Keith

Thanks guys

A friends of mine recently gave me the feathers off of a couple of pheasants that he shot. However, I've been told that using feather off of wild birds might get mites into my fly boxes and cause the whole shotting match to be ruined. Is this true? Is there some way that I could steralize them at home? I was thinking of baking them in the oven.

Nice pics. Nothing beat brookies for colour. The reel is a Dragonfly Kamloops, I believe. I have a couple. Very nice sturdy reels.

No country on earth has had laissez faire capitalism for a long time. Not since Industrial Revolution England, in fact.

Nice Catch. You don't see too many fish with those markings. A beaut of a brown.

Good to hear he's doing well.

I get most of mine at Fish Tales or Country Pleasures. I like a lot of Idlywildes patterns, which you can also find at the Fishing Hole or online. They can be pricey but the quality is in line with the price.

As you noticed from that MLS post, I think the problem you will run into is the zoning. I don't think that the land in that area is open to subdivision (at least not yet), which is why you have to buy 350ac. I know there is movement in the Longview area, led by country singer Ian Tyson to prevent any kind of subdivision that would break up the ranch lands and the grassland scenery of the area. For that reason, I think you have to buy a whole ranch or be lucky enough to snap up a smaller acreage that may have been zoned back in the day. While I would love to live in that valley as badly as you, I hope they win the day because it would make me sick to see them throwing up 1 acre subdivisions in there. However, the cynic in me thinks that eventually there will be too much money in it to hold it back.

Recent study out of the U of C showed that bear spray was effective in 90% of encounters. The stuff does work.

Has anyone used/tested their yet? How well does it work? Any problems with tangles?

Sounds like fun.

These regulations have more to do with chauvinism and protectionism than they do with the protection of the fishery, and that is why they are so annoying to people. I would absolutely bet my life that the number of fish getting hooked on Elk has not gone down since the introduction of these regs. I have even heard of one study that is finding an increase in pressure because people feel the need to get their 20 bucks worth, so instead of fishing for a couple of hours and grabbing a pint they are hammering the river from sun up to sun down to get their 20 bucks. This is just one more case of people trying to pass of an environmental public policy in order to meet their own political or personal aims. If they really wanted to protect the fishery then they would increase the fees for BC residents, as they are the majority users. This is comparable to Dion's green shift. In principal a tax on carbon sounds great, but wait, we aren't going to tax gasoline, which is the single largest source of carbon emissions in the country. What is the sense of regulating a problem if you are going to let the largest source of the problem slide through. Well in Dion's case it's because taxing gasoline is a very unpopular idea with voters, so we'll tax oil plants in Alberta and let drivers and voters in Ontario slide. In BC it's the same thing - let's drive off Alberta anglers, but we'll leave 90% of the anglers to do their thing because they can vote in our jurisdiction. I would totally be all for any restrictive regulations to protect the fish here or in BC (or to limit CO2, for that matter) but these policies are just ugly politics dressed up as enviro solutions.

What I don't understand is why Alberta hasn't stepped up to this. I see BC plates on the Crow all the time. Is the Crow not a busy river? I say we fix our 'crowding problem.' For a province that is known (and reviled) nationally for not letting people mess with us or our resources, I can't believe that nothing has been done about this.

Humble, where do you find these monsters? That's the gnarliest fish I've seen this year.

This was the hardest fighting trout that I've ever caught. I had 2X on and I had the rod cranked over with side pressure, but I couldn't budge this fish. I thought for sure it was foul hooked, but when I brought it in the nymph was just sitting in the corner of it's jaw. It made some nice runs and came out of the water a couple of times, but it spent a lot of the long fight just hovering in behind rocks in the riffle where I caught it. It would take me minutes to budge it out of there before it would run and then do it all over again.

It difficult to say without knowing where they came from. But I would go with: 1) Westslope Cutt - difficult to say purity without knowing some history of the location. But no spots on head or below lateral line say that this one is more on the pure side. It does have a pink stripe, but colouration isn't a good guide. Color will change with the seasons and according to the food in the any given water. 2) Hybrid, for sure 3) Hybrid, for sure

The easiest, though not necessarily the best, ways to tell are the spotting on the sides and head of the fish. Pure Westslopes will have an arc on their sides from the anal fin to the head where they don't have any black spots below the lateral line. Westslopes also generally don't have spots on their heads. And they generally tend to have larger spots. If you have a cutty with spots below the lateral line on its sides or spots on its head then it is a hybrid. If that spots are small then that is also another indication. As trailhead said, there are not a lot of pure westslope populations left. Some are more/less hybridized depending on the quality of habitat for rainbows. As most know, westslopes tend to have the competitive advantage in higher colder waters, while rainbows win out down lower, so depending on how suited the water is to rainbows then less will have moved in, although it only takes one to compromise genetic purity, which is why there are few pure populations left. If you want to be sure then look at some of the academic or resource papers that have been released, and to be really sure go fishing above a barrier to rainbow migration such as a waterfall. There are some populations around that live above falls and these are likely to be the only populations that we will have left at some stage. It's important that we recongize these and protect them.

I know trout unlimited was doing a bit of a project, and I have heard reports of fish being in there. However, there are plenty of obstructions to fish movement, and lots of fertalizer than runs off into it. I think a better question than 'is there fish in it' is: Is it worth fishing. I would have to say that's pretty doubtful. Would be interesting to try though if you wanted to put in the time.

I second Cataract Creek. Both upstream and downstream of the falls. Upstream of the trunk road, walk to the second bridge and then fish up. There are a lot of brookies in there. Downstream of the falls there are several species. Quirk Creek also has lots of brookies and it would be good if you got involved in the Brook Trout Supression Project.

That's a nice looking fish. No doubt about it being a hybrid.

That project has been on going for many years now, and has made a significant impact. There are a lot of cutties in Quirk these days. Fish the lower sections and you'll be surprised. I agree with the recommendation to buy Barry Mitchell's Trout Highway. That book has put me onto more trout than any other, plus it's a good read. Especially for a beginner, it is invaluable.

I agree with that reccomendation. I fish that area often and it can be up and down. The water is already getting low in that area and the browns can be sluggish on hot days. I find the best success early in the moring (before 9 or 10) during the warm weeks.

"Dreaming on the grayling score"??? I used to work at Edson West Gas Plant and I spent every evening catch piles of grayling. The Embarass river still holds the provincial record for grayling. And the Erith is probably the best river for catching a McLeod river rainbow. Also the C&R regs that have been in place for quite a few years means the number and size of the fish can be decent. The stoneflies should be coming out on the Embarass soonish, and the fish are more than willing to take a dry. I have caught some nice size grayling there. Access to these two rivers isn't that easy, but it means the fishing is better if you put in the effort, and the Embarass does come along HWY 40 in the middle and upper reaches. The Erith is harder. The easiest bet for Grayling is right in Sundance creek. In the prov park the creek is bushy and casting can be tough, but the fish are willing and there even a few browns in there. The easiest place to catch a grayling is where HWY 40 crosses sundance, south of HWY 16. It's not a nice fishing spot as it is right on the hwy and gets fished often, but there are plenty of Grayling and some good hatches in this section. The McLeod is also a decent river, but I generally stay away because the access to it is too easy. I have never fished there without running into ATVs, bait packages or the like. Emerson Lake has good fishing for brookies.

Get well soon Jim. I love your books and hope you'll write many more.

I can't believe the quality of those ties!