BillyGopher

A w&w guide doing the miles will use 2 pr boots a yr, 1 pr waders. Don't try to adhere extra patch/reinforcing to the waders as the area about the patch/reinforcing will become harder than the wader material and that transition will then fail. It's been done before and your waders end up looking like hell and leaking even worse and are no longer on warranty. Send 'em back. And no company is going to design waders for the 200 days/yr angler and give a 5 yr warranty. 1000 days is about 8 to 10 times what they're designed to warranty.

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and that is the discussion ender right there. It has yet to make it to the Minister, let alone have the Minister deliberate it. And you know how long a deliberation that would be given the present and forseeable political climate in AB. Maybe in 20 years there will be a seniors license, but it won't be for $. It will simply be a tracking device of use of our Fisheries. No Minister will ever approve charging seniors just to go fishing as it pertains to societal considerations as a whole, esp when the vast majority of much simpler, politically easier to implement changes were well shot down before reaching the Minister, let alone most of the few that then made it through to the Minister in the last round of license changes put forth by the FRT.

Keep in mind to use RAP. The gov enforcement uses the calls as data points to distribute funding and placement of enforcement actions and officers. Even if nothing happens in your instance, it does have impact in the bigger picture. If we don't use it, don't show the need, we simply won't get actions taken. It's up to us.

Wonderful fish. Congrats. Am wondering why you'd bother avoid fishing the spawn when you clearly fished through the hottest, driest weather and lowest, warmest water we've had in years?

trying to see the bow part of that cutthroat. the only bow feature might have been a possible white tip on the anal fin in top shot (was simply backlit) but it is not white in photo #2.

still missing the point. eggs can get trampled any time until fry emergence through april and post spawn adults are at lowest energy levels until early may. closure to jan makes no scientific sense. close until may 1 makes sense.

Would you give a shirt that reads "My meat's legal" to your 6 yr old kid or your wife to wear???

As an fyi from Dave's blog - just got this email from Colin over at the New Fly Fisher: 'Dave, I hope the summer is going well and biz is strong. We just got confirmation that CTV TWO in Alberta will begin airing The New Fly Fisher. Here are the details: Sunday, August 5 at 9am MT. It will air in this timeslot until Saturday, September 15 when it will switch to 8am MT. On Sunday, September 16, it will also begin airing at 8am MT. I would appreciate it if you could spread this info to all in Alberta who would be interested. Only shows shot out west will be broadcast. Cheers Colin Colin Mckeown Producer The New Fly Fisher 613-836-8295 www.thenewflyfisher.com'

Make sure that you look into insurance coverage before renting. What's behind the companies, do they have proper insurance, how long providing the service, do they have the resources (ie - reliable, experienced people involved), etc. Renting a boat is one thing, having the ducks lined up to do it 'right' on all levels is a completely different game. Each facet of our industry is a separate business and each has its intricacies that have to be covered.

Sounds like a good idea, almost as good an idea as a photo shoot over NYC with a huge, low flying plane doing circles over the city with a fighter jet on its ass.

Not to pick, but doesn't this pretty much go against photo rules? The handling of the fish, on the rocks, barbed hooks, etc. Oh, and not to mention the fact that their ripping browns off redds. A moderator question, I guess. Or a move to the shack nasties thread.

Their website has been down for some time and my emails are bouncing back. Just wondering if anyone knows what's going on with the company, if it's still around, or if any warranty work can be done by them still?

This thread is almost only missing one thing. I LOVE JET BOATS.

Jim is doing well after having three stents put in to clear blockages. They were able to catch things early enough that it was as favorable as could be. He left hospital this morning and is home now, hopefully resting as comfortably as he can with Lynda and three love pups.

Clive, Get two pieces of plexi, cut to size and pin them together. Works really well as a floating framed photo. Also, if you want to try something really neat, you can heat warp the plexi to a curve for a really cool effect with spotlights. Meld mounting brackets on the back and it looks wonderful.

Apologies for not visiting this site more often to post sooner, but life gets in the way. Are anglers voting with their feet by possibly fishing Stauffer less? Are there really fewer anglers? Where's the #s to substantiate that claim? If that is really the case, is it Stauffer in particular, or is it fishing in general that is seeing a down turn? Ab license sales seem to say it's fewer fisherman, not fewer fish in Stauffer. Further, is it Stauffer or is it a societal issue, where things like pace of life, price of gas, available time, city dwellers focussing on the Bow, etc that are keeping people from driving 45 min to 2 hrs to get to the stream? Another possible reason Stauffer may have fewer anglers is that it has a reputation of being fished heavily and those that do enjoy fishing small creeks may opt for other equally enjoyable waters to avoid what folks perceive as busy waters. Just pointing out that the reasons are many. Groups like Trout Unlimited created the buzz about Stauffer by having a purpose on the stream, a purpose to "rescue" it and also to fish it, as people were involved with it. Part of the reason so many fished it was that it was a focal point, a meeting place, a discussion point. There has been very little done on Stauffer for the "hands on" folks the past decade. Sure, a few beaver dams pulled but there is little else happening, and that which is being done is being done by one or two, with little input from others. Hence, the upswing in popularity created by a purpose in nits heyday also caused the downswing, once the purpose was fulfilled. Stauffer's popularity truly follows the same curve as any other fad. We can't do fisheries mgt by annecdotal review. We need tangible proof, a data set that looks at more variables than one's word of mouth review. To understand why, you have to appreciate what is, and we don't know what is until it is properly observed. Flyslinger mentions a creel survey that included fishing logs. It's been a while since that was even done on Stauffer, since Dave D and Tracy & Kat sat out ther eback in '92 or '93. It's fairly easy to do, even if only done by creel or journal. In terms of data, there is a massive difference from Quirk Cr. Quirk has had a database of angler effort, catches, controlled use, etc for a long time. Stauffer has one or two people that share with Fisheries staff. To compare the two is to not understand the differences and not pratice biology. We don't have a data set that allows for management decisions to based upon. Please realize that. They are useless for showing any sort of trend in between. A good biologist recognizes trends but doesn't make management decisions based upon graphs with such gaps of information. "The best we have" isn't even good in this case, especially when looking for funding to show why the trend in the graph is occurring. Do yourself a favour. Go back to the pdf in the Stauffer link Don posted. Look at the graph. Now, you tell me what the population dynamics were doing for the decade in between. Were the numbers at a high, a low, trending up or down before the 10 yr interval sampling? You can't tell? Niether can biologists. And without creel cards, journals, etc from a larger than one person sample, they mean nothing. In the bigger picture, my point in belabouring this thread isn't to beat on Don nor anyone. I picked Don's thread because Don's a big enough boy to know this wasn't "at" him. It's to raise the issue of the standards on which we base our fisheries management, what our hopes and expectations are. Is it acceptable to have no data, let things go, to lose track of science? The point is that more people need to understand what is required to do proper management of our fisheries, to stay on top of things and get involved and make sure that fisheries management plans for regions/watersheds/rivers that were supposed to be reviewed get reviewed instead of sitting idle for 10 years past due. If things go unchecked, at what point do we have any useable information to base management decisions? We wind up with a science deficit in this province and are further behind. Then what do we do to catch up? Simply fudge numbers or make them acceptable? Reach out and use a small, possibly unreliable data set out of convenience? Close down our research arms? In the case of my local river, that seems to be the case, as other projects get higher priority. It seems that there are two tiers of priority - you get funding or you don't. Is that what we really want for our fisheries/environment? Funny, I had answers right up until that last question.

Don, My concern is that there are 4 (or is it 5?) established data points. Then you have annecdotal evidence that could be right or wrong from 1 or 2 anglers. Where, in the science world, does this support any notion that the population's biomass is shrinking? It could, in fact, be showing that the biomass is actually expanding just as easily as contracting as we don't know where the #'s were the 5 years previous. I think that if you ask any biologist, having data entry points 10 years apart is almost useless information as it only shows a snapshot of one point in time. To give true trends in numbers, biomass, etc, annual studies should be given for a period of 5 - 10 years. Then we'd have a better appreciation of what is really currently happening. Your referenced #s are scientifically useless for any kind of management activities, and while you might be right or wrong, you're putting the cart on a different highway than the horse. The first step here should be to get funding for annual pop/biomass studies to see current trends of all fish species in the system. Sure, if you want to study contaminants, please do, but not under the guise of the sky is falling in biomass and #s of fish (trout or otherwise). There is no data to substantiate your correct/incorrect interpretation of a scientifically useless data set. That is the point of my post. No biologist should take on a study to determine why the pop/biomass is "crashing" based on that data set. Establish trends, see what is truly happening, then see what is causing the trend, and make management plans and actions accordingly, based on the guiding principles of our fisheries mgt. Again, the trend could very easily be going up as it could be going down based on those graphs - we have no idea what has happened in the 10 year intervals - given the 2 drought years followed so closely by floods. Re: flooding - those fields sure go under water and fish are lost. Did anyone monitor this? In the drought years, did anyone do in stream water temp monitoring? My point is, again, that there is one annecdotal set of observation and no science to back this stuff up. This isn't personal, the point is that if $, time, effort, etc are going to be spent here, it needs to be put through the proper procedure and channels. My last point is concern of funding for your study. Should groups like TU/ACA/AFGA fund a project that is based on no data to substantiate the purpose of the study? Again, why would any biologist approve that when there isn't a good data set? This isn't fluff, this is the core of fisheries. There is a channel and procedure steps for this kind of stuff and it's critical to follow it. In your mind, I may be making a semantical posture of separating concern over contaminants from the biomass "issue/non-issue", but it is imperative that the two remain separate. You want to connect them using the referenced data set, but you can't do this in science. You have to first see what is really happening before you can play Connect-4. Again, this ain't personal. We all know your passion and dedication. It's always recognized and commended. I just want to make sure that you're not getting an idea in your head and running with it before due time and procedure are followed. Johnny 5 - at first blush the lower sections reveal less trout/biomass. What about FISH data. You typed fish, but fish as in brown trout. What of the other spp?

Reply defensive as expected. Have a good one.

Don, I think you really need a statistician with an economist mindset to look at the data set and help you determine if your data set has any validity and whether or not those who might be approached to fund such a project should fund it. Your data set borders on having zero validity for your concerns. A low number of samples over an exceptional time duration coupled with life span of your subjects (10 years is a couple - few generations of trout) really leaves little validity to any concerns. If you are concerned about leeching, etc, and wish to seek funding, I would strongly encourage you to not use this data set to substantiate any funding as there are simply too many holes and no relevancy whatsoever.

I see three risers in there.

They'll have 'em on Friday afternoon for sure. Birdie just flew past saying so.

Gawd, Kris, we had you covered, then you type that? Might as well put a target on your head now. I ain't got your back no more.

"YOU can stand on it, dude!" Classic line! I always like to encourage folks to stand on what looks to be thin ice! Fun stuff. Hate to rain on the parade but I didn't see anything over 4 pounds in the vid, so how did they avg 4 to 6? PS - for others - My goodness, it was fairly obvious a few of these trout were going home with the Slayas, so let's leave the imposition of how to fish "my way" alone, can we?

So, Tako lies about being BCBoy, aka Kris, and he's got racial issues? Hoo-boy! We'll need to get Barbara Walters to interview him and see what really makes him tick, deep down, below the sub-cockles. Oh, and I vividly recall the bet at the old Forum. Kris owes a buck or two, definitely.