rusty

Here are your pics Paulie; you've gotta surround the http:// all the way to the .jpg with like this (no spaces): [ i m g ]http://photos.blahblahblah/blah.jpg[ / i m g ] You want to link to the larger pics too instead of the thumbnails.

Spent two days last week down on the Fraser system with PAV and another buddy. Fishing was awesome. Caught three species of Pacific salmon (chum, coho, and sockeye) and got to fish for chinooks too. We even got out for sturgeon one night and I gotta say...whether or not it's flyfishing, it is something else to get pulled on by the largest freshwater fish in the world. Just an unreal experience. We hooked a fish 8' long that we fought for a half-hour before he snarled us in something on the bottom. We had Curtis from Great River and John from Bent Rods and both guides were awesome. Curtis is a really good flyfisher and John is a sturgeon guru. Would recommend either of them. All in all I'm ashamed that I waited until I was in my late 20s to fish the Fraser system.

Awesome.

Wicked pics man...we're heading there in three days. Were you guided?

Policeman's Flats is one of the best spots on the whole river, regardless of how hard it gets hammered. I fish it really regularly (over 30 days a year) and cannot believe the number and size of fish so close to where you can park. I also cannot believe how so many people down there are fishing the wrong water with the wrong techniques. The only difference between the pounded spots and the less known ones is the solitude, not the fishing. 10% of the guys catch 90% of the fish on the Bow. Get out for a day with Max, spend some more time watching and learning to read water, and you'll be in that 10% before you know it. There are plenty of places around here with low traffic, tough access, and excellent fishing - but you'll have to find them the way most of us did.

C&F makes a threader that you can stack flies onto. It looks like a bobbin threader. You put a dozen flies on it with a magnifier or whatever, then on the stream you thread your tippet through the nice big loop and pull the fly off. Check it out in the shops.

Sweet pics Wes. I'd love to boil off the skull of a big pike and put it on one of my endtables.

Conor, If you need gear let me know...I've got a 1090-4 Xi2 and a #10 Nautilus CCF that you're welcome to borrow.

I watched that beating from the hotel bar in Sherwood Park and have to say...it got awful quiet around there in an awful hurry. Sure it's only preseason, but it sure looks like Edmonton could use some d. Should be good on Friday.

That should be a Gatorade commercial!

Jay, Honestly man...you need to get this stuff on DVD. It's awesome and you'd sell quite a few, especially around here. Wicked stuff.

Personally I try to strip set without moving the rod. A good 8-12" pull on the line does the trick. If they're there you just lift the rod and you're off - if not, just count to three and they usually nail the fly. Setting with the rod moves the fly way too far and pulls it right out of the zone. Sometimes you'll strip set three times on the taps and then POW you're on.

I agree with the Doc - whitefish action should be very steady. If I don't have a hit in really short order I change depth or location or whatever. They're a blast at this time of year, especially if you get the chance to fish them on emerging chrons. A #12 or #14 black chronie with a red rib usually does the trick. They're a riot on a 3 weight.

Who was your guide? Great pics - looks like a helluva trip. We're locked in for Oct 16th and I hope it's still decent. Been a very very good year up there.

Hard to say because I don't know Chinooks and I don't know how tall your wife is - but I'm going with 45.

Look man...I'm not going to start an argument with you - there's enough of that going on around here already. Why don't you re-read what you wrote (esp the part about not being willing to fish with another angler who you might hate, though I doubt that you've met). How could supporting Streamwatch be a "waste of a day"? Huh??? You spend 100 days on the river but you can't spare 1 to support it? My point is simple - we all benefit immensely from Alberta's fisheries, and here's someone who's taking their own personal time to come up with a way to raise funds to benefit all of us. Why can't we just get behind that and support that? Why do you have to find personal reasons to not support this idea? You know what? I don't care what motives people come to a charity event with - as long as they come and bring their wallet and we all support a good cause. That's what an event like this should be about. See the big picture here. The Streamwatch program will do wonders for our overtaxed resources, and as people who glean an immense amount of value from them out of our $24 licence, the least we can do is get behind it full force. Kudos to Brett for taking the initiative here. Maybe you could use your "big box" connections to supply some swag for the event?

Gorgeous brownie - and a pretty sweet tat to boot.

Seriously? Secrets? On the Bow? Ok then... The only thing that I think is "secret" on the Bow are the less heavily pounded access spots. Even then, many of the less traveled and less posted spots have more and more people fishing them all the time. What, you put your SJW on the bottom of the three flies instead of the top? I'll guarantee that no matter where you "think" you are now as far as the Bow is concerned, there are a great number of anglers out there who'd make you look like you were holding the wrong end of the rod with a blindfold on and one hand tied behind their back. Would you want them to treat you like a "leech", or would you want them to throw you a bone so that you could learn something new? I've been fishing the bow for over 15 years, and there's not a single season that passes that doesn't show that I have way more to learn than I know. I'll guarantee that I could teach you a thing or two, and I'll guarantee that you could teach me a thing or two. That's what makes this such a great sport and such a great community - we can all learn from each other when we accept that we don't know everything. Every year I meet new people on here who've fished for a long time and it amazes me how different our approaches are. Instead of viewing these other people as "leeches", why don't you smarten up and realize that you have way more to learn than you do to teach? There are a lot of people around here who've been fishing the Bow for longer than you or I have been alive, but somehow people think that because they've caught a few trout that they're part of an elite club who has some extremely exclusive knowledge. What if Toolman and anyone else who's shown you how to fish had that same attitude? Plus, to top it off, you can't put a silly internet board pissing match aside for one day to fish for a truly excellent cause? Give your head a shake man...that's just weak.

Lightfoot George Strait The Hip (and plenty of it) Death Cab and, feel free to have me shot, but I'm really liking Death Magnetic.

I had 10' #6 XP that I used for the Bow quite a bit - but to be honest, it just got too heavy compared to the 9' over a full day. Yes, it was nicer for high sticking and streamer fishing, but I never really found that it caught you fish that you wouldn't have otherwise picked up. I really liked the rod for fishing lakes because you could bomb 70' of type III fullsink with one false cast and you're only casting every 5 minutes. Fishing the river got to be a bit much though. The spey would be OK in that situation, but I've found that speying on lakes makes too much of a racket (though admittedly, I'm no hotshot spey fisherman).

Totally depends on model. Since Fish Tales brought Dai-Riki in I've been pretty heavy into those, but I find Mustads are fine for size 12 and up. You should check the wire weight of the hook you're using - the Tiemco 2487s are too fine and bend out constantly; the 2457s are bombproof. Those Partridge scud hooks are the best hook I've used, but I wish they'd make them a bit smaller. Their 20 is a little bigger than a 14, but if you could get a 22 or 24 I'd use them for a lot more ties.

I personally don't like whites because they fight like a wet sock, thrash until they've tangled and mangled your entire rig, and make your hands and/or net stink. They're a lot of fun in good numbers though, and they are bar none the best way to learn to nymph fish in the fall. Spend a day or two at the old railroad trestle in Canmore and your nymphing abilities will improve tenfold. Stop at the Grizzly Paw for a Drooling Moose Pilsner and one of those back bacon cheddar burgers on your way home and you've got yourself a damn fine October day.

I think it's the latter, but that's just my opinion. I ran an aquarium net through some weeds and came up loaded with small scuds (Hyaella?). There are lots of minnows in the shallows still and the chronie hatches are still incredibly prolific. My personal, unfounded, poorly educated opinion is that the stress on the fish is coming from harvest in the spring combined with heavy sustained C&R pressure through the summer and fall in conjunction with the sexual maturation stress. Like Max pointed out, the insane numbers of fish in there are not helping the situation. The big hen you see in the top pic there was fought hard and landed in 4 minutes; we gave up trying to revive her after more than a half hour. I think the C&R mortality of those eggbound and miltbound fish is a lot higher than a lot of us would like to believe, and you just don't see the dead ones because of the water clarity. I really hope trips are the answer, but in the meantime, the lake is still an awesome place to take someone who's learning to flyfish or hasn't really nailed trout before.

Not saying there are or aren't 22" fish in BH - but neither me or anyone I've been there with in quite a while has caught them. They are tough to measure without a tape because they're such pigs. I've fished every square inch of that lake too, and my best fish came from the point across from the launch in 5' of water. Here's a few from a couple of years ago though. I had days there when these were damn near average. One day at the wall of whales I caught three like that in three casts. Those were good times. All three of these fish taped within a 1/2" of 22".

Obviously flies under indies are still the best way to slay them, but we did really well hand twisting boatmen or whatever else too. I'm sure you'd nail them with floating boatmen but I just didn't have any with me. I just don't see how the math works out to take all those big fish out, and I also don't see the harvest pressure after the pike opening. Something's killing those big fish though. Rob - if you're ever looking for company for huns, let me know. I have a little single shot .410 that would love the workout.