gillmy

If it's rusting, it's probably not lead - lead develops more of a scale on it. You won't get poisoning unless you lick the anchor for the whole summer, or rub it all over your body or something. If you are worried about it, you could wear gloves, or paint the whole anchor with rubber compound to seal it (sometimes lead weights are coated when you purchased them).

Hey Conor - is your leader just braid and what lb/test? and how long for the length? I do have lots of braid on hand, but usually use it as a core or mixed with mono or thread. Yours would be a very skinny leader. Thanks... Mike.

Thanks to Rick for allowing himself to be a guinea pig for leader testing - I'm glad that they are working out. Rick sacraficed days that he could have been working to be out on the river helping with product development , and for that I truly thank him. They are quite easy to make once you build the jig, and the cool thing is all the different combinations of lengths and materials that can go into them. It has been a busy spring for me and also I am pretty new to flyfishing, so I haven't been out at all yet - hopefully soon. Thanks for the post Rick, and the new shipment should be arriving shortly.....

Looks like a beautiful place to fish. Fishing is truly a pasttime that transcends culture, language and other differences between people. Thanks for the post.

April 30 Girl - Dave - Cause tax day should always be a good reminder May 6 Boy Darren Girl

Yeah, I've seen it at the tills of Canadian Tire stores. Good investment at $9.95.....

Hope my kids see it that way too. Excellent way to explain life stages to them.

Those are some pigs. Nice day.

nice nice nice.

LMAO....

I think that last one is a moose knuckle, not a camel toe....

Very nice. What was the temp out there?

That's a good reminder.... Easy pickin's for the CO on April Fool's....

Very Cool pics.

Wearing waders doesn't make the fishing less enjoyable Once the fish is caught, you really should limit handling them The fish go back into the wet spot, and they like it. You don't really care what sex of fish you catch If they really piss you off, you CAN kill them.

That would suck. Also good to wear a hat with a brim all the way around. Last year I took a hook in the ear from my newbie brother-in-law. It felt like getting hit with a bullet - hook went right through the thin part of the ear and then when he stopped the cast, the hook turned and poked through again. So I ended up with a nice fly hanging out th :derby racer: :derby racer: e back of my ear and two holes. Never liked that guy.

'Castuserraticus' - I feel your pain buddy. It seems they work great for a while. I have bought some replacement batteries on ebay that have worked better and longer than the original - but that is buyer beware. I like having a simple phone as well, but I actually did get a Blackberry because the battery lasts forever. It can go for a week with normal use before I need a charge. Cell phones are an unfortunate "necessary" evil these days. Mike.

I was up in Cataract creek this last weekend and caught some brookies. They were not huge, but were hitting dries hard - lots of fun. We were walking upstream of the campground to several small pools.

Last time we were in Hawaii, we rented a house from a site www.vrbo.com (Vacation rentals by Owner) and found lots of space at a reasonable price. We just used the same service again in Orlando and also rented a house - it is the way to go.

Don't mean to sound totally stupid here, but it is a habit of mine.... What is a false cast and a double haul? I think that I understand "shooting" - when you hand onto the line and then let it go on the forward stroke?

Just because lightning is so cool.... (or more than you ever wanted to know about lightning) Found this good explanation on a website. "Lightning does indeed come up from the ground. Even though we commonly view lightning as 'striking' the ground...the process of lightning is a bit more complex. The internals of a thunderstorm effectively separate electrical charges, with positive and negative charges accumulating in different parts of the cloud. These charges are still attracted to eachother, despite being separated. In a thunderstorm, most often it will be the negatively charged ions at the base of a thunderstorm. The Earth is charged as well, and in response to an increase in charge at the bottom of a thunderstorm cloud, the opposite charge will be climbing up anything it can find to get as close to the charge building in the cloud. In most cases, this would be large amounts of positive ions finding their way through the crowd, up sky scrapers and radio tires, sailboat masts (and even people holding fishing rods...) to get as close to the cloud as possible. This is a feedback process, which mutually encourages charges to increase in concentration toward a central location in both the cloud and on the ground. Finally, the air itself can no longer insulate the electricity and breaks down ("ionizes" -- happens at a very high electric charge level)...The electric charge thus begins to travel in the air beneath the base of the cloud toward the positive ions on the ground, but only in about 50 meter 'steps', because it eventually encounters more air that has yet to be ionized. Since the electricity is in such a high quantity by this point when it gets to this lower air, it takes virtually no time at all to push this air beyond the breaking point and ionizes it. Each successive 'step' is a new voyage for the electric charge, and often creates crazy patterns in the sky of travel toward their end. Each time, lightning is attempting to be lazy; to get to the opposite charge at the ground as quickly and as easily as possible, though it often doesn't end up that way by it's stepped appearance. However, eventually (all happening in a fraction of a second), the lightning bolt makes it down toward the ground. Now, the charges on the ground have been building as well, itching to make their move. When the electric charge from the cloud (normally negative ions) make it within 100 yards or so from the ground, all the positive ions that have been growing for a long time, think it's 'Go Time', and launch up from the ground toward the path illuminated by the ionized air. When the connection is made, there is a violent release of pent-up electricity (that can match or even exceed the temperature of the Sun), and in a split second, multiple flashes and 'return strokes' go back and forth up that established channel (sometimes you can see it flicker), until the charges have been released enough for that ionized air-path to once again fall below the threshold for electrification. One other thing, when the air column along this path has been ionized, there's a loud sonic boom caused by its quick collapse, which is often loud: Thunder."

That's a little frightening. A Graphite rod is a good conductor, so not a great thing to hold in an electrical storm I would guess. Interesting fact about lightning is an opposing charge comes up from the ground to meet the charge coming from the sky, when the circuit is complete, that's when you see the flash. There are some cool photographs of this, but here is an example. Your conductive fishing rod (at this point a lightning rod ) helps to complete the circuit. That is pretty freaking experience. Glad you didn't get zapped to bad... What damage could a billion volts do? Good warning.

Thanks for all the info - I went to MEC and picked up the southern Alberta Backroads Map (Wholesale was sold out), and also picked up a topo map there of southwestern Alberta ($5) which has a lot of detail and also list access points on the hiking trails. It also gives you an idea of how strenuous the elevation changes are Thanks again, and good fishing.

Thanks headscan - do they sell that at Wholesale?

Is there a detailed map of all the lakes, rivers and streams in Alberta?