BBBrownie

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.

Glad to see that this didn't end up coming up in the yesterdays preceedings. Fisheries Act intact - for now.

I don't think in reality this is good for anyone, including industry types. A obvious key component to "fish habitat" is fresh water which is becoming scarce/overallocated/degraded. Taking protection of "fish habitat" away will result in degredation of water quality in Canada, among a multitude of other direct and indirect effects on plants, animals, abiotic processes...Water is a necessity of life, no matter how you make your living. If you think fish and/or water are important sign the petition below. fisheries act petition Hmmm, link function doesn't work? Here is the address: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/124/389/037...-fisheries-act/

Thanks for sharing, really enjoyed the collage style!

I have a mustang manual inflation waist belt type. At a lodge I guided at this fall we wore them while running boats. I found that interference with working/fishing was minimal. Huge improvement over past designs! Carrying an extra cartridge may be a good idea as the handle on the pull cord hangs out a bit and could potentially catch on something and set the cartridge off (although this never happened all season to any of us three guides). Very light also, once used to wearing it you don't even notice it is there. I like the piece of mind of having this protection when on the water a lot, but I don't want something invasive as in the past I have never used any sort of PFD while fishing. I would be wary of self inflators with immersion disks, way too many scenarios that could lead to undesired inflation in a water sport like fishing. I am envisioning this product being similar to the immersion sensor on a backpack electrofisher, where the sensor is at waist level, if you go beyond you waist the cartridge will discharge...I know when electrofishing, although an important safety, this often limits sampling access, is a fairly distracting consideration. I like the manual best at this point as I like simplicity, see to many failures in automated devices, I don't trust sensors. I think the only real issue with the manual waist belt is with having the presence of mind/ability to pull the cord and pull the inflated bladder over the head while floating down the river. Maybe not so difficult in most low velocity situations, but in a rapid, or coming at a log jam or something it may get interesting. For me, convenience, simplicity and noninvasive is important, if it was a pain in the ass I wouldn't use it. Even if it does become a kick board, it is better than nothing - I can't be bothered to wear a vest.

Photo number 2 is incredible, huge fan of flyin fish shots! Looks like a great trip.

/

Harps, I agree with your statement that a higher value must be placed on Alberta's fisheries. I also agree that income data associated with a guides association may help to put a hard value on the fishery when combined with other monetary inputs, but what if it doesn't change a thing and suddenly we have wasted many F&W $ to develop a system that doesn't result in protection of anything and really just loses habitat value due to those dollars having been diverted funding away from other important projects that may have actually been having a positive impact. I think it would only be feasible and an acceptable level of risk if funding were completely self contained and fully contingent on guide license dollars. I just don't know if there are enough active guides in Alberta to generate sufficient $ for initial startup and research into the program.

So we will all know who the established guides are, they will have numbers on their boats. Still doesn't address: a)recreational anglers being accused of illegal guiding (how would you ever police this?) this already happens daily in BC. b)recreational fishing by guides on days off - Harps in the system you mention there are days where a guide may have a mandatory non-float day but would be free to walk and wade- what if they are fishing with friends and floating, they will likely be harassed and accused of illegal guiding. c)just because there is a mandatory log book doesn't mean that illegal guides will use it - See gun registry. Where I do see merit is in the case of the southern foothills streams...as annoying as I feel this proposal would be for the Bow River, anything that decreases exploitation of these southern drainage's would be welcome in my mind. I would just like to see this pushed for the right reasons and to me it looks like local guides looking for exclusivity. Calgary is the primary source population of guides, many of the ideas are going to intentionally or not, be Bowcentric. I am worried this would be a losing proposition for the average angler and a waste of F&W's precious few dollars.

I think another perspective for me on this whole guide association/regulated guiding...obviously there are administrative costs involved. With the paltry state of fish and wildlife funding these days, first off i don't think in the current configuration that the regulation would be an option due to a lack of funds for administration. One could argue that licensing fees for guides would pay for administrative fees I suppose...in my mind with the current state of the environment in Alberta, including some of the issues described in this forum (the foothills come to mind) I would much rather see any fisheries dollars (as there seems to be so little) go towards things like habitat protection, enhancement, research, enforcement or our fisheries as this is still sorely lacking. Once we have taken care of important items like this then maybe we could consider using leftover dollars to regulate guides on nonnative tailwater fisheries such as the Bow? Just another argument for Nay that seems to be lacking from the discussion.