The Female Angle Prince of Pelletheads
A little guy from the Thompson
Summer on the T
One on the switch rod
Three T rainbows
Chip off the old block
Mitchel river beauty
Mitchel bull
Washington Winter Steel
Washington Winter Dolly
Well, that’s it for now. Hopefully I can get out and take some new pics once the celebrating is done. I will have to try and salvage my other pics along the way.
Merry Christmas and Happy New year,
Dave & Sarah
The pictures get a bit better as my cameras improved. Unfortunately there is about a year and a half of my best stuff missing. It does exist in various places online but I don’t have the time right now to save and then enlarge them all. I will as time permits.
Cuban Bonefish
The T
Thompson Rainbow
Rare summer rain on the Thompson
Adams river bow
Adams Hog
Another slab from the Adams
Solid Adams fish
So it’s Christmas eve. The tree is loaded with presents. The kids are excited and can’t wait for the festivities tomorrow. Kirk has headed to Ixtapa for Christmas and some fishing. I myself haven’t managed to get out for a couple of weeks. Thyis time of year generally means alot of celebrating and not much fishing. I find myself watching videos and looking through ols pictures when I get a chance. Last night I stumbled upon a small vault of fish pictures that I thought were lost in “the computer crash 2009″ where both of our computer hard drives crashed. Alot of the pictures were poor quality or thumbnail sized scans so they don’t translate well on the computer. I’ve put the remaining good ones up here for you all to see. This first set is 4 – 10 years old.
Enjoy…………………..
Pitt river Sockeye
Adams river rainbow
Pitt river bulltrout
Greedy bulls
Pitt Bull
Pitt Sockeye
Bulkley Steel
Belizean Bonefish
Belizean baby tarpon
Leaping Sailfish
Well the day’s of going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark are definatley upon us all. So what is the best thing to do(if you can) GO AWAY!!! Well myself and family are headin south,,, far south, Ixtapa to be exact. So for two weeks I will be fishing for sailfish, Dorado, Jacks and bonita to name a few. So off to Micheal and young I went to pick up the new rod a 12 wt that I could afford and some flies etc. I also borrowed an unused Loop 11-14 hd from Dave and some lines, well He donated the lines as i cant bring them back as I’m not checking in my bags on the way home. I’m not sure he fully understands this so maybe I’ll tell him that they also rejected the reel! yeah right! Oh well they’ll be there (the lines and flies) for Dave and Sarah when they go back. So here are a few pics, I’ll have a full write up when we get back. 
My new lines arrived a couple of days after my new rod. I ordered two Scandit line systems to match our 12′6 6/7/8 MKS’s. Each line system was packed into a nice large head wallet and consists of a Skagit head with 4 zinc tips (6,9,12, and 15 feet), a floating head that converts it to a Scandi line, four poly leaders, a level running line and a tapered running line. An instruction page was a nice touch to help it all make sense. I was a bit skeptical regarding the idea of changing a skagit into a scandi. It sounded all too easy. Nothing’s that easy…… I would have to wait to find out.
I spent some time tying up leaders, waiting for a chance to get out and test the whole thing out. The line sat on the table mocking me and it wasn’t until about a week and a half later that I was able to make a trip to the river. What other river than the Thompson would be best to test out some new gear? I threw the line on my reel, loaded up the truck and hit the road at 4am on Saturday morning. The weather network called for a low of -12 and a high of -2 but I knew it would be colder. That didn’t include the always present windchill factor. I was on the water as the sun was coming up. As usual there wasn’t a single person on the water where I was, a popular run that usually requires getting in line. December usually means cold weather and few anglers on the T. My favourite time.
The water temp was a solid 40 degrees farhenheit. I decided to start by swinging a huge black streamer along the bottom. I chose to loop the 12′ zinc tip on the skagit head and added a 5 foot leader and a big articulated leetch. I was using the tapered running line. I had a few problems making the line work for me. It felt as though it was too short or not heavy enough. My fingers were aching from stripping the wet line in the cold and i was getting frustrated. i had to sit down for a minute and warm up and figure out what the problem was. I realized, while sipping some Makers Mark from my flask, that I needed to try something different and then come back to this set-up.
I took off the head and looped on the floating scandi tip. I added one of my home made 12 foot leaders and a purple egg sucking leetch. This set-up felt okay and I was able to launch 70 foot casts fairly easily. I realized right away that the problem I was having with the Skagit set-up was that I was casting it like a Scandinavian line, I’ve been using them alot lately. I still felt that I needed to add something. I took off my homemade leader and added the floating versileader and two feet of tippet. Immediately my casts improved. I was able to easily make 80 foot casts, a few longer ones when I needed to. I tried out a sinking versileader and it casted just as well. I tried a few different casts from both shoulders and felt comfortable with them all. Everything except large and weighted flies worked great. This seems the norm for scandi lines. After about an hour my “testing” was interuppted by a sharp tug on the line. I set the hook and was into a fish. The line didn’t peel off of my reel and I knew that I had a trout. I quickly landed and released it.
Testus Interuptus
A jam and hardwear fisherman turned up and low holed me soon after. I had fished most of the run and decided to try somewhere else. I noticed quite a few more vehicles around now that it had warmed up slightly. Luckily there are plenty of places to get away from people on such a big river. I drove just out of town, pulled over and got ready for a hike. Down an embankment, up another, under a fence, along a semi-switchbacking goat trail, down a cliff, across the train tracks, down another cliff, half a mile along the ice slick grapefruit sized rocks. This run begged to be fished and no-one seemed to have been here in awhile.
I decided to try the Skagit set-up again. This time I paid close attention to my cast and everything came together. The line casted extremely well once I adjusted to it’s short length and concentrated on sustaining the anchor. I was able to easily manage 80 feet of line and lost enough flies to know that I was getting into the zone. I was rewarded with two more trout. Both were football shaped and heavy.
Pot Bellied Trout
In the end, I came to two conclusions.
1. This is a great versatile line set-up. If you can remember to alter your casting styles when you change between Scandi and Skagit, you will love being able to cover so many types of water with one rod, reel and line.
2. Short bellies and heads suck when it’s 12 below zero. I will stick to mid and long bellies and avoid having to strip line as much as possible.
The label said “Nothing Goes Down Like A Dead Frog”. Hmm…… interesting. There was a booth set up at the liqour store where we could sample the various beers in the Dead Frog mixer box. Lager, Honey Brown, Nut Brown and the 2 1/2 Year Anniversary beer. All of them were excitingly tasty. In fact I still haven’t found one that I would call my favourite. Not bad for a small brewery right here in my home town of Langley, B.C. I’m not quite sure where the name came from but it’s catchy. I’ll have to dig deeper. This is definately my new favourite choice for beer. I’ll be keeping this one in the fridge next to the hot-tub!
Go buy some!