I am lucky, the back of my head might be in one of the videos....hahaha But what this meant is that we had the 50 miles of Ania river to ourselves. No other lodges, no floaters. Just us, a guide, the wildlife and copious amounts of fish per mile. The welcome committee: When you get off the plane you are greeted by the guides, and taken to the welcoming lodge in Aniak. You quickly wader up, get on your jet boat and head up the river for an hour or so to the main lodge. The lodge is well appointed with a big dining hall. Heading up the kuskoswim to the mid lodge: The Aniak river is a tributary to the MUCH larger Kusko. Was worried when we were flying in at the color. But the Aniak itself is crystal clear. The Mid River Lodge: We spent 4 days fishing out of this lodge: Walking up to the dining hall View from the lodge, looking at the Aniak The Cabin: Outside The Cabin: Inside Up River Tent Camp: We spent 3 nights fishing out of the tent camp Tents. Very comfortable, and gives you more of that camping/rugged alaska feel. Waiting on Supper, Chillin by the fire Supper Time!!! Breakfast and Suppers were amazing. Chef Corey preparing the nights suasage, tri tip and brisket. Every night left you fully satisfied! Lots of wildlife around. Guides are packing the heat. But we only saw one juvenile bear the entire time, and he was none to interested in sticking around. The Daily routine. Coffee is ready at 7, breakfast is served at 7:30, 9 you meet your guide and head off for the day. Get back to the lodge around 6:30, supper waiting for you at 7:30. Your Chariots waiting for you: The fishing: Its not really fishing, but more like catching. We caught UNGODLY numbers of fish, if I threw a number out there, you probably wouldn't believe me. Most of my fishing was done with single handed 6 or 7wt rod. No need for two handers or light tippet here. You primarily fish from the boat, as they back drift with the motor. We fished most methods that they use up there: Streamers, beads and mousing. Mousing is by far my favourite, but conditions arent always optimal for it. Had one really spectacular day on the mouse, with about 15-20 big rainbows landed on the mouse and bunch of grayling in the mix. When I wanst mousing in the front of the boat, you would kill time by catching dollys, chums, or grayling on every cast of your streamer. They get get returns of all 5 species of pacific salmon ( everything except coho was in the system when we were there), leopard rainbows, grayling, sea run dollys, artic char, sheefish and pike. Most days you caught 6 or 7 differebt species of fish. Sheefish and Coho were the only ones that we were unable to catch while there. Rainbows (These girls are the prettiest rainbows I have ever seen. Their colors are just WOW. That red streak....amazing. They pull like tanks, get them up top of water column or you arent landing it. They are all over, and when you got one on you know it right away. We caught so many over 20" that I stopped counting the first day. Getting out of the wood and on top on mouse patterns was my favourite way of targeting them) Sight fished in a flat water spring. Beautiful colors, and those shoulders are meant for pulling. Hydroman with a a chunky Bow! Double Rainbow......But what does it mean? Sea Run Dolly (these girls are super abundant, you have to get past them and the grayling to catch the big bows. They are in feeding heavily on eggs being dropped by the Chum) Double Dolly Duty!!! Look at those dorito mouths...... Lots of color variation in the Dollys, some are really light, some very dark King Salmon ( you cannot target them, but you catch the odd one accidently. Must stay in the water and be let go as soon as possible. This was a little 15-20 pounder in her spawning colors) Grayling (rub his head to get his fin up......lots of these guys, like the Dollys, they eat your fly as fast as possible, caught many the beat my PB grayling. Ranged in colors from very light to very dark. They will eat mice, streamers, eggs whatever) Chum Dog. Catch lots of these guys, awesome pull on the line. They get a run of about 800,000 of these guys in the river. As you jet up, it is a parting of the Chum. But these guys provide a ton of nutrient for the entire ecosystem, whether that is their eggs or decaying bodies. Everything feeds on them. Which is why the Dolly, Bows and Grayling are so big. Watch your fingers with this set of chompers. Artic Char: Tough to tell them apart from the Dollys sometimes. But this is a good example of a more typical Char. In the lower stretches and a trib called the Doestok, you can catch some very nice Pike.. Everyone should try to experience Alaska at least once. Whether it be this lodge or somewhere else. The time and money is worth the adventure that awaits you.

I snagged a beaver once. We’ve been married for 35 years...

It's not a monster, but this 24 incher is the biggest one I've caught since my 28 incher 10 years ago! Caught on my last cast somewhere in SW Alberta. It's a miracle I landed this with my 7.5 ft 4 wt rod using 5X tippet! Fish was landed quickly and sent back to her home.

I am excited! For many years it seems like the trout lakes in Alberta have been stocked based on tradition. Starting with Mitchell Lake and an angler request for a fall spawners [browns or brookies] to complement the spring spawners [rainbows], Brown trout were stocked in 2003. Angler acceptance of the mixed species resulted in a further experiment in Birch Lake with Brook, Rainbow and Brown trout stocked in 2013. At the request of many anglers, after either experiencing the Tiger Trout fishing in Manitoba or seeing the pictures, Tiger trout are now being stocked in several places throughout Alberta. After many years of catching Brown Trout from Europe, Brook Trout from some bog from in a New England state and Rainbows from British Columbia or the US, we are now on the cusp of a brand new mostly made in Alberta Rainbow. In conversation with Craig Copeland, Fish Culture Manager of Alberta Environment and Parks, I learned that a different Rainbow Trout is now being cultured for stocking . These Rainbow Trout, which are near 95% purity of Athabasca Trout, are one of the Native Trout of Alberta. The brood stock came from an end pit lake in an active coal mine. Clearly, as the trout are not 100% purity, they cannot be called Athabasca Trout for the purposes of identification. To reflect their mixed linage, they are designated as PLPL species in the stocking reports. Mr. Copeland also related that some of the PLPL strain have been added to East Pit Lake near Stoney Plain. He anticipated that somewhere between 100,000 > 150,000 PLPL trout would be stocked by 2020. Personally, as a third generation Albertan, I’m excited as hell to get a chance to catch a Rainbow raised in Alberta from Alberta stocks. My thanks to all involved to make my dream come true. Don Andersen Here are some pictures of the Athabaskas - I know - I know - I'm not supposed to say that but......

While guiding a couple in BC on a small stream they asked me to marry them. Kind of like a captain of a ship I guess. Told them it wouldn't be legal, they said its OK they already where. We did a ceremony under the pines in my old drift boat. Have always received an xmas card from them every year.

Got my rod and reel back Thanks to RedBeard and the forum.

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve put in the time exploring the east slopes of the Rockies, but I rectified that this year. For the past couple of months, I have spent at least two days a week walking and wading a beautiful mountain stream, trying to learn some of its secrets. It’s been food for the soul and I have been rewarded with awesome scenery, beautiful fish and nature at its finest

I recently had the exact same interaction, but I asked the guy his name and if his property operated a business. I then pulled out my phone and made it clear I was calling the cops. I told him I needed his info as I needed to know who I was going to have charged and sued for violating my charter given rights. He stated we didn't need to do that but I still had to leave, I responded with he has 3 options, 1 me calling the cops 2 me posting on all my social media where the best brown trout fishing is on this stream and he'll have to deal with all of us legally fishing 3 he can walk back to his house educated I also told him at the end of this id still be fishing it. He walked away muttering. We have to stand up to these guys. I have talked to anglers that have been scared off of this property numerous time. The land owner does it because he gets away with it. I also go to local detachment if the land owner gets threatening, even if nothing happens just to have the record. Stand for our rights guys, we loose stuff daily.

Hope it doesn't migrate up here...

5.5ft Lodgepole Branch is all one needs for Cutties

Blonde Wulff

Hello all, Thought I would share my winter project here! I was in need of a 4 weight reel for a rod that I built, so I decided to design a reel that would suit both my 4 weight and 6 weight rod. The goal was to design a high performance disc drag reel which would cost no more than two decent fly reels. Since getting into fly fishing, I have had this dream of having a fly reel on the market which could compete with the best. Maybe someday! I used the info and formulas from the "2015 5 weight Fly Reel Shootout" by Trident Fly Fishing to determine my specs and adjust them. The final design had: -4.25oz Approx -3.5" OD -Spool volume of approx 4 in^3 for the 4 weight spool, and about 4.5 in^3 for the 6 weight spool -Line pickup approx 7.6" per turn The reel has a disc drag system with alternating Teflon/Rulon and Stainless Steel drag washers and has plenty of adjustment, and will be sealed. Other features include an incoming and outgoing click sound, easy spool changing, and pretty much everything else a normal fly reel would have. As my motivation for this project was high, I didn't have many issues designing the reel. Most things just took time and some research (and a background in designing stuff with CAD). The main challenges were designing a drag system to be adjustable AND sealed, as well as making it affordable. The first design was going to be fully CNC machined, but it would have cost upwards of $1500 from a Chinese manufacturer, which is way more than I was willing to spend considering it may not even work properly. I worked through a few more design iterations and ended up coming to the conclusion that I would have to do some unconventional things to make it affordable/worthwhile. I decided to utilize a lot of CNC laser cut parts in the design, which can achieve precision similar to CNC machining, although they lack the ability to do 3D features on a single part. In the end, i was able to design something that would function well and look cool (to me at least). All parts are either CNC laser cut or machined from 6061-T6 Aluminum or Stainless Steel. I wanted it to stand out and be unique, so I designed it to have fish graphics laser cut into it, featuring a rainbow, brown, brook, cutthroat, and bull trout - basically, the trout we fly fish for in Alberta. Some "wave" features joined them to provide structure. Below are some renders of the design: Most of the parts have now arrived and I am totally satisfied with them all. The drag system has been tested and feels very smooth and strong, and all parts fit together exactly as they should. It really would have sucked if it was a disaster If all goes well, I will have a fish pulling line off this thing by the end of next week! Next winter I will likely design a second housing with a different graphic, as well as play around with more finishing techniques (polishing, etching, anodizing). For now I'll just enjoy it! I'll upload a picture when its completely finished. Cheers!

I caught a bull by accident last year in a spot I didn't even know they existed. Other than that, a couple from streams in the last 10 years. The number of people going specifically to target big, staging bulls sure has increased. They are quite vulnerable being so visible sitting in their gin-clear pools I fish for Cutts about 3 days per year over the last 10 years. It is a treat to go feed them some dries on a special trip. I think they are too valuable to abuse. You can catch every one in a pool on nymph In the past BC had a "flyfishing only" rule on certain streams.... No bobbers, no attaching weights to the leader, single hook....I think we should do the same for the southern AB streams that are getting loved to death. It would be nice to see a few fish that don't have their mouths ripped up. They are only Cutts, work for them a bit

So I have a little boy, almost 4. He got an Echo practice rod when he was 2. He fished a Sage TXL2710 with a Sage Click II, he's really got a handle on streamer angling and has just started mixing it up with hopper-dropper rigs. He's banged out some sweet gold during high waters, I couldn't be prouder. We recently got back from a camping and fishing trip, and he said something that cut me to the core. He got his hands on classically coloured rainbow, he was blown away. He then told me the rainbow is now his favorite fish..... WTF? What did I do as a father to fail in such a manner? Rainbows.... come on, I told him they are the equivalent to Instagram butt models, no substance, no soul, just the same looks as next one. I did the only things I could think, I sprayed bug spray and SPF on his flies, broke his TXL over my knee and then took him to WalMart bought him an uglystick and some Raps. I think I'm going to head to the downtown browntown section with a bottle of wild turkey and contemplate my very existence. Thoughts? Flyfishy where you at sucka?

On the weekend, my wife comes to me and says her car is making a knocking sound. She's worried something is wrong with her brakes and wants me to take it for a spin. I oblidge, and sure enough I hear the knock too... only happens when braking fairly hard, but doesn't sound like it is related to the brakes per se. I tell her it sounds like something is loose underneath, but when I crawled under I couldn't see anything with my untrained eye. I tell her to take it in to Toyota for them to have a look, and she does. For the record, it took a second mechanic to diagnose it... their laughter was payment rendered.

Getting back to the opening theme of this thread ... My season on the Bow was a mixed bag. Not as many fish-to-net as in past years, but most of them were large (18-24") and healthy. Very few small fish. This reflects a change in my approach over the past few years. I used to be a die-hard dry fly fisher. Even if there was no active surface feeding, I would toss attractor patterns while scanning the water for surface action. The result was that I would catch quite a few 6-12 inch rainbows while skating a caddis emerger, often getting surprise hook-ups while retrieving my line, "accidentally" catching dumb juvenile trout while intent on setting up for my next cast. A few years ago my approach started to evolve, after having some heart-thumping success with streamers. That, and a perception that finding pods of surface sipping snouts is becoming more and more uncommon on the Bow - at least during the daylight hours (and my bat phobia keeps me off the water after sunset). So now my go-to technique involves wet-wade streamer swinging, while always keeping a weather eye open for rising fish. This also means that I don't often rig up with full sinking rigs, so I can switch to dry flies without too much hassle. Not the most effective approach for getting streamers down where the fish are holding, but not completely without merit. At least when you are swinging streamers near the surface, you get to see some big swirling refusals that would go unnoticed with a sinking rig. All that being said, I still think my empirical observations support the conclusion that the Bow still has plenty of large trout (more rainbows than browns in my notional creel, but that might be due to my floating rig approach), but the 6-12 inch cohort seems to have suffered a noticeable decline. Overall, even though my fish/day rate has dropped, by biomass my success rate has improved (one twenty inch fish probably has the equivalent mass of a dozen or more juveniles). I guess having fewer, but larger, fish might result in good biomass figures, but is that healthy/sustainable? Is this perceived change in age/size distribution borne out by the electro-shocking surveys? If so, what is the cause? I don't think angler pressure would do this. Probably the opposite. Did the flood change the feeding habits of mature trout? Lots of banged up little fish making for easy hunting in the summer of 2013, training a generation of eager piscivores? Did the flood reduce the quality and quantity of rearing habitat? I used to have a favourite beat near Home Rd that got swept away and replaced by riprap in 2013/14. I've spent some time poking around the NW this fall, and it seems to me that in addition to the riprap wasteland that continues to expand along the left bank of the river, there isn't a lot of natural vegetation in those parts of the riverbed that haven't been flood-proofed. The shallows in the NW are just a large expanse of rock snot. Not much cover for juvenile trout, and it doesn't look like ideal bug habitat. Last fall I saw redds being tended in water that was quite deep and fast-flowing (as compared to redds down below Police): is this an attempt by spawning fish to stay clear of the rock snot? is it a successful spawning strategy? A couple of one-liners to cover the high- and lowlights of my season: - The Bow is changing, and I've had to adopt different techniques to keep up. Still not going to be tossing bobbers anytime soon, though. - The Oldman system is on the verge of angler-pressure crisis. One day on the Livingston was enough for me: fishers at every access point (on a weekday!), battle-scarred trout the new norm. And there's a summer job for someone who wants to provide valet parking at the Gap. - The Elk is facing similar angler pressure issues ... and don't get me started on how BC has hijacked a federal (it's in our Constitution!) resource and made it virtually impossible for most Canadians to fish the Michel and Wigwam. - The mountain tribs of the Bow remain relatively overlooked, but a successful day of fishing usually involves a couple km of bushwhacking and wading to find the honey holes. - I now have to walk further to find the solitude that I'm looking for with my wet-wades, but the day I say I don't enjoy a 30 minute hike to find prime fishing water, it'll be time to hang up my gear and spend weekends watching Bob Izumi catch bass with crank bait.

Love it. Reminds me of my late teenage years. My younger brother came out of the closet around the same time I told my parents I had become a conservation oriented fly fisherman... my Dad was so ashamed of me, he couldn't speak. My gay brother got the boat and the cabin! Your young man has an eye for beauty methinks... at least Rainbow Trout are native to Canada and Alberta, those Bow River Loch Leven Brown Trout are exotics from the old world, or in some cases from Germany... who would want to catch a lazy, louche, decadent euro-trutta that is the colour of diarrhea? Coarse fish vs Game fish is an old country term. Vestiges of the British Class system. Game fish were trout and salmonids, while everything else like Chub and Dace and Eel and Pike and Walleye were, well of course, coarse. A bit out of fashion here in Canada, but still used to identify seasonal fisheries and the fishermen and fisherwomen in Bonnie Ol' England, Scotland and Wales. The rainbow trout species and myriad variants have proven themselves to be the most amazingly adaptive little fish. From Chromers, through to the California Golden Trout they are an incredible and complex example of tenacity and beauty. Like most fathers, do you not hope that your children grow up to transcend their own parentage? Do we not hope they will go beyond our meagre ability, and fly forth from the nest to achieve their true potential? I believe your young lad is well on his way! Bravo!

Jayhad just rose and hooked his first riser for 2019. Now if he had the same skill playing and releasing them. Don

Remember the positive changes when voting comes around next year. Who will work with an admittedly imperfect conservation-regeneration approach, and who will attempt to reverse it to the days of dust, mud, and noise?

A bowl of goodness

So that didn't take long after we started getting in the media. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-trout-fishing-recovery-plan-1.4546810 http://edmontonjournal.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/alberta-government-backs-off-plans-to-close-popular-fishing-rivers/wcm/ecd291b2-3ea5-4b7f-a163-4c0dbedb501e And folks, make sure to thank Don Anderson as he helped us (Backcountry Hunters and Anglers) out a lot with this.

Went out for what was probably my last camping trip of the year. Wasn't as quiet as it was during the OHV ban but the beautiful fall scenery helped make up for it. First campfire in months! Luckily I still remembered how to split wood and light a match. Found some fish. This guy broke someone off before I got him. If you want to reclaim your fly, sorry but it slipped out of my fingers and floated away. Ciao! The clouds kept threatening all weekend but other than a shower on Sunday morning it stayed dry.