Bigtoad

I've had great service there before and the one or two guys in the fly department were knowledgeable and helpful. This time.... nope. I felt like I was in Home Depot during the labour shortage! Good point about letting the management know and yes, I will try to forward my experience onto them so they can try to fix it. I think I was just so pissed off because we had just come from United Cycle (where I know the owners) and our experience was excellent. Couldn't pass a worker without them asking if they could help us. The place was busy (go figure) and staff were still great. Then over to Wholesale and...what a difference. Big disappointment. Cheers.

So my family heads up to Edmonton on the weekend to do a little shopping and my wife drops my kid and I off at Wholesale on the South side so we can each do a little pressure free shopping. The good: I head into the flyshop to fill out my list of fly tying supplies that I am running low on. As I'm heading in I pass the wading boot section and see that the Korker guide boots are $70 off and are now $149. I have been looking at the Korkers Cross Current boot but wholesale was always out of my size and I had a gift cert to use up on them. Anyway, the guide boots were in my size and now in my price range so even though I had stupidly forgot my gift card back at home, I decided to pick them up. I told the sales guy that I had a little more shopping in the fly section to do and then I'd pick them up at the fly counter. "No problem," says he. The bad: I begin going up and down the fly isles picking up a few things here and there, but I can't find a couple of things so I pop back out to ask the sales guy. He's nowhere. I figure I'll have another look and see if I can find the last two things myself. I look for another couple of minutes with no luck and pop back out. He still isn't around. It's probably been 10 minutes since I saw him. The ugly: My wife hasn't texted me yet to say she is done shopping so I have a bit more time. I go out of the flyshop and walk around the store looking at other merchandise. There are at least 3 girls at the customer service talking and giggling but aren't doing anything. I check out the camping section, no one. I check out the fishing section, and there are two guys at that counter talking it up. I walk past them and neither even see me let alone ask if I need something. I decide to go past them again and see if I get a different response... same thing. They are busy talking about how to rearrange the ice fishing section and are totally oblivious to me and the lady with two kids who are obviously picking up something for dad and don't know where to start. I decide to head back into the fly fishing section to see if the phantom sales guy is back in. Nope, still gone. And now there are two more sorry soles in the section looking around for fly gear, obviously wanting a some help, with no one around. One of them stands at the counter looking at the fly reels for over 5 minutes and then finally walks out. My wife hasn't called yet so I browse through the flies, looking for new ideas, have another look for the two things I can't find, and still no salesman. It's now been probably a good 45 minutes since I saw him in the fly section and I haven't seen him, nor had one other person ask me if they can help me in any way. My wife texts that she's done, I grab the boots off the fly counter and head to the tills. 3 girls and now another guy are standing around there chatting as usual. One of the girls reluctantly breaks off and heads to the till. Doesn't ask if I've found everything. Deosn't say anything, just rings me through, hands me my receipt, and turns and walks back to the group who are still talking. Seriously!!!! If those boots hadn't been $70 off, I'd have left everything there and walked out with nothing. Word has it Cabella's is coming to town and you'd think a place like Wholesale would really be pushing to get and keep business right about now. Business seems like the last thing on their minds. Cabellas should have a pretty easy time attracting new people. Cheers.

Interesting thought.... What I don't understand about doing it in B.C. for steelhead is that I read an article in a fishing magazine that said that there was a study to identify why some rainbows become steelhead and why others prefer to stay in the stream as rainbows. The main factor was on health of the fry. Fry that were the runts of the litter were mostly the ones that headed out to the ocean to "beef up" before returning to kick the ass of the smaller rainbows when they returned. Very Karate Kidish really. The fry that were the most physically fit, stayed in the stream as rainbows. Anyway, the point I'm making is that if they put more nutrients in a river to increase the steelhead numbers, if the study I read is correct, you're really just increasing the # and quality of the rainbow population but might be actually decreasing the steelhead numbers.... Just something to think about. Cheers.

Hey, could everyone PLEASE stop asking to get their name in the draw!!! It really decreases MY chances of winning....

Throw my name in please. Doesn't matter for which one. Cheers.

I believe you could have also entitled that little vid, "My turn!" Cheers.

That makes me giggle. What do you guys use for tippet with such clear water and big ass fish in tight places? Brand? Wt? Cheers.

Love the first and third pics. My knees start shaking when I look too closely at the first one. I'm sure I would either snag the fence or hit the shnarb on the far side and get to watch him swim away. Nice pics.

Flyfishy, perhaps you would have a better turnout if a quarter of us had half a clue what in the world you were talking about 1/3 of the time. I find that sentences usually help when communicating and not some form of strange haiku. For example: PANCAKES Awsome! Flyfishy waffles too... p.s. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm expo p.s.s. enter contest Just a thought, flyfishy... Cheers

I thought I had that willow-infested jungle pegged until you pulled a rainbow out of it

Did they just change their name to "The Ontario and-sometimes-other-places-in-Canada-too Flyfisher Magazine" ? Cheers.

Hey beedhead, have you tried to contact the Alberta outdoorsman magazine and see if they'll run an article or at the very least put an information box giving the website and a quick bit of info in their next issue? You have almost 2,000 his on this thread and 2,400 his on the Outdoorsman forum, so there is at least a lot of "interest" in the proposal. Just a thought. Canadian flyfisher might be a good bet too. Oh, not to mention local fly tiers clubs that have websites as well as guys like Jensen and Rowley that have blogs with regular readers. They might be willing to put a link on their sites. Cheers.

What I don't get is the stupid cable fence that they have the entire way down the QE2. I realize that it is there to stop people from crossing the median and going into oncoming traffic but couldn't they just have put one cable fence down the middle in the meridian? It would have been half as expensive in the first place and: - there is now no room to move over if you have to fix a tire or other emergency issue ( I realize you should go to the other side anyway but sometimes it's safer just to pull into the nearest shoulder/ditch). - cars now, instead of sliding unharmed (or very little damage) into the ditch will hit the fence and wipe out at least one entire side of their vehicle. - cars could hit the fence and bounce back onto the road like a giant pin-ball. - those posts look like big freaking spikes to me. Maybe they've even sharpened the tops so that when there is a rollover- the impaling will be quick and effective. - In a bad storm, from here (Lacombe) to Edmonton I've counted over 20 vehicles in the ditch on the Northbound alone. If half of them are on the fence side, that is 10 places that they are going to have to fix every storm. Over the course of the winter, I bet it would be close to 30 places they are going to have to fix. AND, they won't be able to fix them until the ground thaws in the spring! If they had put the fence in the middle of the median, it still would have stopped cars from crossing but only a handful of vehicles would have skidded that far, so limited repairs come spring. -oh, and when they do fix them, they are so close to the road that they will have to shut down the left lane where they are fixing it and back the highway up a few miles on the Friday before the May long weekend! Looks to me like a make-work-and-continued-work project to me, that is very unsafe, expensive, and mostly unnecessary. Cheers.

I think Sundance, Beadhead, and others (including myself) also see it as a bit of paradise. We just want to see it at it's full potential and don't think it is there yet (at least from a fisheries stand point). I think we are under the "it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all," philosophy. We don't know all of the positive or negative outcomes of such a regulation proposal but it makes a lot of sense, it should really improve the fishery, and the negatives outcomes like overcrowding, increased garbage, etc, seem more speculation than they do an inevitability. There's a quote from a book on business that says something to the effect: "Good" is what stops us from being great." If things are bad, we have no problem trying to fix them. But when things are good, we're worried we're going to screw it up and make things worse if we try to improve them any further. I think people in favor of this change think the K lakes are good but not great. You think they're good but don't want to mess with it in case it goes bad. So I guess you have to ask yourself if you're happy with good or if you want to try for great? There is some risk, but there is also potentially great reward. Cheers.

Great philosophy jusfloatin! Let's keep the fisheries in Alberta as crappy as possible so that we don't have as many users! Awesome! That's like getting a dog with no legs so that you don't have to take it for a walk. Freaking brilliant! You know what else we should do? I don't like seeing other fishermen when I'm fishing the North Ram. It's just too good of a fishery. We should lobby the gov't to open it up to keeping 5 cutties of any size. Then, in 3 years when the fishery collapses, I'll be able to fish there in peace and quiet. I bet there won't even be any garbage; won't be any fish over 6" either but that's the price we have to pay for some solitude! I don't remember EVER standing shoulder to shoulder on the Bow and I would think the garbage issue would be due more to the river flowing through a city of 1,000,000 than from the fishermen (I'm assuming the condoms people periodically find floating along aren't from the guide boats, but perhaps that's why a few companies are so expensive ). The more quality fisheries we have in Alberta, the more spread out the fishermen will be. We have so few quality places to fish, that we tend to congregate where there are good fisheries. And good fisheries are where there are good, solid regulations that try to keep big fish in the lake/stream longer. Cheers.

In a small town up in Northern Alberta there was an old Indian man that was an absolute master fishermen. Every time he would go out fishing, he would come back to town with his limit of fish. Some people thought he was amazing while others thought he must be fishing illegally to catch so many fish all of the time. There just happened to be a new, young Fish and wildlife officer in town that really wanted to prove himself. He had heard the rumors of the old Indian man and had seen him come into town several times with his limit while others got skunked. Bound and determined to get to the bottom of this he approached the old Indian man and asked if he could accompany him on his next fishing trip. The old Indian man said, "Sure, I'm going out tomorrow really early. Meet me at the lake at 4am." So the next day, the young officer meets the old Indian man at the shore of the lake at 4am and they jump in the old man's boat. The old man rows to the center of the pond, drops anchor, reaches under his seat and pulls out a stick of dynamite. He lights it and throws it into the lake. BOOM! The water explodes and there are fish floating everywhere. The old Indian man grabs a net and begins scooping up the fish and putting them in the boat. The young officer is shocked and yells at the old Indian man, "You can't do that! That's illegal! I'll have you arrested!!!" The old Indian man calmly reaches under his seat, pulls out another stick of dynamite and lights it. He then hands the burning stick to the young officer and says, "Now, are we going to sit here and talk, or are we going to fish?"

Ok, so here are my two favorites for the Bow this year. Both are a little worse for wear for obvious reasons. First one is a stonefly imitation that worked extremely well even into August on some picky fish. The second is a take on a san-juan worm but tied with sued. Super easy but also super effective as a dropper under the previously mentioned stonefly imitation. Cheers

If you want just a good pack for a great price you can't beat the MEC Brio http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail...._id=84552444241 for under $100. I just got the MEC IBEX and really like it as well. More padding in the waste belt and more pockets and features. Took it on a 60km round trip hike last year and loved it. I'd save your money on the pack and spend it on boots and a good tent. MEC tents are also great. I have the tarn 3 and have used it for probably 100 nights, many of them in the pouring rain in NZ. Never leaked and even in gail force winds and hail, still feels solid. I've never had a problem returning Mec stuff as well. If it breaks, they will fix it or replace it. Got to love that. Cheers.

Hey Maxwell, do you have a pic of those foam green drakes? Cheers.

Ok people, it's freaking cold outside and I need to ward off some early season depression. Let's have the best funny/humorous fishing or fishing related stories and pics that you have. I'll start us off. My dad and I were just finishing our first ever guided trip down the Bow and came around the corner to McKinnon flats and saw this. All three of us thoroughly enjoyed watching buddy try to get his precious stalled hummer out of the river. They brought in a really big truck and cable to pull it out but to no avail. However, the thought of taking the boat off of the trailer to get the hummer out of the river never crossed these genius's minds. Gotta love a little karma.

1. Chernobyl ant 2. parachute adams 3. Elk hair caddis 4. Black wholly buggar 5. Bead-head pheasant tail nymph

I'd go with foam chernobyl ant type stuff with rubber legs. They're a ton of fun to tie and once you use foam on one thing, you'll be trying it on others as well. Works like a damn on the Bow too. Cheers.

Double Rainbow, Golden Stone, After Dark, Snout Hunter, Rock snot, That's what she said, The Worm.

Just make sure you eat lots of powerbait.... if the bathroom is an outhouse, you'll be fishing right next to the lieu!

Well whataniceguy, I guess the only thing left to say is, "Yes, well, I’m polymerized tree sap and you’re an inorganic adhesive, so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of me, returns to its original trajectory and adheres to you." Cheers.