Bigtoad

I had a similar experience at the flyshop in Wholesale in South Edmonton and sent an email to customer service complaining about my experience. Never did hear a thing back. Went to Wholesale in Calgary a week later and it was totally different. Helpful people who actually knew something. I guess it just depends on who is in charge. Might even depend on the day? I've never had bad service at the smaller shops either, but I do expect to pay a little more for some stuff (but am sometimes happily surprised). Cheers.

I caught one on a Blackstone trib using a pretty big streamer prospecting for bulls and big cutts. In one little stretch I caught a cutt, bull, brookie, and whitefish all on the same streamer. Cheers.

I've caught whites in the summer on prince nymphs under an indicator. Takes were super light so it was easier in really clear water where you could see them inhale the fly. This winter, I've had really good luck icefishing at Gull with a wire sanjuan worm and even better on a scud imitation. I opened the stomachs of several that I kept and they were full of scuds. Pheasant tail nymph has been productive as well. Cheers.

Done.

Is there a gov't of Alberta website that shows parks/etc where offroad vehicles are and are not allowed? Where they need to stick to trails and what are those trails? I see there is a North Ram Nature Area but I have no idea what that means because obviously quads are tearing up and down that area. I'm not sure what's natural about that??? The gov't website has several different designations for different areas but offroad areas are pretty vague at best. I don't have a quad, I'm actually wanting to use the website to figure out where to go fishing on foothill streams where quads aren't going to be passing me as I hoof it in for a little untouched cuttie action. Nothing worse than hiking for an hour and just as you get to the stream, a couple quads come flying past you and begin fishing upstream. I have also had bad experiences with quads on the Blackstone where there are quad tracks up and down the river from one hole to another. For some reason... where I find these quad tracks, I also don't find any fish... must be a coincidence.... It would also be really helpful to be able to report someone who is offroading where they shouldn't be. Cheers.

Just sent in my experience to customer service. We'll see if they respond. Cheers.

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.

I have a 4pc TFO 4wt Finesse that I love with a Pflueger (sp?) reel. The Pflueger and Amundson reels were with $20 of each other and I almost went Amundson but the Pflueger is absolutely awesome. I've landed some beauty browns on this setup this year with no worries. The shorter rod is great for small creeks and streams but doesn't have the jam to throw it out there like a bigger, longer rod. For the small stuff though, I love casting it. As has been said, it really depends on what type of fishing you're going to be doing. My dad and I were fishing Prairie this year and he struggles with his casting (especially in close quarters) and was having trouble casting well with his 6wt $60 rod. While I was undoing one of many large birdnests in his line, I passed him my rod to cast to a rising brown across the stream. His casting improved 100% and he was throwing line like a maniac. He made a great cast across the river and missed the take on the brown. I could barely get him to give me the rod back. When he did, his casting went to crap again. I'm just saying that a rod that feels good to you really can help. Cheers.

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.

Now you've really gone and let the powerbait hit the fan on the outdoor forum. Nice! At least you should get a few more signatures and some healthy discussion on the topic. Cheers.

Hey Beedhead, you might also want to throw this onto the Alberta Outdoorsmen website http://www.outdoorsmenforum.ca/ ? I'm sure you'd get a mixed bag of support from there, but at least more people might know about it. There are a few bait-chuckers on there that seem to think it's their god-given right to take as many fish out of a lake as possible and the bigger they are the better. However, most seem to be sensible individuals, many of which I am sure, if given the opportunity to fly-fish, would throw down there maggots and powerbait and step up to the vise. Just another way to get the word out. Cheers.

Done! Thanks.