dryfly

Governor General: Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean Telephone: 1 800 465-6890 / 613 993-8200 Fax: (613) 998-8760 Email: info@gg.ca / smcook@gg.ca Jack Layton Telephone: (613) 995-7224 Fax: (613) 995-4565 Email: Layton.J@parl.gc.ca Gilles Duceppe Telephone: (613) 992-6779 Fax: (613) 954-2121 Email: Duceppe.G@parl.gc.ca Stephane Dion Telephone: (613) 996-5789 Fax: (613) 996-6562 Email: Dion.S@parl.gc.ca Michael Ignatieff Telephone: 613 995-9364 FAX: 613 – 992-5880 Email: Ignatieff.M@parl.gc.ca Bob Rae Telephone: (613) 992-5234 FAX: 613) 996-9607 Email: Rae.B@parl.gc.ca Dominic LeBlanc Telephone: (613) 992-1020 FAX: (613) 992-3053 Email: Leblanc.D@parl.gc.ca According to our MP the internet petitions can't be given to parliament. Naturally they will get attention if millions sign them. Here is an official parliamentary petition as send by our MP. HAS to be at your MP's place by this Friday. I presume they will accept PDFs of the completed petition.

THIS could be the right petition.... http://www.petitiononline.com/CANADIAN/ I signed at about 10 AM as #668 and it's now over #5,400 !! Sign on ~!

Not so fast Lynn... I heard Mike is getting you one of these for C'mas. :pimp: :lol: :P

Woohoo Jeffro!

The Doghouse Beware!! Take heed all men.

Good on anyone who wrotes ANYTHING to anybody. I wrote to the Liberal party and to Brison yesterday. Rex was great and he slammed Stevie Wonder for being such an idiot over the party funding. THAT was the sole reason for this mess. The opposition was pissed. The PCs were too cocky after surviving the last minority. Still .... There is a petition going around. BUT it has a spelling mistake in it ... which I have asked to be corrected. http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/no-to-...ent-canada.html "elect " should read "elected"

Amen Troutlover ... This is NOT democracy. As much as I dislike AB Liberal leader Taft even HE said it was nonsense. The Liberals are conspiring with the Bloc (a separatist party aimed at the destruction of Canada) and yesterday the Liberals (Brison) claimed the PCs are playing politics. WTF!? The shameful, undemocratic process that the Liberals are currently engaged is a disgrace to all Canadians for the sake of an immoral greed for power. It is NOT what we voted for. Dion was soundly rejected even by his own party! And the bastard will be PM next week! I heard the prick Dion on the radio this evening and nearly puked listening to his smarmy French voice you can barely understand. Bastard. (I've nothing against the French...but I want to be able to understand the PM. Is that too much to ask? The guy is a loser. Canadians rejected him. His own party rejected him. And the smarmy bastard could be PM. Come on!) Any Liberal or ND who supports this move is just as bad as the power-hungry Larry, Curly and Moe. Moral Liberals and NDs should be protesting this because as Troutlover said this is NOT democracy. The liberals are dividing the once wonderful country purely for political power. This is THE MOST divisive political bullshit in Canadian history. Shame on any person who condones this. GRRRRR!!!

If you got money from a Liberal I want a refund! Green maybe, but Liberal?!?! Clive PS: Well done Rick!!

Man at that age I think you need a burning permit to light the cake! HBD Gary!

The ponds across the road from me are frozen over. I'd guess Badger is open. Though it is hard to say about the shallows near the launches. -10°C last night. You'll probably want to fish deep (3+ m) with slow (SLOW!!) retrieves. Given the water temps use EXTRA caution. Life expectancy in 2°C water is just a few minutes. Beware the Badge Breeze ... although Sat is probably calm. Who knows? Friday will be breezy. The Badge Breeze is a mean sonufabitch and it'll get ya. Been there. Done that. Good luck.

Boomer song

Was sort of expecting a bit more substance rickr.

"Once a fish's eyes don't orient to the water when above surface, he's pretty much a goner. " That is bullshit! "A fish's eyes underwater are horizontal to the socket because the hydrostatic pressure of water holds them there," ?? A released trout with horizontal eyes 2 inches under the water are straight because of water pressure? Really. Lots of pressure there, eh? Following your "water pressure" logic then a fish's eyes would be straight at (say) 4 foot dpeth and gradually turn downward as it neared the surface. That is no so. I've caught trout for 50 years and photographed trout for 30 years. I've landed thousands of trout. The tired ones have their eyes down. Trout that come in readily have their eyes straight and SPLASH away. The stressed ones are down and have to be released with care. According to you 80 percent of the fish we release are goners I guess. Sure. okay. You bet. Gonna post some pix later. EDIT: I don't have to post pictures of my own ... but will gladly do so if desired. I took a few minutes and checked the fish images on this site. I recorded eye position of 65 trout--the first 65 I came across where eues position could be seen clearly. 42 (65 percent) were out 13 (20 percent)were down 10 (15 percent were in between) PGK, be careful about what you say. Maybe some guys don't treat fish quite right but I guarantee that 65 percent are not "goners." To say that fish with eyes out are "goners" is misleading and a disservice to novice anglers. You should reconsider your advice because it is incorrect. Cheers! Clive

All good points. Thanks to everyone. SPECIAL THANKS to bloom for his hard work and wise council. Well done Tim! Will be great to see how this all plays out. If Police develops even close to BH, it looks like we have indeed increased the opportunities for quality lake angling here in Southern Alberta. I might even become a lake angler one day. I just don't want to fish when Andersen is on the lake. I hear he's pretty good. Why am I not fishing anywhere today?!? (Couldn't get out .. doing favour for a friend. ) Cheers! Clive

OLDMAN RIVER CHAPTER Trout Unlimited Canada Agenda Wednesday, November 19, 2008 ATCO Gas Building 410 Stafford Drive North, Lethbridge MAP 7:30 to 9:30 PM General meeting 7:30 PM Welcome Richard Burke and Henry Komadowski, co-chairs 7:40 PM Guest speakers ACA (Alberta Conservation Association) Brad Hurkett will present a preliminary report on the Upper Oldman River bull trout status assessment project Please note that in the New Year, Will Warnock will also be presenting information on bull trout genetics in the drainage, so we have two complimentary bull trout programs. 8:30 PM • Richard Burke will present information on o Development along the Crowsnest Lundbreck corridor. o Possible donation to TU of land along the Crowsnest • Paul Harper will present an update on Crowsnest River rehabilitation 9:30 PM Adjournment For information please contact: Clive Schaupmeyer, program chairman, clives@shaw.ca

Ho man ... I can't wait until February! After this and Lynn's video post ... what's next?

1) I am confused about the election outcome, or more specifically where Obama will lead the US energy policy. See below. 2) Consider that had McCain won, the USA was one heart attack away from haveing Palin as president and THAT would be indeed a scary scenario. I bet we all agree on that. Here is an Obama statement from an interview with San Francisco Examiner earlier this year. Let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. I was the first to call for a 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a (sic) ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them. Cap and trade won't work any better in NA than in Europe. Carbon values have apparently crashed. Solar, wind and biodiesel and highly environmentally questionable mass energy sources. Conservation is the main way to reduce use of fossil fuels. Yet we are ALL so bloody two-faced on this matter. Big cars. Big houses. Even us warm-and-fuzzy fly anglers are fossil fuel piggies. Me. You. All of us. Some are better than others, but we all use too much fossil fuel. What RAE the solutions to that? They sure as hell are NOT wind, solar and biofuels. Is Obama just another misguided idealist with no sense of reality and what the world needs to keep running? Methinks. (BTW, Kevin Taft once again this week used the phrase, "Post carbon society." That is such a naive, irrational and impossible mission. It is utter nonsense. In the foreseabel future--say 50 years-- the world cannot stop using fossil fuels. Just fossil fools think so.) Ideology is grand...but it can lead to freezing our asses off. England will have a huge shortage of electrical power within 10 to 20 years as they are closing old coal plants and have no plans to replace them with nuclear power. Last week the British parliament passed a new climate change law that calls for carbon emissions to drop by 80 percent by 2050. Absolute lunacy that is simply unattainable. WTF ar they thinking? They want 20 percent of their power form wind which they wil find to be impossible for many economic, engineering, environmental and practical reasons--and at teh end of the day teh carbon reduction from wind is small. Wind farms are obscene and Obama needs to learn this fast. Obama had better be reading the British newspaper ... as biased as the media is...as wongr rightfully stated. The current economy in the USA (and world) has put a big chill on eco-weenie idealism. And the fact that the earth temperatures have been cooling for a few years...on my! Cheers! Clive

Thanks Don. "low kill or no kill>light stocking gets you larger fish. Damn but if that ain't rocket science." The unknown is what is "low kill" since there is a legal limit at BH. Maybe the guys from the Hat area can comment: 1) Will an acceptable number of BH rainbows grow well over 20 inches as long as there is a legal kill limit of one over 50 cm? 2) What percent of BH anglers go there with the intent on whacking a keeper? Thanks.

RE: Gas Bubble Disease Thanks beed... Funny how angler's views are different. GBD is apparently caused by excessive oxygen. Yet some anglers claim the oxygen in BH is too low and causing harm. Go figure. Clive

Don, Thanks for that. However, it is a "scientific" formula used to describe something very subjective. We'd all agree that the "extremely poor" fish in the pictures on page 3 is indeed in poor health. Beyond that it is a matter of personal preference. The K factor description also states that the factor will crash after spawning. Yet using the numbers only to describe a lake would be misleading: one moment it is "excellent" and the next moment merely good. Did the chap who developed this K factor say that fish that are consistently "fair" or "good" live shorter lives than fish that are "exceptional"? Over 90 percent of the fish in our high-country streams would be rated as between poor and good. Most bull trout (not spawners) would probably be rated as poor to fair yet they have been here for millions of years and seem to be doing at least somewhat well. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. We'd all like to catch "excellent" fish in the pictures but I am not sure the "exceptional" fish makes my bum hum. BTW... the "cowboy" ponds were more or less manged by an angler. Stocking was extremely low. There was no harvest and rod days were restricted. They charged $250 per day to fish there. I fished one of the two ponds with 20 other anglers in May 2006..included were Brian Chan and Phil Rowley. I think less than 15 fish were landed in six hours--about 120 angler hours. (It was practically blizzarding at the time, but still...) (Funny story there regrading chironomids, streamers, Brian, Phil and Denny Ricards. Too funny.) Kyle McNealy has an interesting measure.--and it is not for bragging rights--just a standard. According to Kyle a good trophy fishery will get you 100 pounds of fish in a day. Interesting. We'd all be MOST happy with BH if we caught half as many fish that were twice the size. But can they get bigger when there is a a one-fish over 50 cm limit? Based on the K factor, the chick on the left is in "exceptional" condition .... I guess.

"Would not stocking for one year be enough time to really notice a difference in size? How fast do the trout in Bullshead grow on average?" Birchy, I don't know about one year...might take a couple--I dunno. bloom and Riverview and others will know how fast they grow. My experience elsewhere is between 2 and 4 inches per year--with perhaps 3 inches being typical. 14 inches one spring = 17 inches the next. They certainly used to grow faster at the Brooks Aqueduct Pond ... 3 or 4 inches per year for a few years. New reservoirs generally have a few years of major fish growth due to nutrient spikes. Crawling Valley was a festering green algae swamp in the early years. Kid name Danny Webster from Bassano yanked out a 19-pound rainbow thru the ice in about 1987. I took a pix of my bro with a 13-pound rainbow--he didn't catch it. Oink. swagman... "and by not significantly reducing the fish population are probably depleting the food source to a disastrous level." I have to strongly disagree. The fish are fat and healthy and they could not be so if we "are ... depleting the food source to a disastrous level." There is nothing to suggest there is not enough food...simply nothing. Basically it is closed system and very little is removed. Food types may be evolving (less shrimp..more something else) but you can't deplete food in a system like that where very little is removed. BH is a weed and bug factory powered by the sun and cow *hit. (Gotta love then range maggots, eh Don? ) Algae, insects, microscopic organisms, a tons of minnows all replenish every year. (No different than wheat in a field--and we ain't taking much out of BH like is taken out of a wheat field right?) New nutrients enter BH via BH creek and from the slopes draining into the reservoir. The drain water is "rich" (probably a stretch) in N, P, K and micros. Prairie plant material decomposes and carries nutrients into the reservoir. The shoreline weeds convert the sun's rays and nutrients into plant materials that becomes the basis for the lake's survival. Plant detritus becomes food for algae and insects. What happens in lakes is pretty damn neat. So if there were ¼ as many fish in BH and they all weighed two to four times as much as the fish there now, how would that change the consumption of fish food? Wouldn't. Same fish mass to support. Same "depletion." (There may be differences in food conversion efficiency between smaller and larger trout.) Let's say 1,000 fish are killed at BH every year and they weight an average of 1.5 kg each. So 1,500 kg of fish are removed. So what? Other than a few kilos of dead fish that are removed it is quite closed system. It is very capable of growing tonnes and tonnes of fish food. You don't just deplete food in a lake system where there is limited harvest. Say a 1-kg trout (spring) eats 5 kg of food (? ? ?) by the next spring and gained 0.5 kg. It has *hit out 4.5 kg of nutrient-rich food to feed weeds, algae and insects--and more trout. However, maybe there are too many fish in BH. Maybe reduced stocking would help. IMHO as long as there is a 50 cm limit there are unlikely to be a large number of keepers there. Let's quit stocking it for two years and see what happens. Wonder how long those trophies are gonna last. Let's see.. three guys in a boat who live 45 minutes away can make three fish runs a day. 100 day at six, 3 kg trout. Gee three guys can take out as many as all anglers all year now. As long as there is an allowable kill it is going to be hard to keep many fihs over 20 inches..whether the lake contains 10,000 fish or 50,000 fish. Oops ... I digressed ... what I was trying to say is that food sources don't deplete to disastrous levels and there is no evidence for that. Cheers, Clive

Riverview makes some great points and has historical info. Thanks. Based on Riverview's comments, how does everyone feel about taking a chance and NOT stocking fish for (say) one year and then maybe adding 10K the following year? Couldn't hurt. The risk? Numbers could (could) drop off and the fish not get bigger. If they don't get bigger then we might (might) know that the big ones are being whacked. If they do get bigger then we'd know it was the food and stocking rates. BTW... I am not sure I can accept the "aquarium" analogy. I did some rough calculations (while driving the other day) on water volumes and fish tonnage. If I recall my math, the mass of fish is about 20 ppm. i.e. 20 kg of fish per 1,000,000 kg (1,000 cubes) of water. In an aquarium the goldfish are more like 500 ppm. Is 20 ppm too much viz. food and space? I dunno. I still think there are too may folks going there with one thing in mind...whack a 50+cm trout. And then they finally get one...smacko. So what is it? Leave well enough alone or play with the stocking rates? I sure don't know. Cheers! Clive

Thanks Don. The trips we've been catching over in BC are a LOT prettier than the false-spawn-stressed diploids. Hawgstoppah said, "No need to change the regs, just change the ridiculous overstocking." I disagree. There MAY be some overstocking, but that is not exhibited in general condition of the fish which are large bodied and fat. There are no signs of lack of food or oxygen or lack of anything affecting growth rates except fish whackers. The lack of "keepers" is without doubt the result if many people killing them. Fish there long enough and you will be asked, "Get any keepers today?" RE: Overstocking and lack of food. Consider that if the fish numbers were the same and a whopping 10 percent of those fish were indeed 21 to 24 inches, this would increase the fish mass by maybe 20 percent. What difference would that have on the depletion of food in that lake? Absolutely none. If the present fish were showing signs of food deprivation that would be different. But they are fat and healthy. Reducing the stock rates MIGHT help, but they were cut in half already from the "standard" rates. Remember also that no one knows what the ideal rates should be. Every lake is different. There is no magic formula here. It may well be that with time, a suitable stocking rate for BH will be established. As for scuds, they come and go with the years and go through cycles--they may never return to BH. Who knows? Over 20 years ago, the Aqueduct Pond in Brooks was LOADED with scuds and they disappeared in one year. WTF? I asked the area bio about this and he attributed the disappearance to the bazillion "shiners" in the lake. There are a lot of small fish in BH and they are not trout. Between the "minnows" and bugs, IMHO there is oodles of food in that lake. We've seen trout chasing "minnows" in 6 inches of water right ON the concrete boat launch pad. Rather funny. As for the number of keepers. I kept a log this fall during the five trips made there. I landed 100 fish in five trips (+/- 2 fish) ranging from 12 to 29 fish per trip. Two of the fish I landed were over 20 inches. One was 19½ tip to tail and would have made legal if I'd done the idiotic "pinched tail" measure. The other was a legitmate tip-to-tail 20½ inches. So that's two percent for me. I think the other guys got one or two. So keepers accounted for 1 to 2 percent of the fish we landed--closer to one percent than two. Mark Twain said, Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish. Someone posted a note about BH and said that most fish caught were 18 to 20 inches and there were some keepers in the day's catch. I sorta doubt that. If size is important to an angler, then fish should be measured or claims about fish length distribution should be qualified, such as "not measured." Then we can all deduct the mandatory 2 inches from the estimate to get a more accurate sense of true fish size distribution. Our gang landed between 200 and 300 fish there this fall so we have a decent sense of reality. We estimate smaller fish length (maybe checking to odd one) and I "measure" the decent ones using markers on my rod. (Since becoming involved in Police Lake and having a new-found love of lakes, I like to have a sense of these "numbers" and "size." And I know that after 50 years of fishing I can't estimate fish lengths any better than anyone else. ) Anyway .. the fish we landed there this fall ranged between about 13 to 20½ inches. MOST were 15 to 17 inches with some 18s (maybe 10 percent) and the odd 19 incher--maybe 5 percent. Keepers accounted for 1 to 2 percent of the fish landed--as noted, probably closer to one percent. Bullshead is a great fishery, full of fat healthy rainbows. Congrats too all involved, including biologist Terry Clayton and bloom for his hard work a few years ago. IMHO the ONLY way to increase the numbers of larger trout is to increase the kill size to 24 inches. And if that does not happen it will still be a good fishery. Hopefully in a few years the "correct" stocking rates can be figured out...personally I think it is close now. Comment on hooking mortality and affects on fish size. Experience would dictate that it is probably not a major issue in the fall when the water is cooler. I released a trout in Police Lake that was hooked in the gills and probably died. Of the many landed in BH this a fall a few were hooked in the tongue and the rest in the lower front or side lip. I'd be surprised if any died. They all zoomed away. C&R and mortality is a reality. But killing (say) one fish per day (by C&R) instead of whacking five is the way to go. Y'all have a swell week...I'm outta here for a few days. (Going to Police and BH now that the crowds are down. KIDDING! ) What was the question? Cheers! Clive

Boy I don't want o start a fight. I read the "stressed fish" article. Here is a quote: The long and short of it was that if the fish’s eyes are looking down, or at the water while being held upright, it was less stressed than a fish that has “Dead Eyes” that are staring blankly straight ahead. He also explained that if the fish has the blank stare, his findings showed that the fish had less than a 10% chance of survival, even if quickly released. He explained that it is very important to look at the fish’s eyes once it is landed because taking extra time with the release, can improve a fish showing stress’ chance of survival by as much as 58%. I've been fishing for 50 years and photographing fish for 30 years. This is bullshit. DOWN EYES INDICATE STRESS. A fish that comes to hand easy will have its eyes straight out. A fish that has fought hard and possibly in warm water will have down eyes. The eyes of fish swimming (underwater .. doh) are straight out. They are NOT down. Cheers! Clive

and rainbows too