Conor

Looks like good times. I can't believe Harry found his blackberry up there. That is just the wrong place for a blackberry to be.

A liberal amount of aquaseal might buy you some fishing time on the waders. Call some fly shops and sporting good stores if you need some; it can be hard to find.

I'd recommend to go on the cheap for tools at first. That way you will not hesitate to upgrade if you decide you will be tying for the rest of your life. Go big on the vise if you decide tying is for you. A top quality vise is a great tool for life. A medium quality vise is a good tool for a while, but will need replacing eventually. I've gone both ways, and I regretted the $150 vise I bought. Try out a few top brands before you decide (Renzetti, Regal, Norvise, ect). If you are concerned about cost, you could stop by my house and I could get you everything you need to start (except maybe hooks) for $25-100 or so.

By the explanation in your first post, wouldn't catch and release regs reestablish historical nutrient levels by a more natural, albiet more gradual, method?

Most of the time I am satisfied with a simple system: dink, small, decent, good, big, huge. I measure the odd fish just to keep myself honest. I find I am prone to overestimating at night and with thick fish. Speaking of thick fish, why do we always talk inches length but not girth or weight. My buddy caught a 22" brown the other day that was one of the biggest fish I have seen out of the Bow. Bigger than most mid-20s I have seen. I bet it would be fairly easy to get a rough girth by measuring the inside circumference of your hands (as if they were wrapped around a fish).

I'd guess it was the snow pack this winter. The Castle range was the the closest to normal, and the Highwood etc were low. Someone mentioned that the Castle was the only one fishing normally. Maybe snowpack and the way it melts effects bug life somehow? Has anybody seen a good hatch up there yet? My gut says it is pressure, pressure, pressure, though.

I think they can see it. Maybe not well, but they can see it. I have caught dozens and dozens of fish on a dead drift #16 dry in the dark. I guess that is all in the city, so maybe the light pollution helps them out.

This one didn't pull too hard. Shaggy was pretty surprised at how little it pulled, as he has had real battles with them in that lake before. My only other experience with them was bow fishing as a kid. They don't pull too hard with an arrow through their side

I had a family holiday in the Okanoggan a few weeks ago. Managed to get out on the Columbia, but didn't find decent access and ended up sight fishing to northern pike minnows in a big slack sections. Pretty fun; I am not sure why they have such a bad rap out there. I also got out for a few hours with Shaggy (from this board and FlyBC) for some bass fishing. We caught a few smallies, and I found this beauty pushing rocks in a foot or two of water. Slurped up a small wooly bugger. http://gallery.flybc.ca/albums/album57/P1010115.jpg I'm afraid Shaggy's net will never smell the same.

The crowding on our waters, if you can call it crowding, is not not from people outside of AB. I can count on one hand (maybe two) the number of BC or SK license plates I have seen at an access point. A change like that would not be easy or cheap. Governments are notoriously inefficient. When would we start to break even on the cost of this change? Would we need a whole new system by the time we started to get revenue out of the change? I don't see a classified waters system bringing significant revenue to our province, if any. If you want more revenue from licensing, lobby to increase licensing fees in general. I agree that natural resource management needs to be dynamic and proactive (not reactive), but a classified waters system in AB is not the way to go.

I try hard not to go less than 5X for dry fly. Bigger if I can get away with it. It is your tip that is breaking the tippet, though. Time for an upgrade. One tip for your purchase- go a line weight lighter on the rod, compared to the line, for most makes of rods (ie bu a 4 wt rod if you want to throw a 5 wt line). This is especially good true if you are a new-ish caster. Also, I'd recommend building a rod, if you like tinkering with fishing gear. Great value and a personal touch. Most rod blank companies, contrary to popular opinion, have warrantees as good or better than major rod manufacturers.

I use a plain clinch with floro. You need to pay close attention to your knots and use plenty of spit to tighten. I do not have problems. I have got a bum batch of tippet on occasion, but I believe floro doesn't age the same as mono.

Just to clarify- a river running through private land would still have provincial regs on it, correct?

The link below will get you some solid answers. She has two very valuable rods. http://clarksclassicflyrodforum.yuku.com/ It is a shame that the Leonard has been sitting in storage for so long and is not being fished. I could help with that problem

Max- CCS can tell you a lot more than the overall 'weight' of a rod blank. It can give you a decent grain window on a blank. Blanks with a larger grain window are typically very fast tapers with light tips that taper to a stiff butt. For example, if I do a CCS measurement of the first few feet of my DanCraft Ft 5 wt I get just about a five weight. As I increase the length, the weight number increases to about 9 at the full length. And guess what, the rod throws a 5 wt with a fast tip action and an 8 with a more moderate fast action. I hope that the CCS guy does something to incorporate swing weight into his system. That might go a long way to getting a 'feel' value for a blank. Also, the line scale is a great tool. If you have any unlabeled, unknown lines laying around, you can get a AFTM number with just a printer and some cardboard. Brilliant. Don- when weighing a line I think the rule is to not count the level tip as part of your 30ft. Find where the taper starts and go from there. There is some variance between brands and the length of the level tip, but I don't know if it would really be significant.

My office productivity has suffered this spring. So has the pay check. I have spent more than a few calm, overcast afternoons staring out the window and not getting much done. Just in case my boss is reading, I don't bill the time! But there is no point sitting at a desk for 8 hr and billing 5-6 hr... So, out of the door I go. A quick word to reception that I am "unavailable" (mostly so the wife doesn't bust me), and to the river I go! Mostly, though, I just have been out in the evenings after the kids are in bed. Very tired at work, lately...

Oh, man. $100 used and $250 new. Looks like they need to send that one back to the printers.

Well the caddis have been popping right through the high water this year. That is a big bonus, in my books. More weeds/sediment means more bugs. I'd like to see the Bow like it was back in the dry fly days of the 80s. Hopefully some rain this year will keep the water up and cool. Even if it doesn't, I imagine a year of bad recruitment might be compensated by high food resources.

A bit of a highjack... Has anyone here tried to correlate certain flowers blooming with certain insect hatches starting? There is a term for this that I can't remember. Just wondering if anyone has any local knowledge of such.

I usually try to avoid a floro to mono connection. I try to go the swivel route when possible (nymphing, chironomiding etc). When I do, I have had luck with a 3-4 turn surgeons with A LOT of spit to lube the knot while tightening. Always lube your knots, but be especially careful with floro. I remember a similar post on this topic, and pretty well everyone recommended the surgeons. I have had good luck with Rio Floroflex and Frog Hair Floro. Frog hair is quite a bit more expensive, but much higher strength for diameter.

I'd like to take my toddler out fishing. Any tips on a sure-thing lake? Perch lake? I'd like it to be very close to or, preferably, in Calgary. She won't last long, but I think she will enjoy it. She has an unhealthy obsession with fish and fishing, only lightly encouraged by me. Lydia, "More fishy! More fishy! More fishy!" Me, "I know how you feel, honey." lol

Hasn't quite started yet. http://environment.alberta.ca/apps/basins/...tionID=RBOWCALG

I have some trouble with very small hooks, particularly when they are in the top of the fish's mouth. Would something like this help?

Dude, you break about a half dozen rods a year. You'll get nowhere near the 'boo.

I've hit a few so far. Finished my first bamboo rod a few weeks ago, and then christened it on the bow with a good Bow brown. Got it on my first cane, a leader I furled, an old silk line I stripped down and refinished, and a #22 hackle stacker midge.