Fly fishing rainbow trout

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are 19,000 worth showing you some highlights of a week fishing the interior of BC for rainbow trout. There are also a couple sharing some fantastic scenery and "critters" I encountered. Enjoy

Remote fly fishing

Got to spend a few days exploring some of the boat access only areas, and with the higher water from the snow melt things went well! Mananaged some beautifully fish on the fly rods with a great gentleman named Ian from the UK. He managed to catch 5 different species of fish including, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, dolly varden, mountain whitefish, and bull trout! Enjoy a couple of pics from the last few days!

Chicks with sticks!

People always ask if I ever guide women? They seemed shocked when I say yes, but there always seems to be women in the mix! It is, however a little less common to do groups of only women? But when it does happen, it always puts a smile on my face ;) Their outlook on fishing, and the outdoors is so much more relaxed than men's! And the last few days for me were no different! Had the pleasure of fishing with four great gals, that kept me smiling no matter what mother nature threw at me!!! Thanks, ladies. We had some great laughs, great food, great talks about ''the birds & the bees'', and oh ya, some fish too..... Enjoy some pics, they are pretty self explanatory. Still can't figure out how you could get one of those flasks in this first pic into the breast pocket of a tuxedo????????

Wow, sunshine!!

Well, after weeks of cold, wet, weather fishing for cutthroat and dollies, the sun has finally started to shine! Did a couple sturgeon trips the last couple days and it was beautiful! Here are a few pics, Enjoy.

My "Fish Finder"

 Headed out on Sunday to put a couple more hours on the new Yamaha, pretty much broken in now and ready for the upcoming season! Decided to poke around for some cutthroat. I had my "fish finder" aka Sage Skaaning along. While Sage is very keen on the fly fishing, at the end of the day its all about "catching" so armed with his ultralight spinning rod he showed just how many fish I was missing in each run with my fly rod!LOL! The highlight of the day was a beautiful 2 1/2 pound dolly varden that followed his spoon all the way in and smashed at the last second! Unfortunately the slippery bugger slid back in unharmed as dad was fumbling with his new camera. Spoon of choice was an all silver Hildebrant, and for flies, the old muddler minnow got its share of takes!
Enjoy

Sneeze, sniffle, quack, bang, "Double"!!

Been feeling awful the last few days with a terrible head cold, and just needed to get out and get some fresh air. I threw my gun, decoy bag, and faithful retriever Fraser into the truck and headed out for a morning shoot. I arrived, and set up my decoy spread, all the while sneezing and sniffling. Dozens of birds began circling before legal shooting light, and it wasn't long before I forgot I was sick.
Over the past five years or so, I've really made an effort to only harvest drakes when waterfowl hunting. I had read somewhere that for every mallard hen you shoot, you remove 30 new ducks from the future population? now wether that is true or not, I'm not sure? but what cold it hurt? Don't get me wrong there is the odd misidentification at first or last light! But today when the first pair of mallards came in at just the right speed, height, and direction, I took the 2 shots and got a double!! They also landed in area of the slough that was reasonable for Fraser to make double retrieves. The icing on the cake, was that the mallard hen was wearing some "bling"! I shoot a lot of ducks every year, but don't harvest many banded ones, so this was cool. I will mail in the numbers, and find out when, and where it was born.
Some people think that hunters are ''blood thirsty monsters'' that just want to kill, but don't realize that we are some of the biggest conservationists! I sat for the next hour and watched a beaver, muskrat, great blue heron, red tailed hawk, some unidentified falcon, and numerous birds.
Oh..... and I passed on at least 10 other shootable ducks, just because.
I love being outdoors and enjoying what others only see on the discovery channel!!
For the fisherman that follow my blog, you'll be interested that I also saw at least a dozen fish rise in the slough to eat whatever was hatching! I guess I should throw a dry fly setup in my decoy bag;)

Anyways, off to take a tylenol cold and flu!!

Flyfishing for Chum salmon

The Chum salmon have finally showed up in decent numbers and catching 20-30 of these chrome beauties on the fly seems to be the daily routine. Enjoy a few pics of the fish and the scenery I enjoy every day this time of year!!