dryfly

Yes, take your bonefish gear. I erred by not doing so last February. We were at Princeville and went down to Anini beach one day and plunked down on the beach to read and smoke a cigar. This is a public beach and there were a few dozen people on it stretch over about 1.5 km. Well holy cow, two guys get out of a jeep both carrying fly gear and I figured (correctly) that they were a sport and guide. They walked onto the flats for about 45 minutes and came back fishless. (I never understood why they just stayed a short while. It was clear after they finished that they parted company and were not going elsewhere.) Naturally I asked them about the fishing and the guide told me to give him a call as he had gear. I did not. Guides will sometimes hype up a water for the benefit of his current sport and prospective sports .. in this case me. But I was kicking myself for not taking my 8-wt and a few bone flies. Geez our condo was just 15 minutes away. The guide was Rob Arita...here. He said there were bones on the Anini flats and I've no reason not to believe him. As bone flats go these were pretty small, but there were no other anglers out there and it looked like you could wade over a few hectares of these flats. They walked out about 300 m or so. Would been a good way to spend a couple of hours now and then. Apparently lots of ponds and rivers have bass and other species .. access is an issue apparently. All I caught were pictures...here. And here.

Good find Terry. Saw one on the Crow about 12 yrs ago in April...was about 6 incjes long. And there are a "lot" at Lees Lake. Clive

A bit OT ... rickr said "Correlation does not always infer causation." and that is an excellent point. We see cormorants frequently but not in numbers or concentrations to be of a major concern generally. But here are probably smaller lakes and ponds where they have an impact. However, I firmly believe pelicans have reduced fish populations on some streams and are a serious cause of trout decline. (Have we had a good pelican bashing lately?! ) Below is a shot of a mid-size reach in the Oldman drainage. This was a great (great) trout stream a few years ago and access was controlled and difficult so we know there was no poaching happening. Now we all know that fish populations come and go with the years seemingly going though cycles. However, on this stream within two years of starting to see pelicans in numbers the trout fishing literally evaporated. (If pelicans were the cause [if], the pops should rebound because, as of last year there were no fish here, and there is little nothing for the vermin birds to eat. Just not worth their efforts.) I rec'd am email last year from a retired senior manager/biologist with SRD and he ask WTF was up with this stream i.e. why no fish here? I showed him this picture. That sealed it for him. This is a "shelf" river with a few deeper pools..but generally rather shallow and perfect for pelicans to herd fish and feed. Like rickr said "Correlation does not always infer causation." All of this is circumstantial, but IMHO these large fish eaters are a reason for concern on some waters. This injury could (could) have been cause by the sharp bill of a pelican. This picture was taken 200 m from the above picture. In addition to swallowing fish whole (which they are famous for) it seems that this sharp bill may also cause injury as shown above.

beed .. NEVER ... and I mean NEVER .. use the word "wee" when discussing a near-senior like adc. Cheers! Clive PS: Happy BD Allan! PPS: beed .. thanks for the kind words. You would not have said "Great teachers" if you'd seen me last night unable to catching nosing fish. I did hang a nice brown yesterday tho. Sight fished. Nice.

Nice shots. Arty as noted. Heck, if I wanna "... Kill An Hour In Calgary..." I just hit the Deerfoot and it stops for about one hour. Happens about 2 of 3 times...that's why I avoid Cowtown at all costs. You cowboys and cowgirls do have a nice fishery in town that is rather enviable. Yahoo ...

Excellent. First-rate report and action. You guys did very well. That brown was the icing. Nice. Clive

From 2 years ago ...

Cheeler, Thanks for this. Great news. I think this encouragement will make me switch. As it turns out this problem "went away" after many hours and much embarrassment. A techy friend wrote last night, "I think it is not at your end I think it is at your providers end. This issue will most likely clear up in a day or 2. " He was correct. I retested last last night (after wasting many hours), and it was fine again. Retested this morning with many of the same attachments as used yesterday and all good. I will have a spare day next week and may be able to jump over. I MUST clean up the folder before doing so..that will take a few hours...have 10,832 emails in many folders. 90 percent can be deleted. Thanks again for the link. (I searched and could not find anything this good.) Clive

Maybe some of you techy types can save my sanity!! (And it is already in the brink! ) Background Been using OE6 for a few years. I send and rec dozens of emails daily. Send lots of emails with PDF, Word doc and jpg attachments. Generally things have gone well. The odd glitch with this and that ... usually "operator error." The problem Today I sent an email with two jpgs and one PDF attachment. An "error sending" box popped up and the message was still in the "outbox" and not in the "sent items" box. It turns out that the message was indeed sent and since it was still in the "outbox" it kept sending and sending. Searching the internet, I determined that this is documented by others. See here. The general solution is to first delete any remaining emails in the outbox, close OE and then do a search for "outbox.dbx" folder (now empty) and delete it. There are several references to it being corrupted. Upon restarting OE, it automatically makes a new outbox folder. GREAT! It all worked again. Well not exactly. I can send emails with no attachments and it is fine, but the moment I attach any type of file (large or small ... PDF, jpg, Word.doc ... no matter), the email hangs in the outbox and the error message pops up (BTW the error message box is blank). If the attachment is a small doc file (say a 10KB doc file which sends in a second) the recipient (my wife's computer for the tests) gets several copies of the email and this continues until I manually delete the email in the outbox folder. Ugh! So I went around a few times and deleted the "outbox.dbx" folder and it all works fine until I send an attachment. (I've been sending attachments for years...nothing unusual with the current attachments.) I read somewhere about reinstalling OE .. which I will never do. If I change it won't be OE. I'd really just like to fix this. I MUST fix this. I might be interested in using something other than an MS email system. Fine, BUT I have over 10,000 emails in assorted folders. Ugh (Again! ) I don't think OE folders can be exported to Thunderbird. Any one know if that is possible? Your suggestions are appreciated. Thanks! Clive

Hey BBT ... If Buckshot reruns become popular, you'll have to dump yer avatar!

Anglers' Ridge B&B .. 200 to 300 m from the river. Well done facilities. Will hold many people. Call Malcolm Bennett or Wendy. Mike Lamb's Riverside Lodging. Mike has an awesome cabin 200 m from the river at the TU Burmis lease. Will sleep quite a few people. Kitchen..two bathrooms...two bedrooms...VERY well appointed. Both of these people are active TU members. Mike manages the TU Hillcrest lease and Malcolm manages the TU Burmis lease. (I have no financial interest in these businesses.)

You are strongly advised to not even consider animal furs and feathers, packaged or otherwise. All you need is one cranky customs officer and you will either pay or have them confiscated. It is not worth the effort and risk. As others have suggested, buy materials or flies down under. Do you even know exactly what materials you'll need? No matter what you take, bet a dollar you'll end up buying something like "urine stained koala bear ear hairs" or some "must have" Oz material. My wife's small bag of trail mix (dried peanuts and raisins) cost us $210 going into Chile last year. Harden criminals we are. Trail mix.

Anyone taking that baby to Bullshead would be up for a Darwin.

No. Assuming the plants are robust and growing well you can leave the flowers alone. If the plants were weak and not doing well you may want to remove the first flower cluster. You will need to know if it is an indeterminate variety (staking) or determinate type (bush) to see how to prune it. If a bush type, then leave it alone. If it is a staking type then the "shoots" at the axils will have to be pruned away. See here. Clive

Yeah a Booby fly and a Dink Float.

It sure as hell would cut down on repeat offenders, eh? Why waste a dinghy though?

Chain Lakes (west of Nanton) is not on the list. here. (Thanks to BBT for pointing out the difference.) The closures or reduced services are unfortunate. Electricity was added at Cottonwood two years ago and use was way up last year. (Casual observation.) Three years ago they could not get a private operator there, and that may explain why it is being reduced to a day-use area...which is nonsense as there already is a a large day-use area there. Looking at the dense clusters of campgrounds in SW Alberta I can't see how this will make random camping worse. Random camping already out of control and the MLAs and ministers simply will do nothing. Please write your MLA and Mel Knight and tell them what you think. Not enough people are letting their MLAs and the minister know how they feel! Don't post here ... write a letter instead! Here is the contact info for the SRD minister. Here is how to contact your MLA. According to MLA, Evan Berger, (letter to me April 8, 2010), there is a new Public Lands Act which will make it easier to enforce land use regs. However, until there is real change in random camping enforcement (specifically, adherence to the 14-day rule) I don't believe it. Just more verbal bullshit. See here... random camping webpage made in 2002. The same goddamn cookhouse was still up in 2008!! It simply has been moved. If you want a copy of the letter I recently rec'd from Evan Berger (MLA Livingstone-McLeod) and email letter I sent to him, send me an email. The reply is mostly just blah blah blah. CLIVES AT SHAW DOT CA I also sent Morton a long letter and "report" on random camping in late 2008 .. I can send that to you as well. His reply was worse than Berger's reply! Clive

Don, I've seen your travel kit ... more stuff than some fly shops. I've been using one of these Planos for years when I haul tying stuff to the trailer....four drawers for hooks, threads, stuff and more stuff. And a larger top compartment for the vice and assorted gear ad supplies. This holds all of the essential trout-fly supplies and gear. Been very handy for me. Clive

Well Chris THAT certainly brings new meaning to the phrase, "pecker head." I vote you are best moderator of the year. PS: I am suing the cartoonist who stole my identity.

Tough crowd. I remember that day Terry. Was fun. But your have now bastardized the thread by showing a CNR trout. rickr ... " A true beast!" Apparently yer referring to what is between my legs? :P

Hey thanks riverview. Have you put the sheep on high ground for tonight's storm? This whole thread is a wee bit spooky. Regarding that fish in the net picture. We had a rather decent day for late-ish October and I was reading a Patrick McManus book at the time, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw. I must have felt like a hot shot because I had a good afternoon...not many fish but they were mostly decent and FAT. I was reading that night and scribbled this (below) in the back of that book. (Why the heck I remember, I'll never know.) Here are those scribblings as written down that night. Was October 22, 1994. And, yes, the word "taped" is as written 16 years ago. Anyway, it was a great afternoon with John. Sorry for the hijack. Let's see some more beeg fish.

Brian, Like I said, "And I know Hawgstoppah's fish are for sure." Honkin' huge bulls. WTF happened to Jokey? I sent him an email about 2 or 3 years ago and never heard back. He he. I also remember the Photoshop hack job of one of your kid's faces I stuck on that bull trout picture. Clive

rickr ... The fish had scales. In the space-time continuum its size would be affected by all that stuff Einstein said about relativity. And since this was so long back in time, and the light waves are still bouncing around the universe somewhere, after 16 years this trout is probably several feet long by now. Me? I got wider and shorter and grayer.

This was probably my longest and heaviest Bow rainbow. 23 ½ as I recall. We weighed a similar rainbow that day at 5½ pounds. These were fat, as is apparent in the picture. Gettin' old. This was 1994 down by Gleichen.