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!! 

Chum salmon time

Well, the Chum fishing has started slowly. Starting to catch a few more regularly on the Fraser, Harrison,  and Vedder rivers. The Stave river has been the "sure thing" lately for some chrome beauties though!

Coho and Chum time!

It's Coho and Chum on the fly time! Everything has been a bit behind schedule this season. The Coho are here in impressive numbers but the Chum seem to be a bit behind? The Chum we are getting are dime bright though and a few have even had sea-lice on them! The weather seems to be turning and the rains are coming so the fishing should get pretty good.

 Enjoy a few of what I believe are the last of my ''sunny" photos for the next little while.

Back at it!!!

Well after receiving a few emails wondering if I was still alive? I realized that I've really dropped the ball on my blog! I guess between a miserable bow hunt for mountain goat, where everything that could go wrong, did! A non stop Pink salmon season on the fly, where 50 to 100 pinks a day left me exhausted and going through flies to the point where I had to tie more right on the river! Or the miserable, cold, wet start to Coho salmon season, it slipped through the cracks. I also have spent every extra minute between work and sleep working and playing with my new obsession, my WR250R! So rather than go into too much detail I'll just throw on some pics to tell some stories. I promise to stay on top if from now on though as the Coho and Chum on the fly begins to light up. Oh and there should be some duck hunts to post about pretty quick as well if all goes as planned ;) Take care, and check back soon!

Big hat.... Big fish!

Some more salmon pics from today, nice work David!