reevesr1

I have no idea what you are talking about. But if I did know, I would say it was up for debate who actually left the rod. And if a rod was left, it was a 6 wt Hardy Zane Grey saltwater rod and possibly the saltwater hardy reel. Hardly worth going back for.....

I wanted to give a shout out to Hanson's. My son Ben is a co-op engineering student at the U of A and is on his first work term. He is working out of Wandering River on the Hwy 63 twinning project as a material tester. 12 hour days, 24 on 4 off (yikes!). On his off time, he is super bored and decided he wanted to learn to tie flies to pass some time, and to sell me flies. I talked to Wayne who found him an old vise, spent a couple of hours showing him the basics, and set him up with all he needs to get started. I think a bunch of copper johns and wolly buggers are in my future. Anyway, I wanted to thank Wayne for taking the time to teach him.

Black hole of fun alert! Try not to get sucked into the event horizon. Gary, I wish I had info for you, but I specifically look for spots with hills (not kidding here), the steeper the better. Keeps the traffic a bit lower. I have heard that a few landowners are starting to restrict access.

Hey, I ate there with my son and his girlfriend there today. I've been there a few times and like it. But really thin crust pizza will never make my top pizza list. But if you like thin crust, this place makes a great pizza!

So I don't really worry at all about where in the string my split shot is. Not saying it doesn't matter (hell, everything matters to some degree), I just don't think it matters a great deal. Or I've never noticed it mattering. My point is, at this point just put it somewhere between the first and second fly, or just above the first fly and then don't concern yourself too much with it. You are better off keeping flies in the water than constantly adjusting the split. I could make somewhat the same case for the strike indicator. While I strive for the 1.5 to 2 (and if truth be told, I'm quite often more like scel in slower water, ie, just over water depth), I don't change the position constantly. If I know the water depth is 2 to 4 feet where I'm fishing (as an example) and the water is moderately fast, I might set it to 5 or 6 feet and live with it. It's not like it's a rule. I caught a lot of fish when I just put my indi and 9 feet (or however long my leader was) and just left it there all day. Don't stand still! I can't tell you how many people I watch just stand in the same position of a run and make the same cast over and over again. I wonder sometime if they think there is a line of fish just waiting for there hook to come by. Grid the water when you fish. Start close in, keep working out. Once you have worked that bit of water, walk up 5 steps and do it again. Do this through the entire run. If you didn't get anything, change flies and do it again. Or adjust your depth or weight. But do something different. Standing in one spot is no way to fish. Friends shouldn't let friends stand in one spot and fish! By far, the biggest issue is drift control. By FAR. You have to learn to manipulate your line so that you get a drag free drift. Way, way easier said than done. Watch you indi in relation to bubbles. In a perfect world, your indi will be going the same speed. In reality, it will usually track a bit slower because the current on the bottom of the river is slower than the current at the top. Basically, if your line is not positioned properly and you impart any side motion, or slow or speed up your presentation in relation to the actual current speed you are fishing, you will not get nearly as many strikes. Once you start to figure this out, you will catch fish. Guaranteed. Assuming you are fishing where there are fish (which is probably the biggest issue, making my first two sentences in this paragraph an over statement!). Finally, set the hook on EVERYTHING!! If you assume your indi drug under the water due to snagging on bottom, you will usually be correct. Except when you aren't and it's a fish. And if you don't set on everything, you will undoubtedly miss a lot of fish. I remember one day I was fishing with a client of mine from work. Max Robinson was guiding my client, and I was fishing behind them. They finish up a run and I hear Max say "that was really good, but you need to start setting the hook on everything. You missed several fish there." Max then looks at me and nods at the run. They go to the bank for a snack and I go into the run my client just vacated and caught 5 or 6 nice rainbows. After that, my client cleaned up. If the indi bobbled, he would hammer it. And I had a blast supplying the object lesson! But all of us forget the basics from time to time. This lesson was driven home to me for about the 1000th time a couple of weeks ago when I flicked my rod to free my rig from a snag, when that snag jumped out of the water and was a brown in the 25" range. I think. Cuz he was only on for a second and I got to call myself stupid for a few hours. Keep working at it newdrenalin, it gets better. If you have friends who fish the bow, follow them around a bit and watch. If not, pm me when the river starts down post run off. I'll take you out for a bit.

Take if from someone who has lived a lot of places, some of them VERY nice (San Diego, Orlando, and Waikiki come to mind) from a style of life perspective and some wonderful (small town Louisiana and Texas, Pocatello Idaho) from a outdoors perspective. I would gladly live in any of the above places if given the opportunity again. But only if they kick me out of Calgary kicking and screaming. For a man with a wife and three kids, all of whom, to varying degrees, love the outdoors, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather live. I realize this is a totally subjective thing, but for me this is the best place I've ever lived, and while there are things I don't like, they are so outnumbered by the things I do like the problems pale in significance. In fact, I kinda like the fact the city has issues. If it didn't, too many people would want to live here. I work for an international company. One of the issues we have with transferring people here is the proportion of them who don't want to leave when we try to transfer them out. That says a lot for the city of Calgary and the country of Canada. Many of you folks have no idea how good you have it here. Keep working to change things you would like to see changed, but don't lose site of how great it is here. Thus ends my speech sponsored by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce!

That would work. But don't get too fixated on the 9 foot part. If you know the water depth you are fishing, try to follow the 1.5 to 2x water depth. The faster the water, the more you can lean toward the 2x part, slower water I lean toward 1.5. Adjust your indicator according to the water depth and rate. But 9 foot is a nice place to start.

I actually had no fish show any interest in my larger Caddis flies (10-12s). I did not fish for all that long, and took 3 on a #14 EHC wit cdc and 2 on a #16 or maybe 18 emerger.

I'd be fishing a golden stone, something small and dark in size #18, and caddis pupae. Bring some EHC and caddis emergers too. If they get on surface again today, you'll want to try that too. Any of the shops can help you with flies.

Here you go Clive, you're very own cheerleading squad. Takes about 50 seconds to get going. My daughter is the girl in the lower left of the screen when they get all lined up. She is the MVP of her team, and told me to tell you this is dedicated to you. Sorry for the hijack, but I couldn't resist. I tried though!

Species caught on fly rod: Brown Rainbow Cutt Brooke Bull White Pike Sucker Burbot I did once catch a pike. sucker, burbot in succession on the Bow.

At that age, in my opinion, it is far better to use whatever method is easiest and catches fish. Don't complicate things at this age. If it's too complicated, or worse yet not effective, most kids will get bored and quit. I know there are exceptions to this, but it is true in most cases. Get them hooked on fishing first, then worry about methodology.

Nice, buddy!

I'm in the very early planning stages for a trip next year! Turns out one of my colleagues here is from Mongolia and she has family who does some outfitting.

Stingrays. Blech. I've caught a few, they are like the opposite of sharks. Instead of explosive runs you get slow unstoppable power. And when they wear out (which takes too damn long), they like to form a suction cup on sandy bottoms. Think sore arms. Then when you finally see them, they are way smaller than you thought they would be and you feel like a wimp. We would fish for them with crabs, and we always kept some of the crabs alive so that when the rays do their suction cup thing you can take the crab pinchers and tape then around the line and drop the crab down the line. The crab lands on the ray, starts crawling around driving the ray crazy and it gets up off the bottom. I swear. Also the damn things get into prime wading water in the spring time to spawn making us shuffle step when we wade. And when you hit one, it scares the absolute CRAP out of you. I also know several people who've been hit with a ray barb. Lots of swelling, puking, and hospital time when that happens. Stupid Stingrays. I'll still fish for them though, what the hell.

This is a video of fishing for spinner sharks in Florida. It is really a product endorsement for the 1 pc Hardy Zenith 8 wt, but I put it up here for the shark fishing. I have fished for Spinner Sharks several times in my life. Almost always with gear that was a bit under powered for the task, fishing off the beach. Some of the most fun I've ever had fishing is watching 75lb spinners jump 6 ft out of the water and making that first screaming panic run. I had not heard of people fishing for them with flies (we fished for them with bloody cut up fish and had no idea they were susceptible to any time of non-natural bait), but after watching this, I have a new thing to try out. 6 foot spinners on a fly rod? Get the !@#$ out!!

So paul, are you saying that the Bow is not only for Fly Fishermen, and that we should be willing to share with peoples who's vision of how to enjoy a river is not necessarily the same as our own? That's a shocking opinion. Wish more people had it. I just looked at the poll and 50% of the voters to date (albeit a very small sample size so far) are for banning jet boats. I find that almost depressing to tell you the truth. As if the river is our sole domain, and no one else can enter . Not jet boats, or partying rafters, or dogs, or kids splashing in the water, or spin fishermen, or whoever else we can think of. Unless of course they stay 100s of yards away from us in our single minded quest to have it all to ourselves, all the time. A friend of mine in the industry once said to me "I love fly fishing, but I hate fly fishermen." Sometimes, I do too.

Wow.

Thanks Ralph, I will. Unfortunately, the auction is on hold for now due to paperwork issues. Don't have an estimate as to when it might happen.

I've been everywhere financially from broke to being pretty well off. I'm certainly not rich by the standards of the society I live in, but I'm in no way hurting either. I have found my satisfaction/happiness in life has very little to do with my financial situation. I'm currently really happy in my job. I have been offered higher paying jobs in other companies, and must admit I've been tempted. But while the grass may be greener on the other side, it's pretty damn green where I am right now and I figure why risk it because the extra money wouldn't make me any happier anyway. So on the surface, I would say that you should think hard about how happy you are now and is the job you don't seem to want worth it. The big kicker in this for you is the debt. Only you will be able to answer if you are willing to accept giving the bank the extra money to make up for getting over your head a bit. There is no "right" decision in this, just a matter of weighing options and going with whatever you think is best. But when you decide, don't look back. You will never know how things would have turned out had you made the other decision and it does no good at all to look back and say "I wish..... Finally, if you do decide to go up north, you are really going to watch your spending habits. The fact that the last time you had some disposable income and over disposed it (I should patent that line, I like it) means you may be prone to doing it again. Be very, very diligent in putting away as much as you can afford and do not make ANY big purchases until the debt is gone. I've also found that we tend to adjust our spending habits to the money we make pretty quickly on the way up. You would have to work hard to avoid that trap. Good luck man. Tough decision. And to the coming comment about how long winded I am (I'm talking to you Taco), sorry. That was as concise as I could make it.

Unless we don't really need those opposable thumbs. Nice fish!

I have a Garmin 60 CSx. It's been around for a while now, so I'm sure there is a newer version. Absolutely does NOT need an external antenna. I've never had it not be able to get a signal, and I've had it in some pretty deep bush, canyon sections, etc.

Succinct as always Taco. Looking for tranquility? Fish with Taco. Not me.

I don't own a jet boat, and likely never will. I have fished in one, and it's owner was certainly not an ***hat (though he catches way too many damn fish). We fished very late in the afternoon into the evening below Police both times I've been on one Never even saw another drift boat. There are a few things that always stick out to me in these sort of threads-the idea that some outside influence ruins your fishing. So much of it comes from our natural inclination to blame ANYTHING we can for the fishing sucking at any particular moment. If I'm catching fish every so often, a jet boat comes by (or a drift boat, or another fisherman gets too close, or whatever) and the fishing slows down, I have a ready made target to blame for the change. I wish I could come up with a reason for the 1000s of other times the fishing shut down without somebody coming in and screwing it up for me. Or had an explanation for the times the fishing sucked, one of the outside influences raised their ugly head, and the fishing picked up. I think we assign way, way too much blame on these distractions. We want to find reasons for things, but in many cases our reasons are absolute and total bs. The other is this seeming need for "tranquility".If you are fishing the Bow expecting tranquility, in far too many cases you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I find it pretty hard to sympathize with someone who gets pissed about the ruckus on a river that runs through a city with a million people in it. Frankly, I'm just glad the damn thing has fish in it! If you are looking for tranquility when you fish, go to the mountains. If you are fortunate enough to find tranquility on a fishing day, relish it. But don't get all pissy when you can't find it or you are going to spend a lot of days all pissy. And that's no good for anyone. It wouldn't break my heart if they eliminated Jet Boats from the Bow. But I can't in good conscience call for them to be banned. Lots of people have spent lots of money on these things, with them being perfectly legal. Doesn't seem fair if they were to suddenly be eliminated from the river they were bought for. Now if everyone would follow Dave's rules, all would be great. But not everyone will. Whatever the case, don't let it ruin your day!

Depends on the donation. If it is a personal donation, then yes. If it is a business donating a rod, or a trip, they can get a tax receipt to the value of the gear/trip/whatever.