dryfly

Speaking for Andersen, myself and other OFs ... Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. Eleanor Roosevelt I am 60!

Lundvike: I'll take one dozen of those. Clive

Ha ha. And then we'd have to ask each guy/gal to provide 4 references so we could rate his/he ability to actually catch fish. So we'd have: Angler index = dpy X years X ability X "nice guy factor" - (minus) dork factor + "brings nice lunches" factor + "always drives factor"+ "ties flies for me" factor - "mooches flies" factor Seriously: Don does make a good point. But as Birchy said, it then gets complicated. Might as well go fishing instead. Cheers! Clive

Lundvike: Looks pretty decent to me--I'm not really a bugger user..just a bugger. You can pack the spun deer hair tighter and add two clumps of hair. After spinning the first clump pack it with your fingers and the head of a Bic ball point pen--remove the ink cart first. Push the tapered open end over the eye and pack the hair. Then add another clump and do the same...this packs the hair quite tightly. See step #5 here. This just shows fingers. But the open end of a Bic pen works well. Pack hair My decent tying stuff is at the trailer...fast and dirty..you'll get the idea. Push the pen end over the eye and pack the hair...you will have to backstop the hair with your fingers. (I suppose another brand of pen would work. ) Cheers! Clive

If you've ever driven to Badger Lake "the back way," you might have espied these N of Lomond. Sorry ... no crop circles spotted.

"...ship via USPS (postal) as opposed to FedEx or UPS." A loud ditto for pikebreath's comment!! Good point pikebreath. ONLY USPS/Canada Post if coming from the USA. Bloody Fed Ex and UPS will charge up to 20 percent brokerage fees. Criminal bastards. Side note rant: I live in a small town and UPS or Fed Ex are useless. We are often away and if we miss either they take the package back to Lethbridge (or ???) and may not come back for several days--UPS comes through on Fridays and Tuesdays! Utter nonsense for rip-off high-priced "courier" services. Whereas if an American company ships via USPS it arrives just as fast (or faster) and if we are away I get a notice on my door or mail box and can go down the next day and pick it up at the PO. Not so with either UPS or Fed Ex. A package just from Calgary via Canada Post/Express Post will arrive in 1 to 2 days. Via Fed Ex it is no faster if I am home and if I am away and miss the first call, I can wait one week--just from Calgary! People rag in the PO, but private courier services to small towns is a joke. End of private courier rant. Feels better. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Good luck with the waders. Clive

" A few years back I got a cannister of flower drying dust at a craft store and now have a lifetime supply of desiccant for flies as well." Whoa! Even better yet. Saves messing perhaps. NOW I need to find what carpet manufacturer makes the cool fibre stuff that make Ice Dubbing and I am set.

Rob: Assuming the bossman lightens up some, and you get away.... Not sure if mentioned....Always good to have some spent wing Olives in your kit--sizes 18 to 22. Also some small dark brown spent mayflies. A spent Olive is my go-to pattern during a hatch on the Crowsnest and has worked for me well on the Bow as well--way back. A spent seems to cover a hatch as the fish seem to know what spent olives are and I suspect they take the spent patterns for cripples too. Good luck! Clive PS: Pack your long underwear. It is -2°C this morning in the Pass.

Any store that carries furniture should have the larger pouches. Today, I got two large pouches at Costco. Furniture buddy was a fly fisherman so he was all over helping me and thanked me for telling him. (They had some sofas on the floor and they were still in the plastic coverings. I could see the desi-paks inside the plastic. ) I left my card with the warehouse guy at The Brick as well--they toss them as soon as they open new cartons. I'd imagine that Visions should have some as they should be in the large TV shipping crates. Schmooze over someone who shows a bit of interest and leave your name. I've enough for at least two years right now so won't be looking any more. (I feel like a cheap bugger, but have spent several thousand dollars in Alberta fly shops in the past couple of decades--I've no reason to feel guilty. ) This is what they look like. This pouch is small.

The homemade stuff attaches to the fly--until you flick it off. Therefore the wet silica is being removed from the container anyway and the supply depletes. Probably just as easy to pound up a new batch every year. Quoting http://www.deltaadsorbents.com/silica_gel.asp Once saturated with water, the gel can be regenerated (dried) by heating it to 150°C (300°F) for 1.5 hours per liter (about 1 dry quart measure or about 30oz weight) in a thick-walled Pyrex dish. Silica gel is non-toxic, non-flammable and chemically un reactive.

Sweet Ben. Thanks. Oh so pretty grayling.

Okay .. I will start with: 1) Apologies to fly shop owners and to whomever figured out the dry fly desiccant stuff in the first place. 2) Thanks to whomever figured it out 3) Admitting that I like figuring out stuff on my own, and 4) I am a cheap SOB. Ass covered. I was introduced to the crystalline dry fly desiccant last summer and think it is simply great. You treat a fly with Gink at the start of a day and after it gets waterlogged you just dry off the fly in a desiccant bottle. Bingo....floats like a charm again--slick as snot--swell stuff. So I get to thinking, "This stuff is really the same stuff that comes in pill bottles and assorted electronics equipment. It is just ground up. Hummmmmm. " Last month my son gets two new armchairs and inside the boxes are large (3-inch) pouches of sodium silicate (or whatever it is) beads. So I ground them up in an old coffee grinder that I use to mix dubbing -- versus Blondie's kitchen model. Looks the same methinks. A kitchen sink test confirmed it to be effective. Yesterday, we conducted serious field trials and it IS the same stuff. So I picked up some more pouches in the city today and since my grinder is at the trailer I devised a way to smash the silica beads with a hammer...folded a couple of tablespoons of beads in a heavy-duty shop towel and pounded them inside a large plastic lid. Voilà. I sifted the crystals with a metal mesh kitchen strainer and repounded the larger chunks. So ... if you like dry fly desiccant like I do and don't like paying $12 for a few grams of the stuff, you can make our own with silica gel beads. Very cool. Caveat: There may be different types of silica gel beads. You take your chances. The ones I used work just fine--every bit as good as the $12 vials. FYI.. Silica gel is a granular, porous form of silica made synthetically from sodium silicate. Despite the name, silica gel is a solid. It is usually distributed in the form of beads, which are packaged in a semi-permeable packet. Silica Gel is a highly activated adsorbent, furnished in a wide range of mesh sizes to suit various industrial applications. It is non-corrosive, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, and chemically inert. It is a highly porous form of silica, with an extremely large internal surface area. The silica gel does not undergo any chemical reaction during adsorption and does not form any by products. It is non-deliquescent and will not change its size or shape. Even when the silica gel is water saturated, it remains dry and free-flowing.

Fishing for 50 years since ten ... FF for 37 years ... More or less "exclusively" FF for 20 years.

Nothing wrong with boot foot waders--perhaps not quite as much ankle support for tough hiking. They are WARMER in winter than neo sock foots. Bootfoots with polyprop long underwear or polar fleece pants on a winter's day are just fine for warmth. That's an "interesting" wader format...wonder if anyone here has tried them. I wonder what the boots are and how they are attached to the wader itself. Price looks good.

This will give you some idea of the color ranges available in greens-yellows. These are half sheets available in a kids' craft kit at Wally World. There were 80 (??) half sheets for about $5. I took the dozen colors I wanted and donated the rest to the grandkids' craft box. The Darice sheets are bit stronger and larger but there is a limited color range. The foam is good for: ant, beetles, hoppers, caddisfly wings, emerger floatant balls. (I support local fly shops rather well, but we are all better off to shop for some things elsewhere for selection and cost. Fly shops charge [wot?] $4 for two half sheets of black ant foam and they don't carry a range of foam colors. Foam pike-fly popper and slider heads cost $1 each at fly shops and you can cut 50 or more from a $2 gardening kneeling pad or perhaps 40 plugs from a $2 foam flip flop sandal.) Oh yeah, the Darice sheets (and others) come in pale tans, tans, browns, pinky orange, orange ... perfect for tan hoppers, October caddisflies, salmonflies. This is a crappy picture of a crappy salmonfly (the pattern is great--thanks Guy...this fly is just a little skinny....) tied with foam strips:

Nice work MTB--most inventive. Thanks. I like the "strip and wind" results ... but sure like your body shapes. Wally World and Michaels (or any craft shop) have great selections of foam colors. The Darice sheets are 8 by 11 inches and cost about one buck. Nice colors too: tans, yellows, ant red and ant and beetle black.

Access to the Livingstone is currently closed and expected to be next week unless it rains. http://albertafirebans.ca/ Have fun in Cow Town.

MrB and Lynn: Nice work telling the folks. Good thing they were cooperative. Just amazes me just how !#$%! stoopid people are--and their lack of respect for the land and forests. People just don't get the "outdoors" and how fragile it can be. (We saw one "cigarette" roadside fire on Friday near Pincher and I talked to a guy yesterday who did a long road trip yesterday and saw six--count 'em, six--roadside fires ... probably from cigarettes.) Several years ago we were camped at Dutch during a fire ban. We happened to be camped within view of the firewood pile--back when it was free. A truck pulls up with two adults and two or three teen gals--we'd not seen their truck in camp before--and the cg was all but empty. They load up their truck with firewood and leave. Moments after they pulled away, a F&W officer pulls up with another "forestry" vehicle and at that very moment the folks who scarfed the firewood drive up the logging road on the N side of the cg. So we told the F&W officer that 1) they'd just stolen firewood and 2) reminded the officer there was fire ban on. She gives hot pursuit and 20 minutes later the perps return and unload the contra firewood. The outcome? SFA!! The officer did not charge them with anything. Charging them with the firewood "theft" required going to court and she said at that time the fine was $50 at most and it all was not worth it. She also said that the perps were embarrassed, apologetic and cooperative, versus antagonistic. Unfortunately she could not risk waiting until they started an actual campfire and charge them with that -- during the ban. (Had a real fire started as a result, she'd have been in doo as she was aware they were going to start a fire.) A few people are just idiots nd make life miserable for the majority of sensible folks.

Pretty decent discussion .. NOT read all. MTB wrote, "If you ask the question whether or not fishing is humane or not, and saying that sometimes you feel guilty, I believe that you do feel it is not humane and should not be doing it." If WE don't ask the question --and sort it out in our minds -- then OTHERS will ask if for us. And if they ask (say) politicians then we stand a chance of losing. RabbiEE's original post is totally relevant. And in any case if we do feel some concern then that makes us better anglers. Cheers all! Clive

Good one pacres. GB: "You don't have to drink more to make the fish look better. " Yeah, but fish seem to grow and grow with each telling and with more beers.

Whatever CKUA is playing. Saturdays on CKUA is cosmic after 9 AM .. all day till dark.... Dead ends and detours (Gateful Dead stuff) Then some country...then some jazz...then Baba's groves (best show on the air) ..TD Mulligan show...it's all good.

Nice post. Thanks. I ponder this sometimes too and it is a tough question. One rationale (and it IS arrogant) is to consider ourselves as the "hall monitors." We are keeping an eye on things in our river systems and that comes at some cost. Thus your question: is FF humane? If it means that more effort is made to protect the streams to ensure continuance of trout and trout streams, then the answer is, yes. However, on the surface C&R fishing could be argued to be inhumane as we inflict some trauma on creatures for our pleasure. Your question is sort of a koan. I do know that it is our job to attempt to make sure our grandkids can get out and wander streams as we can. Take care, Clive

NM...pike will eat a lot of stuff including scuds. But most of us have settled into large flies from 6 to 8 inches...which pretty much precludes "throw double streamers for pike?" It would fall under the general heading of "bad idea" And yes, yellow, is the general color of choice, but always have other colors too as they seem to have their moods (... don't forget the large pike are always female ) and some days prefer orange, red, and whitefish colors too. and some days it just does not matter. We had a slower pike season this year (cold all of April and May--hard to believe right now), but still managed a few good days.

If he was standing in water past his junk, any indecent exposure charges could be dropped due to "lack of evidence"! Or not even standing that deep ...