WyomingGeorge

I tried this out years ago and never found anybody. The one shuttle company used to do it but it was very expensive and you had to jump through hoops first. You can rent drift boats at most of the major rivers in Montana, typically for US$150 or so per day including the shuttle of both the boat and your vehicle to the takeout. The Missouri at Craig's a great place to practice handling a driftboat if you're new at it, as the upper river is very gentle and straightforward to row at anything but super high water.

I wanted to do the same thing a decade or so back before I bought my Clackacraft, but found it very hard and/or expensive to find anything around Calgary. I ended up renting driftboats (and confirming that I wanted one) down on the Missouri River at Craig, on the Bighorn River at Ft. Smith and on the North Platte River near Casper. They're typically around US$100-$120 per day, shuttle included, which considering shuttles alone on the Bow start at $60, always seemed like a pretty good deal to me. The nice thing is that down there you can gain exposure to different sizes and models of drift boat.

What about a single layer of rip-rap laid flat underneath the bridge. That would make it all-but impossible to drive upstream without impeding navigation. Granted, it wouldn't withstand a flood, but few things would. I tend to be with Bron on this one, that there's been an overblown reaction to the use of an exposed gravel bar of large cobble that grows only weeds. People throwing garbage is never good, but one sees garbage on the Bow wherever one goes, sadly, and blocking people from this patch of gravel won't stop those same people from littering at all the other places they go. Nor will it stop litter from floating in from upstream, nor youthful cyclists from chucking their empty Big Gulps beside the bike path. The rest of us pick up litter in whatever locations we happen to launch.

Do you think it's been flyfishy all along having you guys on?

If you focus on rowing others in your driftboat for a fee, you at least knock out a good portion of the risks associated with letting the boat out of your sight. But don't kid yourself that you'll be just rowing and not guiding. The oarsman is critical to putting people onto fish, picking out risers, keeping the two anglers working harmoniously, prioritizing water, etc. If you just float aimlessly down the middle with the anglers doing what they want, it's unlikely to be a big-numbers day. So then your conscience and your dedication to fishing get the better of you, and before you know it you're doing a little of this, suggesting a little of that, providing a few helpful tips...and then you're pretty close to guiding for just a rowing fee. There are far, far worse ways to spend one's days, of course.

Louise Shotton, 403-818-1625.

Was it $1,000 each? If so, that does strike me as substantial. If one is truly fishing for sustenance, then saving on $25 worth of store-bought salmon at the cost of a $1,000 fine is a poor economic trade-off and not something one is likely to repeat. If one is killing out of sheer cruelty and bloodlust, or hunting for a record trophy rack or a huge bearskin, that emotional desire is disconnected from economics and a mere fine is unlikely to deter. I know most of you wanted far, far more, but does that view make sense? Do you think the cost will prevent a repeat, or just make them more wily?

Perhaps one reason we're not supposed to discuss politics? But, surely, Taco, the truth or falsehood of a statement shouldn't depend on who is making it. One may object to Ezra, but either it's true that the new premier has hired anti-oil ideologues who would like to destroy Alberta's number-one industry, or she hasn't. If she has done so, it doesn't bode well for our economy...and how I feel about Ezra doesn't change that. The union propaganda posted a couple of days ago did not elicit quite so obscene a response from the guys on the right.

To the guys who say "meh". So then when it's a matter of principle that YOU care about, like say surveillance of phone calls and internet usage, or police forces flying drones over backyards, then the guys on the right get to say "meh"? Did I get that right? If the entire population feels that way, then nothing is a matter of principle any longer. Everything is purely about individual policy preferences. And then we all wake up one day and every freedom we ever had is simply gone because enough people were in favour of chipping away at each individual item. Tyranny has been the default mode of government, in all times and all places. Freedom is the exception. If nobody cares, in fact if people laugh and snort at the idiot who even still uses the word, it goes.

Actually, I can purchase 1,000 vehicles and drive them on my farmland until the end of time and register not one of them, ever. I only have to register a vehicle that will be driven on public roads. But a rusty old .22 hanging from a nail in the barn that would never leave my property and never even be fired again had to be registered with the federal government, egged on by a bunch of people whose open agenda (Allan Rock, quoted in public) was that in a country like Canada, only police and soldiers should have guns. Their agenda, clearly and openly, was confiscation. I don't own a gun, and I never have, but I understand the distinction and the concerns of firearms owners.

For whatever reason, I thought nearly everyone on the forum was kind of a bit left of centre. Of course, a gun-toting commune sounds rather syncretic, or eclectic, or perhaps just anarchic. Who shall be your crazed, charismatic, quasi-religious leader?

Hi Don: I know we are far apart politically, but I do not believe withholding investment dollars because one fears one will lose it all is holding anything or anyone to ransom. To believe that entails believing that investors in other countries owe us their money. Alberta has been a wonderful place to make an excellent living for millions of people over the decades, thanks largely to the energy industry. The spoils from that industry have enriched the provincial and federal treasuries to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Alberta's GDP is larger than B.C.'s, which has 1 million more people. If that's holding us to ransom, I'm a more than willing hostage. I honestly can't think of a place or a time in the history of civilization when a mere tradesperson could make $150,000 per year and own a house, property, vehicles and innumerable recreational items, and put his/her children through university. An industrial pipefitter in Alberta today lives materially better than my grandparents in Europe, who were of the just-below uppermost class. Bcube: OK, sorry if I mixed up the application of a couple of the laws, you are clearly an expert in this area. But you do know the trend I'm speaking of, surely. It began in the late 1980s with the dispute in Saskatchewan over the Rafferty and Alameda dams, and quickly spread from there. Remember, gents, nothing personal on any level here. Just a discussion, right?

Hey gents, lively discussion. And before I weigh in, let me just remind everyone that I'm not "from" Wyoming, I just go "to" Wyoming and couldn't think of a better forum name for my silly self. Regarding the gutting/non-gutting of protection for lakes and streams, it might be worth recalling that, historically, there was a gigantic pile-on of regulations by previous Liberal federal governments. It could be argued that removing some of these regulations isn't loosening things, appeasing the oilpatch, etc., merely restoring balance. Also, there's the small matter, and I only mean that half-sarcastically, because in today's era of the gigantic administrative state, it really is considered small, namely the Constitution. And it assigns primary responsibility for lands, forests, waters, the environment, wildlife and property in general to the provinces. The giant federal pile-on of environmental regulations beginning in the early 90s was done largely under the cover of trans-boundary or navigable waters authority. So, any stream that crossed a border was suddenly fair game to the feds, and any stream that was "navigable" by birchbark canoe was subjected to...federal fisheries regulation. Constitutionally, it's perverse. Functionally, a given set of new federally imposed regulations may be to people's liking if they happen to like their federal government but don't like their provincial one. But, be careful what you wish for, as the tables can always turn. Personally I'd rather keep the authority to make laws and regulations such as these close to home, where there's at least a chance of local people having some influence. So the feds backing out of this doesn't mean these things can't have the heck regulated out of them, it just means the regs will have to come from the province. Lastly, to say that Alberta's economy will go down only because of the oil price is providing too much cover to the NDP. The capital investment strike began the morning after the provincial election. I know this personally, as a client cancelled plans to take his private company public. So, $400 million that would have come into Alberta from Toronto, NY, Miami and the U.K. even with $50 per barrel oil stayed away purely because of the provincial NDP. They can go ahead and raise royalties all they want, but a 100 percent royalty rate on a well that doesn't get drilled raises exactly how much for the public treasury? Correct: zero. And a higher corporate tax rate on a company that's losing money raises how much? Less than zero, as they'll be paying back the company's tax installments, and this year's losses can be used to offset taxes in future profitable years. It doesn't require NDPers to destroy an industry. We saw it before with the PCs under Stelmach. He raised royalties to get "our fair share" and mineral lease auctions ("land sales") collapsed from $5 billion per year to $1 billion, and drilling rates fell precipitously.

Loomis 1-piece. Yes, 1-piece. Smoothest, most supple thing I've ever cast. Yet powerful. Having only one piece allows the rod to bend in a perfect continuous curve with no flat spots. It's lighter as well, feeling like a 6-wt in your hand, but actually has more power than the same rod made as a three or four piec. Also, the reduced labour costs mean you get a high-end rod at about a $200-$300 lower price point. Ships in a long cardboard tube and comes with a fabric cover. Works best if permanently stowed in a driftboat and used as a boat rod. Hard to transport in a car or to take on approach walks.

Mrmomar: You are right, of course. I got carried away