BBBrownie

yeah, but it is confined to high elevations. Above the forestry, above the atvs, so how is it even touching on the issue. I am very familiar with the "wild land park" designation and agree a wildland would be great to address some of the Castle issues, however, it is the location of the wild land, which is proposed to protect less than half the castle area, and confined to areas above the tree line that is an issue. This will only protect those portions that have no current resource value.

Will the Castle wildland park even address anything? My understanding is that it is restricted to high elevations, basically the alpine (above treeline) is protected, with a continued allowance for resource extraction and "targeted" forestry in the valleys. The old bait and switch. We shouldn't settle for this as it is all window dressing, no substance at all.

nymphs? isn't that cheating anywhere west of 22? Why would you nymph when you could watch the take? Couldn't imagine going to those streams intending to nymph...Sorry, to each his own but id rather get skunked on a dry or swing. Leave them poor cutties alone

These fish aren't steelhead- 7/8 weight is waaayyy overkill for the poor trout in the Bow. Silver Doctors 4/5 weight Meiser sounds like just the ticket.

Tis a trailcam. Motion activated.

Hopefully a great dog for you. Mine is a similar mix - used to look a lot like river, maybe a bit bigger though- a lot of the black eventually turns into white though! He turned 10 in December and is one of the smartest, most athletic dogs around. Just demands a LOOTT of exercise...still!

Don, I think maybe its been removed, I regularly read the round table minutes and have seen no mention. somehow I missed this. I'll dig around and see if I can find it.

That would be a hell of a shame if there was in fact a brown trout kill on the Braz. Don, where did you hear that info? I grew up in the Drayton area and haven't heard anything suggesting a brown kill?

incredibly tragic. I sure feel helpless, I hope the rivermakes it through all this. Its going to take something incredible to pull these cars up without compromising em. makes me sick.

thx Uber, though the link is dead, after googling Bowfloat the company does in fact exist and have pontoons avialable for rent. Cheers.

Anyone know of an outfit that rents out canvas wall tents and stoves? Or anyone willing to rent theirs out later in April for a couple weeks? Thanks!

I realize this is an old thread, but does anyone know of a current pontoon rental option? Heading to Terrace near end of April, I have a boat, but a friend who is joining does not. If anyone has something reliable they are willing to rent out for 10 days or so, let me know! I know there are rental options in Smithers on the way, but we will not be in Smithers when a shop is open. Thanks!

Coral- Looong hike in - 35 km one way if I recall (6-7 yrs ago) with 10-12 creek crossings, we got 6 inches of snow on way in mid august, grizzlys, lots of sheep hunters. Some of them ride up and bonk goldens to eat for dinner while camping up at the job creek trail confluence. Most of trail you will be dodging horse *hit in willows along the creek. Rainy - 4 hour hike, easy access, tough to find trial head though, basically walk straight up an av shoot until you hit a headwall, follow the base of the headwall around to outlet creek. caught many, many fish, they only wanted nymphs, were picky, and very small. Also a few other groups in at the same time. Beautiful setting, golds are like a bar of gold in hand. pm if you need better details.

lab mix all the way. I've got a lab/shepherd cross that I adopted from the SPCA 8.5 years ago. He is 10 now and still healthy as a horse and eager to fish. I couldn't ask for a better friend-smart, loyal, strong, harmless and as a bonus makes a great pillow. The shepherd in him makes him tall though, so high end of medium sized!

I've found them in fairly large numbers in the North Sask in Edmonton as well.

Too bad! Close to home for me, and Mailey is always good for a BS session. Will be missed.

Not trying to discount your post BowCane, but frankly the above statement is not true at all. -BC is a good example- there are many streams in BC that have an abundance of spawning gravel avialable, but are limited in available nutrients for various reasons, including gradient, substrate, precipitation/climate, source, etc. In these systems you may have km's of underutilized spawning gravel, but you don't have enough food to support a population large enough to exploit the avaialble habitat. In coastal cases, native trout have adapted in a way that circumvents this nutrient issue by migrating to the salt (steelhead, sea run cutts). Where barriers to migration exist, migration is not possible. Unfortunately, in many of these systems we have gone in and modified this spawning rich, nutrient poor cycle by logging until we are spawning/rearing/nutrient poor and populations begin to crash. -Another example could be where you may have plenty of spawning habitat, but temperature spikes result in fish kills to adults. Another could be lack of overwintering... My point is that while spawning and rearing habitat are obviously essential to the life history of trout, there may be other more immediate factors that do not allow the mature spawning population to fully expoit all avialable spawning habitat. I suspect that in the case of the Bow river other limiting factors apply (as you've mentioned Bow Cane).

Is spawning/hardening/emergence even limiting to brown tout in the bow river? This is a question that would need to be addressed. As the primary spawning habitat is already protected, unless we are seeing low recruitment, further spawning/hardening/emergence period protection may not necessarily correlate with an increased population of adult fish. If building a management experiment out of the scenario and trying it out for say 10 years to see if a correlation can be made between actual increases in mature adult trout and increased protection during spawn/hardening then this may be the right move. It would be interesting to see the data, although very difficult to attribute directly to the protection (as there can be so many other factors influencing during the short timeline). The problem is that even if it made no difference at all in actual catchable fish numbers, it would be difficult to convince managers to re-open the section. It is also unlikely that a monitoring program with any sort of rigor would be funded so we would probably never know whether it was successful. A concern I would have (as an earlier poster mentioned), is that increased effort would be directed downstream of the closed section during a time when the post spawn fish are stressed. I have a feeling that capture mortality is more limiting on Bow browns than spawning/hardening/recruitment success are.

This looks excellent Jim. I am surprised retention was ever allowed on Gorge? Rare, but not unheard of to find a fish that would have been considered legal in the Gorge system.

No. Calgary has a distinct lack of off leash parks. If anything, I would like to see more. Dogs running around along the river are not making the banks unstable. Following that rationale, yourself as an angler would be contributing to bank instability. I don't live in Calgary, but I feel for dog owners as they have a right to have areas to take out their dogs and in Calgary off leash areas are very spread out. 99.9% of the Bow isn't along a designated offleash park, perhaps you need to broaden your angling horizons. we build houses, freeways, parking lots, etc, etc, etc on top of wetlands in Calgary, an off leash area is the least of the concern from an urban park wetland perspective. I am all for wetlands, all for protection of riparian areas, but you know what they say about picking battles. I should add that the population has doubled or so since 20 years ago - kind of comes with the territory of a major urban setting.

Northfork Scadden pontoons rule. Expensive, but light weight, include all the bells and whistles and capable of running big water.

can see that sphincter pushed right out...

Yes, you can use a MOW tip in conjunction with heads manufactured by brands other than RIO. MOW is simply a series of sink tips available in differing densities(just like any other sink tip) but with different lengths of level floating line integrated so that if you want a shorter tip (example a 7.5 ft tip) there will be 4.5ft of level floating line integrated so that all the tips equal 12 ft in length. This makes it easier to cast a short tip without blowing your anchor or having some of the "hinging" effects and additional knots and loops associated with adding on cheaters. Essentially it is just a sink tip with fancy loops built in. They do work great, just a bit on the pricey side.