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Angling his way to the world championships
Eventually the truth would have to come out and if finally did when Todd Oishi's wife Robyn grew concerned that the family's cat might have mange. Oishi, a national champion fly fisherman from Maple Ridge, never reveals what he uses to make his flies unless he has to. In this case, he had to let his wife know Tinker Bell was fine; Oishi had just snipped off a few off the cat's hairs in order to make a fly. As Oishi puts it, you can use any sort of feather or fur to make a fly, as long as it looks life-like. For example, he made numerous flies using the feathers from the three African guinea fowls he purchased for his wife's birthday. Sadly, they died a few years ago and their feathers are now part of Oishi's fly collection. It wasn't what he planned - he gave the birds to his wife for a birthday present, along with some jewellery - but it ended up working well for him.
The quiet jolt at a perfect site for fly-fishing
It's that moment when a trout grabs your dry fly. It starts when you see the trout rise before you feel the grab. A millisecond later, the trout jolts you, and it's almost an electric sensation, as if you are wired directly to the fish. For a lot of people who fly-fish, it's the single most exciting moment in all sport. This is better than watching any sport because here you are the participant, not the observer. And the way you take this to the highest level is by casting a dry fly to wild fish in a pristine wilderness stream. That is what has always led me back to the Middle Fork San Joaquin River, high in the Sierra in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, the best place in the West to try and catch the grand slam of wild trout in a single day: rainbow trout, brook trout, golden trout, brown trout and a strange-looking hybridized mix I called the "golden-brook." Even though the trout are not large here, you have a chance to get 20 to 50 grabs in a day.
Lampreys put a bite on lake trout
Lake trout, once the dominant predator on Lake Michigan, are so rare these days that salmon have replaced them as the fish of choice whenever a backyard boil is in order. While most longtime big-lake anglers admit today's salmon and steelhead are far more fun to catch, high-fat lake trout have a one-of-a-kind taste after being boiled with potatoes, salt and onions and smothered in melted butter. "They're a little better tasting, a little more moist," said Denny VanDenBerg of Kewaunee, who has been boiling fish for almost 50 years. "They might fight like a log, but then again, so do walleyes." Brian Frerk of Green Bay gives away almost all of the salmon and trout he catches while fishing with his 6-year-old son, Josh. He may not fully understand, then, the love affair with lake trout by those who grew up with them when they were the only game in town in the 1960s or who targeted them in spring or whenever nothing else would bite on slow days from the 1970s to the 1990s.
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