DaveJensen

The res if at capacity right now, but can we at least wait to see what actually happens?

http://environment.alberta.ca/apps/basins/DisplayData.aspx?Type=Figure&BasinID=7&DataType=1&StationID=RREDRED This is to help the southern folks keep perspective on your Bow R flow rates. The river in town started coming up a couple of days ago. You see, the weather Network and Env Canada are forecasting an inch of rain out west. So, in preparation for what the Dam Man is saying the Forestry Experts are predicting for 800m3sec (the call was made and that is real) to come into the reservoir this weekend, which would be much higher than most annual run off high water events in June, the Dam Man took the precautious step of opening up the dam gates early. A very pro-active approach to something that most likely will not occur to the level their experts are predicting, lest they know something Env Canada and the Weather Net know, but have been wrong almost every other time the past decade this time of the year. And in the mean time they took a river that was finally fishable for a week or two (the first time since the flood back in June - it's been a very muddy year) and took it back to runoff levels and clarity. And that is how our local Dam Man deals with Public Relations: we get way premature runoff level dam releases based on predictions/projections that fall outside of outlandish, while the sun is shining during the hottest, driest spell of the summer.

To piggyback Don's post: which then begs the question who, among us, is going to stand up and be amongst the voices to ensure that logging in the valley isn't continued, tomorrow or 100 years from now? And to get involved to ensure it doesn't occur in like valleys in the future? We have some very sensitive ecosystems in the province. This doesn't mean reacting to something happening, it means reviewing logging plans, allocation plans, AOPs, etc, to ensure that things like logging Hidden Cr valley don't get past the planning stage. There has been some horrendous logging done in the province but it typically goes under the radar thanks to the O/G industry. The worst sediment loading culprit of all, road construction and its networks once established, really needs be addressed in reviewing in all industrial expansion into our 'back country'. Which all comes back to and ties into Martha Kostuch and the Sunpine Forest Products Mainline Road... cumulative impacts.

Interesting. The RDR 2005 flood of relative proportions nuked the whites and they really haven't come back. They used to be black in the runs (like salmon rivers) under the boat and now you rarely see many. Are the floods and sediment loads to blame or are the floods unearthing something more sinister in Alberta?

BCube - gee - who knew I needed an editor (besides every editor I've submitted anything to! and that's sincere self deprecation) Yup, your edit's better but sometimes these things go that way on forums: you know, when you stop running your own forum and make a firm decision not to allow yourself to get too involved on line in the future because it typically goes exactly this way - then you wind up not writing as clearly because of that mindset. That, and I've just been on forums for the past 20 years and the same thing keeps happening: people talk and do nothing and usually someone takes offense at someone pointing out that nobody does anything and more energy is put into that argument than actually following up to see what's going on with a potential issue. I've had my hands full enough up this way the past long while with our region's own issues as well as into BC Parks Mgt Plan involvement - for a couple of hours today, in fact. Amelia & I have decided I'm only allocating time to tackle my home region's environmental issues - which is a large enough bowl of dough to kneed. Sanity boundaries. With any luck a few folks down that way get out, get involved, write letters once the picture gets clearer if it truly warrants it. Hopefully someone actually gets out - and hopefully the conditions are better than Taco's experience so a relevant series of shots are taken.

bingo.

I agree. That's why I went back to try to edit it but even at that it didn't read right. So be it. And then you have the different angles of: I'm coming at it from influencing the regs perspective while someone else might simply be making a statement in fishing. Either way, you're right and it didn't read how I hoped in expressing my angle. I still love forums.

Caught the same cutthroat nearly 50 times over 11 years on barbed hooks. Caught the same browns on the Red Deer dozens of times through the years on barbed hooks. If allowing barbed hooks is good enough for the best brown trout country in the world (NZ) it's good enough for me. People need to stop worrying about a +/- 1% mortality in fish and start spending time, attention, and voice on things like Hidden Cr, the Brazeau being turned off, Alberta's quad free for all, gravel mining rivers, the ridiculous plan to rip rap essentially the entire Bow & Highwood for 'flood control', unrestricted logging into buffer zones, endless road construction (and subsequent sediment loading of streams) of the back country, etc. Those issues eradicate fish and/or have the ability to severely limit populations. The barbed / barbless debate is for those that don't really want to get too involved in the whole of the series of larger picture issues that have real impact. It allows them to stay at a safe distance as a general rule. (I had to come back to edit this as what I typed sounds harsh but wasn't meant to hard-assed. Then again, to my point, how many people from this board have driven out to Hidden Cr to take photos since seeing what was happening?) 100% barbed - always.

From my perspective, in hindsight of having lived and grown through something similar, for as bad as the situation can appear, it's not as bad as it likely looks. But it will take years. But that's the point of parenting. The kid likely needs more love and attention than the typical kid, sure. But, more than anything, he needs consistency. One thing I can tell you first hand: if you aren't willing to commit to being in the kid's life for the next 10 years, don't get emotionally involved - as much as it might hurt you to walk away it could shatter the kid. Mom will have way more to say about stability than anyone else and I suspect as a friend there's nothing more you can do for the kid than to support mom in establishing her life and encouraging her to provide stability and time for the kid with positive role models and encouraging influences.

What the above said. Here's a map. Red is the sides and water to fish. Once you look at the water, it becomes obvious, quickly, what kind of water goldeye prefer on the RDR. Yellow is the access points (ish). You will catch fish if you fish the most likely goldeye trough water. Have fun!

One of the things we found this past year in New Zealand was post the 5 week flood cycle (and we're talking 26" of rain in 22hrs kind of rain with vertical depth changes of 14 feet in that time frame), was that after 5 weeks of it, fish gave up on the shoulders of runs, having been pushed. If it was a gorge (canyon) river, many fish were pushed from the canyon sections as there was no escape from the flow rates (out turns too violent, gravel wash in turns of no break structure). If it was a floodplain, the fish weren't to be found until stable pools. This was confirmed by drift divers later in our trip who did extensive drifts of rivers and literally found over 90% of the bigger fish in the pools remaining deep as it was the most stable environment. That, and the fish were so skinny (much like pretty much every brown I'm seeing on FB, blogs, and websites from the Bow since the flood this year) that they had to find the most stable, quietest places. It didn't make for great sight-fishing but we also weren't about to dredge just to catch something. The drift divers' observation was fewer fish as well. Again, floods will do that, which is why it takes a few years to bounce back. And floods aren't the wonderful magic eraser, habitat enhancer that some folks are touting, cart blanche. When such killer floods occur every 3 to 5 years, populations simply can't keep up. Maybe this hasn't been happening on the Bow, but it certainly is in other areas of the province and some streams need more consideration in regulation to limit human impact on sensitive populations. Of course, much more to it than a forum post, but some thoughts anyway. Cheers

For a few of the forum members who have questioned why the city had river accesses closed to use until recently. This was one of (if not the) the most experienced, long serving guides on the upper Bow. For the younger or newer or the old time fly fishers and guides, it happens in a flash. Take the extra second to think through the ramifications of your actions or decisions. Even taking a trip during a flood season or high water... question whether you should and be honest about your decisions... and consider the ramifications. It can happen to any of us. Think and be proactive, even if the answer becomes no. A boat doesn't = a good life...

Enter the echo, eh? As you & I know, at the point of an unreturned tele call to DFO, 99% of folks would have given up. Trying to get their attention past that to change gov or policy, I think there would be plenty of checked out, empty stares. I miss Martha Kostuch. I thought of her a lot as I was trying to get through. I thought back to the Tay R case and knew that she'd have done likewise to get things very much ramped up. It was, and likely remains, a case that would have national ramifications given where things are at with various Acts and processes. It's one thing to battle industry. It's completely another when it's the actual governing bodies in charge of process that are so completely incompetent and hamstrung by their own policies and procedures, especially when they themselves put the operating guidelines in place to begin with.

Don - agree! I called and called and called DFO offices in C & E. Literally after 15 calls and emails, I got no reply until 5 months later, receiving essentially a 'please mind your own business' email from DFO. The ESRD folks are hiding behind the prov-fed issue. They can't / don't want to do a thing except in the case of fish kills and unless there is strong, directly involved evidence (pictures) then there is nothing they are willing to do. The folks that care about the Brazeau don't want the river inundated with anglers chasing the few big browns as new company on the water just to be able to protect the river from not having water through a PR campaign that brings the issue to light and why anglers should care. Folks pay attention to the fall-out from things like that and simply don't want to draw attention to places that can't take the pressure. Has anyone figured out the equation for this stuff yet? Now, back to the original response I made ^ in the thread, there are some good things happening regarding fish studies if they indeed follow through. I was approached by a few techs/bios at the spring prov RT and told these things were going to happen, as well as thanked for following as hard as I did to get some attention. So, thanks to the other fellows, we were able to get that much done, which is a positive step given how archaic things are in the dam industry with TA. You have to start somewhere and thankfully, fish are generally a renewable, living resource -> we all have to remember that.

"Did Transalta have a blanket approval or exemption that had no operational conditions attached?" Yes. I agree with everything you said, which is why I followed it through to where it is, which is better than it was, but it still needs more: Now here's the best part of everything for the Brazeau and something I pushed hard to clrafiy because nobody in the fed or provincial gov was willing to divulge: TA has the only water flow monitoring station. Add 2 & 2 and you quickly realize the reason the gov had no idea the flow was zero was because TA didn't disclose it to them. In follow up I discovered the fat kid was protecting the cookie jar and there was/is no plan for the fat kid not to continue to do so. What really needs to happen once min flow is legally established, is a gov monitoring site so schleps like us can do what we all do - follow it because we love knowing what's going on. That is something that needs to be followed up to establish and is crucial. You'd think a PR person somewhere would figure that one out.

Riley, you've missed the key point: there were no legally enforceable min flows. As Pepe Le-pew would have said "Les ooops". That is why the good news coming out of this will likely include min flows, etc, as I stated above. Everything you, I, and pretty much everyone else has ever stated (ie - common sense) is bang on, and it's time TA does what's needed. Cheers

Re: the Brazeau. A fellow I know posted on FB after being pissed off that he couldn't get anywhere with DFO, etc with his photos. I took the photo of a BONE DRY Brazeau R and his report to folks I know through DFO and F&W, who promptly took action on investigating what exactly happened. I have another fellow who I know that was there at the time - the trouble is that he's a good friend who was actually on site, working on the dam, who substantiated the fish kill but whose info I couldn't use to further prove the fish kill story for fear of losing his job (wife + 2 little kids). Bottom line, while the investigation stopped at not being able to substantiate the claim, but anyone with 1/2 a brain in his head would know that to be the case when that river was bed rock, bone dry for at least 1/2 a day. But procedure is procedure. The good news is that the process wound up seeing a commitment from the company to put time & $ into studying fish use, fish movement, spawning locations, etc below the dam. There will also be ramifications of this into the flow regime, finally. This is something that the Ab gov hasn't bothered to do in all these years because it's apparently too difficult for them to justify putting $ into a river that is 'so hard to get to' and 'so few use', though the jet boat, raft, and wade traffic through there can be high at times. It's a good news/bad news situation.

Just for clarification, the email pdf was a DRAFT, not an official release as yet, looking for input from the RT members & their members before being released to the public.

No offense, but this is a very good thing. Your average person simply does not know enough about water safety and bank stabilization. When it comes right down to it, we have to remember that we are part of a functioning society and even though we as fly fishers know a thing or two doesn't mean the other 99% of the real world does. This is about risk management and time/resource management. It is FAR better to keep launches and accesses closed to the avg water IQ individual than to have to do a rescue every other day while those resources could be used far more advantageously in other areas of flood recovery. I hate to say it, but even your avg fly fisher would very quickly get themselves into a pickle with the way some of those banks have been eaten. Hopefully people respect the process and we don't find new roads driving around barricades driven by fly fishers, causing new erosion channels. Sometimes we simply have to take a step back, look at the bigger picture and accept that the world isn't going to line up with how we'd like it to be. Is the short term conflict worth it? Time is all that is needed and things will be back to how we hoped them to be. Cheers

MMAX - you & I recall the same episode @ Pyramid L. The wind was howling in that episode and they were bobbing in float tubes like corks but hammering fish like crazy. I miss that show, so well shot. And any show that had Bull on it worked for me (I think that was the Jackson Hole episode). And about the fight.... we literally just got back from fishing for them again (see blog in a couple of days) and the two points that stick out are that they fight poorly. Very poorly. I think grandma twitched harder in her sleep. The other... you can run up and down the beach, pounding them on the head with bobbers and flies and they won't spook easily. If they do, just walk with the pod 10 m and they'll be right back on the shoreline drop off. Perhaps the most user-friendly sight-fishing fish known, and that's why we do it. But they are pretty and it was good to get away. +28C on Friday. Drove home last night and @ 3am had to slalom through jack knifed semis spun out on the K-Ctry hill on the #1. Good old Alberta! But you don't have to drive that far to catch lahontans. The monsters at Pyramid, sure, but there are a few places to poke around much closer to home with Lahontan cutts in the 3 - 8 lb range. And I even got home without the Lyme disease and a summer of antibiotics this time. And Don's suggestion would be gold if it could work.

Back to this thread. Re: barbless. Mike Sullivan quote at the prov round table mtg yesterday had the best, most qualified reply to barbless vs barbed hooks "It's so subtle as to be invisible" and went on to discuss the larger issues of habitat (as in you have 20 - 30% land disturbance in grayling streams and habitat becomes anoxic). Again, our fisheries aren't suffering from lack of regulation, they are suffering due to habitat, land use, over recreation. Don. Yes. Thank you for asking. I've been to NZ and seen Didymo at its worst. Once again, your ongoing negative assumptions & projections of me are incorrect. One day you'll stop? Where was I re: mtg on the Red Deer? New Zealand. I'd been busting my ass for 13-14 years trying to ensure the mtg you attended even occurred. Good of you to show up. Re: Moving forward any kind of biological study on Stauffer as a benchmark ecosystem & fishery: it might just get some traction, despite your insistance of your world view that there's no way something like what I'm talking about could occur. If Streamwatch can get funding, why not this? Re: me saying any kind of personal attack on you: I continue to simply set the record straight and respond to your ongoing, unfounded attacks on me that you began long before I even knew who you were. You persist in dismissing, denying, deflecting, and attacking me - I simply continue to set the record straight. You don't like getting called out on doing this, but yet you continue to do exactly what you did in this thread (deflect one issue and attack on another).

BCube - I wasn't actually arguing against your point at all, not judging bad science, etc. I'm simply saying that by the time you examine all, referencing what you did and other studies, in the end it is a wash between hooking fish deeper with barbless fish and having a higher landing % and thus stressing/exercising fish more up against the supposed man-handling stress of barbed hooks. It's as close to a wash as you'll get differing agendas to agree on. But even at that - we all have to giggle at the fact that the studies you reference refer to Alberta mgt uses barbless because it's shown to reduce stress, etc, etc... when in fact it was a self important premier smokescreening Alberta anglers by imposing his will on a system, completely usurping process and tossing the depts good staff under the bus as he did, all so he could have the appearance of doing something positive on one hand while handing out FMAs, coal mines, and O&G leases like Halloween candy with his other.

Doesn't science essentially say that the difference is negligeable between barbs/barbed, depending on what aspect of it you look at? But wasn't the question in this thread asking if Vanna White was sexier than Roseanne Barr, and if we want to keep more Vanna Whites in our rivers, shouldn't we make sure we don't mistreat them, as a basis for something that - as you and we all point out by mortality rates and studies - has nothing to do with fish populations and dynamics? If our fisheries are managed based on one thing, then how in the world can you impose the Vanna White clause as a basis for new regulation? And yes, here we are discussing Vanna White vs Roseanne Barr while there are far more valuable things we could be doing with our time... like ensuring we continue to get meaningful data collection and true biology in our rivers so we have a time observation of cause and effect? That's just one idea... But don't worry, stuff like that won't get air time at Saturday's mtg. I'm sure it will run over time as discussion continues on the subject of barbed hooks. But if it's precautionary management you want, then why do bull trout and brown trout streams open April 1? Let's look at that... fish spawn in the fall and are at the lowest energy levels of the year. They hit their wintering pools at a time they're skinny and beat up, scarred up. The ice comes on and insect activity is low. They stay that way yet streams open April 1. Water levels remain low, but the food chain doesn't improve much until early - mid May. Most trout caught have spawning scars, are thin, still have dark remnants of spawning color and are generally lethargic. And because there is no food available and because the water levels keep them in their pools, where can they go? So, April 1 comes along. It's as easy a time of year to catch as many as you have time for. Would't precautionary suggest you close those rivers until May 15 or 31, when they've had a chance to eat a few bugs and regain their energy levels? The trouble is that if you do your fisheries management based upon precautionary measures, you will end up closing pretty much every trout water for all but maybe 6 weeks of the year, by the time you account for wintering habitat, pre-spawn-post, floods, droughts, etc. And that is the dicey slope. If you do management by what is, by collected data sets, you can make adjustments. But, as I mentioned in that AO thread where Don & I would actually agree on many things, you need science to be a verb and not a noun. And that means ensuring we get ongoing, meaningul data collection.

Stopping myself from jumping out of my desk like Arnold Horseshack... The answer is no. Every bit of our science and management is based upon live fish and the study of population and their dynamics. If you want fisheries by beauty and fad contests, simply let Chuck Woolery, Simon Cowell, and Tyra Banks manage your fisheries. Boo boos may be a leading indicator of trends in populations, but the second you bring beauty into the equation you immediately open the door to fly fishing only, guide allocations/rights, etc... and you don't want that because they're the scurge of the earth. The only reason I replied to this silliness is that someone out there is going to read that Don Andersen says it's a good idea, and completely miss how our fisheries are managed. Science. Data points. Data collection. Population study. You want lipstick, check your grandma's pig. Keep coming back to science. But of course, Don, then you'd also have to look at our Fisheries Mgt system and see if it could improve, but that would begin a cross forum discussion. And apologies, I haven't looked at any replies since my last post on that subject at AO. Been busy. Don, we should do a comedy show. We'd almost be perfect for each other.

Taco - QAT - just a long ago thread where someone was coming at me for their interpretation of me being a little self-righteous (imagine?) and asked who made me the Queen of Alberta Trout? To assist the individuals mis-interpretation of me, I simply posted a photo of QE2 carrying a sceptor and imposed my face on it and asked what his problem was. I was reminded of that with BBT's post. It made me tear up for the old days of running a forum. I'm a little obtuse tho, my personality still doesn't jive with forums but I still keep coming back for more. That QAT thread was 15 yrs ago - but again, I tend to remember things.