lonefisher

I have seen weather changes that seem to completely shut the fish down........ I will definately say that weather can affect fish but I can not say if its the pressure, or the light, or even perhaps an effect on the insects which translates through to the fish....... I rarely get skunked either but just last week Glenbow and I were out on a river that the week prior had produced 30 plus fish easy in a day. We fished for about 1 hour and the fishing was good about 5 landed at that point..... Suddenly we get hit with a black storm front that changed it from calm and sunny to a pretty good storm with extremely high speed high elevation winds (meaning we felt little wind but the clouds above were screaming past) The fishing immediately shut off and for 5 hours we rose nothing and could not seem to make fish take nymphs or streamers either all of which have proven effective on this river. After the first hour the storm had passed but those high elevation winds continued to howl all day. We were effectively skunked post storm...... Although I think we did manage 1 or 2...... but still noticably slower then it should have been.....

She just knew all us guys were thinkin it but were too afraid to ask

At the tail end of the fly there is 2 brown things sticking out are they tied in like that of it is just part of the shellback coming off? They make very little sense to me...... Whatever it is it is a interesting looking pattern

I'd love to do it but I just cannot get the time off..... I have been trying and trying but staff shortages are seriously so bad its not even funny. I am lucky to even get my regular days off this year and only because I downright refuse to work them...... its brutal. Everyone with the ability to do my job (which is not that hard at all) is already completely fully loaded and in most cases overloaded to the point of wanting to kill people. The rest are so new and so unexperienced that it would be foolish to even try and leave them. Someone else did it last night and now I will have 3 days of headaches trying to fix the mistakes as they filter through the system...... I work in the tourism industry and the word weekend just does not have the same definition for me as they do for others...... Now if it were on a thursday I would be all over it......

Ladystrange They tried bottom bouncing with him for hours but even the pike didn't want him.....

Ahhh the legendary high mountain redfish...... Rickr your grandfather would be ashamed at you for giving away that texas family secret spot.......

I looks a lot like a backswimmer or boatman pattern that I have seen Brent Schlenkter tie.... (A million appologies if I spelt name that wrong and I know i did) But in all honesty I am not sure.... in the pics it almost appear to have antenae on the head but that may be your tippet...... thats my best guess but if those are antenae its not a backswimmer.....

I thought he was trolling a sack of kittens?

I say if you want to take the year off do it man..... But if you plan on going to university and thats what you want to do then just make sure you come back.... traveling is addictive

definately not a hopper expert but this is a good link http://people.uleth.ca/~dan.johnson/htm/dj_gh_guide.htm

great post and great bulls! sounds like a hell of a trip and that scenery is worth it regardless of the fish caught...... PS great underwater shots!

Those are sweet Woody is that charcoal? I especially like the bottom one simple but deadly. EDIT ok your second post wasn't up when I started I have a new favorite bet you can't guess which one.....

Its not fair to expect a canadian tire employee to know ANY fly patterns..... near minimum wage and an entire world worth of sporting goods equipment.... most won't know the products they do have let alone the millions they don't...... I don't expect to much from the kids at big stores like that.... If my mechanic said "whats a catalytic converter?" I would be worried..... or if a climbing shop employee said "whats a carabiner?" I would maybe get gear somewhere else..... The trick is to never go to big stores like crappy tire unless you know what you want and where to find it..... Just my opinion

LOL I actually don't think I have ever heard the word canuckish either.... But I kinda like it too.

nope best bet is troutfitters near the football stadium...... Crapadian tire in Cochrane has a bit of stuff but not much.

Toolman in a Calgary nightclub? Don't know the TM that well but I know its tough to be drinking at the Back Alley or Cowboys and drifting skid bitchs for monster night time browns at the same time....... PS Gordon your Canadian is getting good eh? I have however taken the liberty of correcting your previous post so it fits with proper Canuckish..... Oh thats enough with the Scottish thing eh? Well two weeks to go eh and I will be in Calgary ? I do the Kilt wearing and the haggis eating, as for the cheap whisky eh.... well everybody knows that goes to Canada and the US anyways eh. I think it's about time I came to Calgary with the Kilt on for a night oot, then the Bow for some troot eh? So if you see Toolman in a Calgary nightclub saying he's not with the guy with the Kilt on, that will be me eh. Gordon Macleod (Clan Macleod rep for Calgary) You will also notice I corrected the capitalization errors....... Were Canadians eh.... not savages ;-)

hey you forgot to fix your divot!

Just looked up the intruder and would be interested if anyone swings them in the bow..... Looks like it could be an excellent trout fly as well as for steelhead......

I believe there is also some that will glow a flouresent orangey red colour...... there is a product called gibbs glow yarn and imho it doesn't glow at all......... other products may be better but I have not used any.....

just outta curiosity but can you post the theme and the deadline you set some other guys might wanna get in on it...... but if you want 1 on 1 thats cool

try fishing a hopper as part of a nymph rig sometime..... I know a few places where this is sometimes quite productive as hoppers I think only stay on the surface for a while then they sink...........once they have sank they are down there till they git ate. I have tried fishing stoneflys and other dries in the same fashion with very little success...... I have caught enough fish on hoppers to know they are often worth tossing but there are many places where they are not productive..... you just have to call the spot and fish what you think stands a good chance of producing..... I don't feel this thread is anything to get heated about lots of great opinions and theories are being offered and the one rule of fly fishing is there is no rules of thumb that cannot be broken...... Hope that doesn't get taken out of context I also feel hoppers are usually best fished from the water casting to shore rather then the other way around.....

Yeah I would say hoppers are an important terrestrial food source......... Likely one of the most important terrestrial food sources IMO. But IMO a good hatch of aquatic insects will always be more productive while the hatch is going on and in the cases of large insects like stoneflys even long after the hatch has happened.... as long as there are enough of them to keep the trout tuned in to them...... But I would also agree with Taco that the number of hoppers is down..... I know that my main area of reference (the farm 20+ years) seems almost devoid of hoppers compared with some years....... Also they are smaller...... I have heard of grasshoppers having cycles even before I started flyfishing I remember a teacher once told us what all the variables were that affect their numbers but I am drawing a blank now...... sometimes I wonder what I went to school for

Drunk on cheap scotch wet wading...... just like any other day for on the water with me and Glenbow LOL cept this time we will have kilts and a cheer leading squad......

When do I get my Scottish Accent and flask of whisky? ...... This spey thing is tough not only do I have to learn about heads, grains, tips, and anchors I have to learn about malts and whisky ageing.....

Toolman I wish I had camera today...... I paired the rod up with my SA double taper 6wt line, bauer jm reel, and 10ft3x leader and lead weighted Bow river bugger in olive and brown. I just wanted to toss some sort of rig on there to try and cast it..... first few casts were pretty sloppy but I finally really slowed it down and discovered it had beautiful response at slower speeds. So I started down the bow here in canmore basically just to get the feel of it..... I worked about 100 yards of river before coming to the main bridge in town. I casted out at the bridge pillar and quickly scurried under the bridge as I would not have been able to cast or hold the rod upright under the bridge...... Once emerging from the otherside I mended downstream to pick the bugger off the bottom. I kinda figured the rod would not be as sensitive to takes as a shorter rod..... wrong..... just as the bugger lifted off the bottom I felt a rod shaking thunk..... Crap snag I thought for a millisecond before the line peeled up past the pillar and around it into the current...... I quickly readjusted my drag as I had it super super tight and was surprised the line had taken that hit. Then I started to tork the fish back around the pillar I wasn't sure whether I would get her around but once she came around I new she was in the bag. About 30 seconds later after figuring out how to get the line controled with my hand with such a long rod I cradled a female brown of atleast 23 inchs...... my biggest (brown) out of the bow for the past 2 months (mind you I have not fished the lower bow since there was still some ice cept once for about an hour after fishing the highwood area). I admired the fish and took a quick measure and let her go....... Where she was landed though I would have been hard pressed to get a pic anyway but I would have loved to get a pic of the first fish on this rod. Anyways I figured that was a good first session and headed home to get ready for work Gotta say I love the line control and simple casts the long rod enables you to make..... another addiction. AS to your post I would LOVE to hear the results from your line tests..... And I thank you for taking the time to do it. Edit I will try and get into the city here sometime and would love to hook up wih you and test some stuff out I will try and find the time