pigl

I have a pair of those that I bought at Fish Tales last year. They are arguably the very best piece of fishing equipment I have ever purchased. They are feather light, have lots of support and are super comfortable. A touch more expensive than some of the other boots, but well worth the money in my view. I would recommend them highly.

I'm with Maxwell. I have two Bauers and counting - I think they might be best bang for the buck out there (although they are not a low end reel).

I've fished in lakes in that area quite a bit. I agree with FH - sight fishing to the cruisers on those lakes is a riot. One technique that I have used with success is anchoring over shallow cruising lanes and using a sink tip line with a dragon or damsel imitation (try a peacock hurl halfback size 4-10). Before you see any cruising fish, cast the line, let it sink so that the fly actually settles into the bottom. When a fish comes into the area, retrieve a short amout of line rapidly such that the fly pops off the bottom. If you get the timing right, the fish are attracted to silt being displaced by the fly, and the fly will have popped up and I think it looks pretty similar to the movement of a dragonfly nymph. Works like a charm. The chronnie fishing technique works really well too if you like it, but I think the biggest mistake people make when fishing lakes is that they don't anchor. I think you MUST anchor in order to effectively fish lakes (unless you are trolling). The only guy I've seen who could sight fish without trolling was a guy on Whitetail Lake a number of years ago who had a wide bottomed canoe that he could stand up in and paddle from standing up. He would stalk cruisers in the flats this way and cast to them standing in his canoe. I don't think that's a particlarly safe way to fish though and is probably not in the cards if you're in a pontoon boat. Good luck - those are some great lakes you are getting to fish.

I am camping up at Water Valley this weekend for the Celtic Festival. Anyone know of any good streams/spots to hit in the area? I have heard that Fallen Timber Creek is a good stream. Any others?

How many members you do have now?

I was out on Talbot Lake near Jasper last weekend fishing for pike. It's a pretty high lake so probably a little behind what's going on down here. Smaller fish were in the weedbeds at the east end of the Lake. Larger fish were in the flats next to shore at the west end of the lake. We caught fish hand over fist. We were either sight fishing them or when we couldn't see them, just blind casting and would get one or two follows on most casts. We used everything from black conehead bugger type things to more formal pike flies with weed guards etc... The most popular colour seemed to be a light bright green pike fly with a deer hair head and painted red and white eyes. They also liked big streamers with black and white and some other colour (blue/green) with some flash in it. We used about 4 ft of 20 lb Maxima with 6-8 inches of the 5 lb TygerWire (which worked really really well - I usually use the more beefy Tygerwire or the Cortland Toothy Critter leader material, but the thinner Tygerwire got more action and of the 30ish fish I hooked I think I maybe lost one to the thinner leader material).

No, Toronto. Homeless people don't bother with Edmonton. They just blend in too much with the general population so it's hard for them to make any money. Thanks for your help Fisher26.

I like SA lines. I bought an Airflow Ridgeline 5 wt WF last year and didn't like it at all - way too much memory. SA trout taper or the GPX (although I don't know if they make them in DT). Why are you getting a DT? As an aside, does anyone know anything about a brand of line called "Wulff". A friend of mine bought a reel on Ebay that was spooled with a "Wulff #9" (which he doesn't care about and will likely throw away), but I've never heard of that line. Any thoughts?

I'm stuck in the Centre of the Universe and have been for a couple of days, so I can't scout the Bow river. I have a float trip planned for Friday. My last trip was planned the day it snowed. The one before was planned the day it rained about 15mm and was very cold. Both got cancelled. It looks like the weather is going to be good, but has anyone seen evidence that runoff has started? Are we going to be there by Friday and am I going to suffer a 3rd cancelled trip - what do you think? (this town sucks by the way - grey, stuffy and boring - the most interesting people here by far are the homeless...)