Hawgstoppah

Hey Rick... You do need advice on which way to set the hook though hehehe!

Oh and forgot to add.... FANTASTIC phto which captures the whole scene, including your pontoon, etc. Great, great pic. That's a pic you should frame and hang in your den

yeah! good advice. also: find a big tree trunk and you can get around it quicker than a moose with his big 'ol antlers can hence the term getting "treed" by a moose. happened to me twice in my life. A bit scary. Moose can make some pretty funny noises....

sweet!

Went into Wholesale today with a pair of boots I had purchased a little less than 2 months ago. They had seen the water about 14 days. They were completely falling apart. I wont say the type of boot becuase I really do believe they were a "lemon" and that most of the boots made by said company are very solid. matter of fact, I've never had such a good grip on the stream bottom as I did with these boots. I had no reciept (lost it) yet they looked up my purchase, verified that I did indeed buy the boots there, and promptly exchanged them for another pair which I chose. Now- THATS GREAT SERVICE! Thank you Wholesale Sports in Lethbridge.

Frank, You look as if someone just shot your heart in a few of those!!! I feel your pain, especially with the camera running. I gaurantee, had the vid cam NOT been running, you would have had an EPIC day... Fun vid to watch. Does Kevin ever fish much anymore? lol...

wing. been buying my licenses at oscars in smithers for the last 2 years. you dont need a non tidal salmon stamp unless your intention is to retain a salmon should you catch one while steelheading. If your fishing purely steelhead your fine with just the 60 dollar stamp. Plus, why pay 40 bucks a day , when you can fish (imho) just as good of water if not slightly smaller fish, for 20 bucks a day? makes a big difference over 7 days. My math also is not wrong. You spend the 430 if you want, and I'll spend my 240 You may catch a few more fish than me... in those 40/day waters.... maybe... maybe not... but yes, your butt will hurt more from the BC gov't LOL anyways, back to the post. Regardless of cost to fish there, it's a darn fine steel. What's the avg week down there if fish are in the river? 1 fish a day... maybe? or is it more likely than that? less? tell us more

Us albertans pay the following in BC (just to get facts right). 58$ for a BC year license... or 38 for an 8 day (or somewhere very near those numbers, lets round up. 40 bucks for 8 day. Then a 60 dollar steelhead surcharge stamp.. plus TWENTY bucks a day for some darn fine water, or 40 for some waters designated the very best". for me it'll be just over 240 bucks to fish 7 days.... still frikkin expensive, but not 400. also if we want to come fish your river we have to cross / deal with border guards at a can / usa border and now get a stupid passport, which is 80 bucks. Factor that into your equation and BC starts looking better. EDIT: this doesn't mean I am against coming to try it someday though! The snake river system is on my radar (idaho) for spring steel

awesome

maybe instead of putting a horseshoe on one of them there horses, ya put your waders on it and sent it off? These things do start to happen to people at your age

LOL... and you suspected otherwise?

Cool dragonfly shots!

cool video. I think the first two fish must be the native "redbands" then booooyah! steel! nice fish!

well written by someone who knows what fishing is all about. even though it sounds like the fish were off that day, they realize the quality of the fishery.

exactly. the upper oldman the highest temp I ever saw (well above the "gap") was 58F (maybe 15c?) FACT: I always stay off "foothills" streams in the heat of summer, and stick to high mountain streams that ARE cold. Now, mr egocop.. back to the point of this thread instead of trying to "bash" someone who in spite of what you'd like to think, has the fish's best interest at heart here.

she hasnt posted in a heck of a long time. hope everythings ok and your still out there speyin somewhere ladystrange.

Point #1 If it's better for the fish EVEN though I do guide some of these waters... *I AM* willing to give them ma break - what about you? Point #2 Wasn't even me personally between Jul 31 and Aug 17th, but those closures were for waters DOWNSTREAM of HWY22. All the area in question is UPSTREAM of HWY22. So check YOUR facts. The last report I put up on the site was probably in June. I havent done much guiding these days. No one wants to walk and wade when sites like this tell all the secrets, ya know. Only people I guide now are my international guys from europe

hey argue for your own right to fish if you want... but in reality, all you have to do is actually spend time fishing the entire system and compare it to 5 years ago, or 10, or 15, or 20 years ago. There's literally maybe about 10% of the fish left. So yes.... having a 5 year ban on fishing to let them recover from US, isn't so far fetched. Comparing montana's rainbow and brown streams (which can handle high pressure) to the oldman/castle/ram systems, is completely unrealistic. The bow will always have fish unless calgary has a bad chemical spill, same with the crow. Those are like montana's rivers, and can handle the pressure.

I think I just saw dave devlin ... he's the elvis guy ain't he? lol

I've spent most of my life on the road watching people repeatedly do stupid, stupid things, and , sadly, watching some of them pay for it dearly.. Like speeding, not using siginals, cutting in front of big rigs, driving too fast on snow, and more. There on the exact same level as people who try to "beat a train" ... so... who's throwing the first stones? Think about that next time you buckle up.... Oh ... right.. there's another stupid thing people forget or just don't give a crap about.

not exactly true there wolf. a 7.9 pound rainbow from a lake might be as little as 25 inches (we got a 8+ pounder from palmer ranch very recently that was 25 inches)... and on the flipside...a 29 inch rainbow I got in the bow would MAYBE have been 7/8 pounds, if lucky. So there's a lot of variables. He didn't state wether it was a lake fish or a stream fish.. Ive seen 30 inch fish from the bow that wouldn't go over 8lbs too, some of those... snakey browns... I carried a scale for quite some time, weighed a lot of fish in my net on the Bow... most people calling the average bow river fish 4 and 5 pound fish have no clue. A 20 incher in the bow is approx 2 to 2.5 lbs. Most people call em 4 or 5.. LOL.. A normally shaped 25 incher on the bow is roughly 4 to 5 pounds... that's it! People call those things 10's!!! Must be the same people saying their 18 inchers are 23's and 24's

LOL Ray. Yep.... if your using the "official FFC tape measure" used to measure most 28's Ive seen on this site, then hell yeah it is!! If your realistic it was about 23-24 inches

Nice browns, welcome to the site!

Ya. Europeans have no idea what inches are and so when I tell them they broke 50cm, theyre excited. 50cm sounds better than 20in

Looks like now we're starting to see the bigger picture. The area needs complete rehabilitation... including from fisherman, for a few years. Yes it's hard to say "let's give it up for a while" but ya know what? I'd like to take my kids there someday, and have fish to catch. There's gotta be some sort of balance. They close streams (emergency closures) in extreme heat for the sake of the fish. Maybe, just maybe, the fish need to be protected from overfishing too... plus quads, random camping, and ALL activity that is proving (at least in my eyes) detrimental to the well being of the fish populations in those (and I am sure other) alberta streams. good discussion on this thread so far.