My Mother's Passing

As I wrote on my music blog my Mom recently passed away. Her influence on my fishing life is pretty much the same sort of deal.

When she was young her family had a cotttage . They fished it regularly for musky bass and walleye. No one was a fly fisher, no one taught me to fish but pictures of their past (before my maternal grandmother nagged everyone out their outdoor pursuits) haunted me.

 There were not that many pictures but still they intrigued me as it was a life (cottage, fishing, relaxed etc.) that I never got to experience. But nonetheless I took these pictures as evidence that I had some sort of fishing tradition.

So I grabbed canadian tire money and bought rods, reels lures and taught myself to fish. In the days before the internet I was winging it in the wild west on everything from knots to casting.

My brother did help at some point but I was hooked.

In the 80's My Mom got into fishing for the migrating salmon in the Credit River and she even let me stay home from school one day when the run was at it's peek.

So Now I am this fly fisherman passing the traditon of fishing and fly fishing with my wife on to our son and (to a lesser extent) my daughter.

In this age of digital imagery my kids and their kids will have plenty of pictures of the ones that didn't get away. to look over.

Till next time

RB

Fly Fishing Guides for Manitoba

Lyons Lake Manitoba

Experimenting with a vid rig to allow me to record myself from the tube.

The fishing wasn't great but the experiment was a win win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVB16CQgXjo




Manitoba Fly Fishing Guides

Fairford River Freeze Off

Manitoba is covered by 6 months of winter most years. Spring is this ethereal thing that looks and feels more like well more winter. Nonetheless afew of us hardy souls head out to the only open water in the province...the Fairford River!

The water is clear, clean and wade-able. So why don't I fish it more ofte? Because it is 2-3 hours of the most boring and somewhat dangerous driving in the province.

We hit it the last Sunday in March which coincides with the end of the regular fishing season, Spring Break and the warmest part of the late winter.

In years Past it looked like this...

The target (once we get illusions of pike drum and walleye out of our heads) is Cisco (known locally as Tulibee)

This year it was considerably warmer with plus temps all day and the fish a little bigger.

I shot a vid for this so you can see by the clothing we are alittle more comfortable;

Manitoba Fly Fishing Guide