"REACHING OUTDOOR ENTHUSIASTS THROUGH OUR NETWORK OF OVER 350 WEB SITES"
2007 Canadian Fly Fishing Championships
October 19 2007
| Written By - Ian Scott - 10/19/2007 | |
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Link to Original Article here |
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If only I could have kept fish on that I hooked.
If only I had made a few different decisions.
If only the rotation I was in was a wee bit different.
If only I had more experience fly fishing the sorts of conditions that we all faced.
Shortly after the event had completed, I had a conversation with Randy Taylor, President of Fly Fishing Canada, in which he said to me, You must have zoomed up the standings compared to last year, Ian.
But in fact, I hadnt. I didn't come in last place like I did last year, but zooming up the standings as much as I expected I would do, just didn't happen. Even with the stillwater practice I did over the summer, it wasn't enough to prepare for the conditions of fishing Moonshine and Silver lakes in Northern Alberta in this year's Canadian Fly Fishing Competition.
And it wasnt for lack of opportunity either. Or lack of being able to hook fish. For some reason, and I'm still trying to figure that out - most of the fish I hooked I just couldn't bring to the net. And oddly the flies that worked personally for me as far as hooking fish were not the same as the ones that brought my teammates success.
I also had a great draw in that I shared a boat over the five sessions with some very good anglers. My first session on Moonshine Lake if I may say so was quite distracting for me - for it included the attractive and successful angler in Sunny VanderKloof. Enviously, the eventual gold medal winner Norman Rupprecht had two sessions with Sunny as a boat mate - but he managed to get around the distraction of fishing with a very fine woman fly angler sharing his boat.
But - I did net a fish that first session and did my best to try to help Sunny bring one to the net as well so she wouldn't blank on the session. Unfortunately Sunny did blank. Both of us had several hits and tugs to our flies but nothing solidly hooked until about half an hour left in the session when a rainbow trout took a black leech pattern that I often have success with.
My second session came with great hopes in myself. In practice sessions, I had hooked a good number of fish, including some very large rainbows on some flies that I was quite confident in on Spring Lake. This combined with
