Boatman Bash

Well, I hadn't seen anything like it. We were floating along in our drift boat when we decided to anchor up in an eddy and have lunch. As we drift in, the entire eddy was black - all 30 yards wide and 80 yards length. Black like a deep organic black. After recently having had great fishing in central Alberta brown trout streams and a few local lakes, we knew what was causing this eddy to be black. It was an epic water boatman event. I took the time to take some underwater photos and video. I also got the net out and scopped up 4 pounds of boatmen for a few stills on the bank. It was amazing to see.

Oreti River (New Zealand) needs some help

The following email comes from New Zealand. There is one of the country's fabled rivers at a cross roads. The Oreti R has seen a multitude of management scenarios through the years, the present fisheries management critically dependant upon angler etiquette and common respect in spreading use of the river through a walk only reach that is essentially user managed. It works reasonably well. The river produces some massive trout. At issue today is a proposal to build a bicycle route along the river, through the walk access only. Where the current 'park in this stall if you are fishing beats 1, 2, or 3 and hike in to your beat' system is simple, the proposed bike route will see a massive change to a relatively small water with few, large fish. It really will change the dynamics of the river's fishing. It also ties in to the long term vision of the region, and how remote areas will be managed and/or developed, and how that ties in to the 20, 50, and 100 year visions. If you look at the bigger picture, this is not simply about a small bike route with b&bs/cafes pitted against a few fish, it's symptomatic about so much more - how a small country like NZ will cope with the ongoing changes brought with economic expansion on a small landbase.

 For more, for the application, for the background, etc, please visit the NZ FF Forum:

http://www.flyshop.co.nz/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=3235

Northern Lights

Like many people, we were treated to an amazing display of northern lights a week ago. At Fortress Lake, the moon rose and tucked behind the range to our south. It shot amazing moon beams down the lake's valley. That would have been stunning enough for the night, but as it slowly drew down below the ridge, the northern lights began rocking out the northern sky. Purple's and greens lit up the night sky over Fortress Lake in an amazing show. The first shot is of the ridge to our north with the big dipper. The second shot is of Mt Quincy & Fortress.

Losing it!

With 45 guests in just over 2 weeks rolling through Fortress Lake Retreat, my attention to detail of projects back home has slipped, to say the least. The bad news was that a program glitch no longer recognized the largest chapter in our soon to be completed sight fishing trout rivers dvd just before I went in to Fortress, and I had to re-build the entire timeline and story board. For once, I saw it simply as a challenge, to build it back up better than it was before. The good news is that the music and voice over files are all done, and the best news that I knew exactly what clips I'd chosen and simply have to re-edit their inclusion. But now that I have 3 days in front of the computer once again, and sit in front of the open program, I'd forgotten that I'd already laid it out and edited 1/3 of it prior to heading in to Fortress. Great news! If I'm this foggy @ 39 years old, I can hardly wait for 79...  :)   It's looking good. As soon as I get through this chapter re-build, we're on to learning dual layer Blu-Ray burning and bar coding. Here's hoping things go well!

Catch Magazine

The latest issue is on line now. Good viewing as always. :)
http://www.catchmagazine.net/