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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.

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.

Yeah most of the trips we caught we smaller than that...the biggest ones were 12" or maybe 13". You can really tell because they're nice and firm instead of a bit spongy like most of the bigger fish. Nothing over 20" for us this year Rob, and that was out of well over 150 fish between 4 guys.

Police Lake is a little farther and may be closed but is a nice spot with great action.

Happy birthday Lynn! Hopefully you spent some portion of it fishing!

I'd recognize that water anywhere...how long were you there? Spectacular pics.

The smell in my waders after three or four days is a noxious mix of wet, sour, ripe, and dead all rolled into one and left in the sun for a few days. It's enough to kill a man. The best cure is to turn the waders inside out and hand wash them in the tub with a mild detergent. An old dish brush does a nice job of getting out any stubborn dirt. Rinse them really really well and let them dry. A nice alternative if you don't want to go to all that effort is to dry them and throw a good handful of baking soda into each leg.

Shameful? Really? Calgary has one of the best wastewater treatment programs in the world. Either we all stop showering, pissing, and crapping, or we accept that there will be some impact from a city of a million people on the Bow. Look at many other places in the world or even in Canada (Vancouver Island) where insufficient wastewater treatment has caused major environmental issues and I think you'll be proud of the advanced systems and technology we have here.

Missed this one the first time around - good post Clive.

Outcast's warranty is lights out - I had three boats in there this winter and they were all looked after.

IMO one day of rain does essentially nothing. The clarity and temp may change a bit but the effect doesn't last too long this time of year. Right now the Bow is infested with tiny baetis (#18-20). The small nymphs and the dries have been working well, and there are still quite a few caddis around.

Ok then... No more steelheading (anywhere except on the salt) No fishing for salmon anywhere (except in the salt) No fishing the Bow, Crow, Highwood, OMR, Castle, etc, etc at all during Mar-May and Sept-Nov If you have a problem fishing for staging or spawning fish or think that you're above it, then you don't do it. The rest of us will leave that determination to the folks who set the regs. How do you know that bull was spawning and not staging? Just by the color? That fish isn't near as dark as some of the other ones I've seen posted here. Funny how when Jay (humble) posted that pic no one dared to try to give him hell for doing what these guys are. That's a damn fine bully man, especially for Alberta. Love the bear spray in the pic too.

If you were to organize it as a fun event and really focus on the Streamwatch benefit, I think it'd be an awesome idea. You could even have a bonus prize for most trash collected. If it turns into a pissing contest as some would no doubt try to turn it into, that would be a shame.