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  Time for Fishing? It’s hard to find time to go fishing. Life intrudes. There are family responsibilities. Work makes relentless demands. You put off trips, hoping for more time later. We know from tracking our web hits that come July and August, most of you will be out in the field. Fishing too late in the year to get the best of it. The magic time is now. April, May, June. On the Pacific Coast the salmon fry are emerging. And soon after that the insect hatches begin to intensify. The lakes warm. The trout gorge themselves. And you are where? Stuck in the office, dreaming about fishing? It’s easy to miss spring. But once it’s gone, it’s gone. So, make some time. Get out for a weekend. Consider the first trip just a warm up. You need to shake off the rust, sharpen your casting, sort through your fly box. You’ll find out soon enough that the leader you’ve left on since last fall has grown weak over the winter. It will break when you snug up that first knot. You’ll want to fish with it anyway, but if you do it will break on a fish. Relearn the nail knot and put on a fresh leader. It’ll pay off in the end. Take some time. Look around. Marvel at nature. Turn over some rocks. Think about what’s happening, about what the fish are doing. If you don’t catch anything on that first outing, don’t worry. Make plans to get out again soon. Work at it. Every trip you’ll get better, sharper. The fish are out there waiting for you. What do you think? Visit our online discussion area and post your views. Letters can be sent via e-mail to: letters@ariverneversleeps.com
Editors: ARNS March 2001 is beautiful ... thank you. Christian Hello; In the Old Bag article (March) it opens with a photo by Glenn Baglo of Les on the Elk River. I am just about positive that the photo is on the St. Mary's below the Mission bridge with Fisher Peak off to the East.
Dear Paul: Readers familiar with the Elk and St. Mary’s are urged to view the article, in The Old Bag, March, and let us know if Paul is right about the location. -Cheers, The Editors: I love the web sight, lots of very interesting stuff. Keep up the good work and I will spread the word Regards Dear Peter and Daphne: Congratulations! What a great pleasure it was to check the website last night and find your Taupo article and photos (in the March issue). We knew it would be good, however, it is better than anything expected - a bit like Graham Moeller's hosting. You have managed, in one concise article, to encapsulate everything that is important about fly fishing in the Taupo district. I have printed a copy (the colour worked very well) and sent it to George, and I alerted Graham by email. After you left Taupo George and I spent another afternoon on the Waitahanui. We saw enough fish rising, as you did, to warrant upstream dry fly. It was great fun, on a lovely afternoon, but we only caught an undersize rainbow on a small Wulff pattern. All the rising fish were feeding in the fast flowing water, and we concluded they were taking something from just below the surface, or in the surface film. We couldn't identify what that something was, so when we identified some larger fish rising, just imagine me in the river casting to the fish, with George on the bank tying on different fly patterns for me as they refused our offerings. I suppose the lesson is that we should be taking a strainer to give us a chance of identifying the food source. In the particular section of the river where we were there was not an opportunity to cast across the stream, so we were stuck with almost direct upstream casting into fast water. We did not spook any of these fish, even though the fly line end must have been close to the fish when the fly was landing upstream - quite often the fish would take something from the surface right alongside the presented fly as it came past. It was probably a case of fish concentrating on a particular food and ignoring everything else. It was a wonderful experience in the best of trout streams. Under Graham's guidance we tried fishing the wet fly downstream, a la Hintz, without success. We had a very special time at the cliff pool one afternoon, and one of my enduring memories is convincing one of the resident fish to take a dry fly. Graham had explained the movements of water in the quieter part of the pool, and had convinced me that I should cross the river and fish the pool from upstream. I tried the wet fly downstream for a start using a slow sinking line with a red setter. After seeing one of the fish rise I decided to try a dry fly. I changed lines and tied on a Royal Wulff. Watching the movement of the fly on the surface following the eddies and swirls that Graham had described, and being able to see two of the three fish in the pool was something I had not experienced before. The fish were easily seen because they were feeding in a part of the pool with a clean bottom and quiet water above. It gave me quite a buzz to see one come up eventually and take the fly. Congratulations again on a job well done. An Open Letter: Analysis: "Slow" fishing for herring continues in the Strait of Georgia, indicating, as it does now in so many areas of the world, that the fish stocks have clearly been over-fished. It is now highly probable that 80% or more of the biomass of the Hornby/Denman-homing and now the Qualicum-homing herring stocks have been taken. Still, past documents obtained by the Fish For Life Foundation indicate that in such a situation the Department of Fisheries and Oceans feels it is powerless to actually close the commercial herring fishery, due to the cash flow needs and pre-season marketing arrangements of the processing companies, and the leasing arrangements of the fishers (well known British Columbia businessman Jimmy Pattison owns the largest roe herring fishery participant, The Canadian Fishing Company, which maintains very close communications and liaison with the DFO). (Final) Analysis: It is a sad fact that the profession of biology, in this high-pressure situation, unfortunately shifts from accurate interpretation of what is going on and advocacy for conservation, to a defensive mode, where all professional resources are now directed to the making a disastrous situation look just fine. The blame for the collapse of the Hornby/Denman stock will almost certainly be put on "environmental change",as occurred in the collapse of the herring stocks in 1968. However, once this pattern of exploitation/cover-up is in place for super-valuable fishery resource such as roe herring, or abalone, etc., the stocks are headed down the road to extinction. In the United States, for example, the authorities are only now admitting, years later, that many fish stocks have been seriously over-fished. Beyond the DFO's very comprehensive initiatives to rebuild the coho salmon, and now-faltering plans to rebuild the vast-potential Fraser river sockeye and chinook stocks, Canada remains far behind the U.S. in dealing full-on with the decline, endangerment, and finally the development of rebuilding plans for the many depleted marine fish species. David Ellis {E-mail letters may be edited for clarity, taste and brevity. It is understood they express the opinions of the writers, not the editors.} |
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