Brian Hampson - Life and Other Things

I caught my first fish on the fly today!  For that matter, I caught 5!

I got out of the house at 0800, and zipped along Lougheed highway.  I made a pit stop at the Tim’s in Pitt Meadows for breakfast, and to get my Turkey Bacon Club for lunch.  Then it was off again.  Traffic was super light, so it was easy to cruise.  I made it to the Morris Valley road quickly.  Then, it was up the winding road.  I noticed that the marsh land at the base of the Chehalis was quite high.  Freshet is certainly starting up.  The Ducks Unlimited sign was half under water.  There would be no herons to see fishing today :( 

The dirt part of the Harrison West road was really dry.  The trees all had a caking of brown, and the dust was rising up as if there were a herd of elephants running behind me.  Unfortunately, this meant that I had to keep my windows closed to keep from being choked by other passing vehicles.  As I passed the Wolf Lake Forest Service site, I thought of those poor people that were camping right next to the road.  They must be breathing in pounds of dust!  Yeach!   The turn for my lake came around KM7 on the road.  Up the road I went.  It’s a small road, and the trees shade it well, so it’s a bit cooler than the main road, and of course, since it’s cooler, it’s a bit more moist, so the dust isn’t a problem.  I continued up the road, turning, weaving, avoiding branches and fallen rocks, and switchbacking my way up to the lake.

As I arrived at the lake, I wondered how many others would be there today.  Last time, there were 4 other trucks.  A veritable parking lot!  I arrived to find one truck unloading a boat, and one group camping.  Perfect.  I unloaded all my gear and was glad that this time I had made sure that I had everything before leaving home (last time I forgot my flies).  I pumped up the boat, and was bothered by lots of little flies.  This was probably the first time that I had actually thought to myself, “Good, I wonder what type of fly they are.” rather than “Go away!” 

I launched without incident, and rowed to the other end of the little lake.  Once I had found “My Spot”, I dropped anchor (12lb downrigger ball), and proceeded to try to cast a fly.  Of course I was hampered by 2 things.  1)  I had no idea what kind of fly would work.  And 2) I can’t really cast very well.  Actually I suck at casting.   “Oh well”, I said to myself, “I’m here to learn how to flyfish and flycast.  It’s not critical that I catch anything.” 

After about 45 minutes of dodging my outgoing fly, and trying to cast more than 10 feet, I decided to change flies.  You know it HAD to be the fly, not my casting that was causing me grief!   The other guys on the lake said they were using a “black Doc Spratley“ Uh…sure.  I didn’t know Doc Spratley from Doc Holliday, so I was at a bit of a loss.  I did however have a big black leech.  After changing to a black leech, and casting a whole lot more, I finally felt a tug on my line.  I was so excited, I launched my line clear across my boat over into the water on the other side.  I bet the fish had never seen a leech move so fast in his life :)  More casting, more nothing.  The guys that were trolling around came back over and said “Maybe try something red - they’ve got red stuff in their stomach”  Ah….I had something red.  I changed, and then cast.  Wham!!! first cast - “Fish on!”  and a hearty yeeehaw from me!  I brought a nice 12” rainbow to the boat and then let it go so that it could go and make some other fisherman happy.   The guys that had given me the advice, came back over, and asked “What did you catch it on?”  Of course I had no idea.  I described it as red with a silver candy cane stripe.  The guys laughed.  Apparently I was using a red Doc Spratley….Well, whaddayaknow!  I kept casting, but I had no more luck….hmm.  I opened my fly box, and inside, I had 3 black Doc Spratelys!  I tied one up, and after about 4 casts that went nowhere, I had a nice long cast to an area near an outsticking log.  Strip, strip, strip….tug.  Tug! Pull!  Fish!!!  Another one!  It turned out to be a bigger fish, around 14” and beautiful as well.  Off it went!  Another 10 casts or so, and this time it was a Bang!  This fish WANTED that fly!  For my 3rd fish, I brought in a smaller 10” ‘bow.  The nice silver candy cane had come unfurled from my “goto fly”, so I had to retire it.  I went with my next one.  It was a bit bigger in the head, so I didn’t know if would work as well.  Tie it up…nice cast…  strip, strip, Bam!  Hook set!  No fish :(  No Hook!  just a little telltale pigtail on the end of my tippet pointing out that in my hast to retie my fly, I didn’t do a good job.   The fishing dropped off for the next couple of hours, so I enjoyed lunch, and slept in the boat for a bit (yes, fishing tends to be REALLY slow when you’re sleeping!)  After being refreshed by some light sprinkles of rain, I was back at it with my 3rd Doc.   Shortly afterwards, there were 2 more fish to the boat.  What a great day!

Around 1600 I got out of the lake, and packed up.  What I had expected to be a day of “practice” actually turned into success. I had a smile for the drive home, and a bit more of a bounce in my step.  I can now go to bed happy.  You can see my fish here.

In case you were wondering what it’s like to be the servant of the Imperial emperor, and tough front man for the dark side…wonder no more:  Darth has his own blog.  Very insightful.  Complete with RSS feed.

Always keen to keep up with the Dark Lord, and his comings and goings, I’ve subscribed

A Chef in the UK was bitten by a spider hiding in a box of bananas.  He snapped a picture of the spider, figuring it might help doctors know what to do.   It’s a good thing he did.  It saved his life - the spider was identified as the Brazillian wandering spider: a deadly spider. 

Some pictures of spring flowers.

Click on the link to see them.  I hope you enjoy them!

I mentioned earlier about Intel offering $10KUSD  for a magazine….

Well, it appears that they’ve found a seller!

David Clark from Surrey, England had a copy, and Intel’s buying it.  He had stored the magazine under the floorboards, so that he could escape the “wrath” of his wife regarding keeping the magazines around the house for so long.

Good on ya!

University of Florida engineers have developed a camera which can determine the speed of a vehicle, by its relative change in position with fixed objects.

This is a PASSIVE detection system, which means that things like radar detectors won’t do you any good when trying to avoid them.  Looks like the only way around this is to lobby our politicians for higher speed limits on the roads  - Something like 80km/h in the city?  Anybody looking to short sell the makers of Radar Detectors?

You know you’re from Vancouver when….(It’s all true)
1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.
2. You make over $250,000 and still can’t afford a house.
3. You know what these acronyms mean: PNE, VPL, GVRD, YVR.
4. You’re shocked when it snows in the winter
5. You’ve had a California roll for lunch.
6. Know more than 10 ways to order coffee.
7. Know how to pronounce Coquihalla.
8. A really great parking space can move you to tears.
9. A man gets on the bus in full leather regalia and crotchless chaps; You don’t even notice.
10.Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, the woman who delivers your mail is into BDSM, and your next door neighbour grows weed.
11. The guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing the baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney IS George Clooney.
12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.
13. The gym is packed at 3 PM ….on a work day.
14. Can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food.
15. You watch the weather from a Seattle TV station because it’s more accurate (see 17).
16. You pass an elementary school and the children are all busy with their cell phones or pagers while waiting for their personal rides home.
17. You don’t even listen when the forecast announces “chance of showers.”
18. Can taste the difference between Starbucks, Second Cup, and Tim Horton’s.
19. Feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.
20. You’re not surprised to see geese throughout the whole year
21. You can’t remember…. is pot still illegal?
22. If there’s a day of snowfall, you consider not going to school/work.
23. You realize there are far more Rainbow flags in the city than Canadian flags
24. Can name 10 Starbucks locations in less than a minute

Unknown Country reports on the missing 1000’s of adult Chinook from the Columbia river.  What happened?  What’s happening?   Has the constant destruction of habitat, and ocean fishery of the species brought it to near collapse?  Couldn’t be the MONSTROUS damns on the Columbia and the Snake?  It’s so bad, that scientists are scaring away sea lions from the Bonneville damn trying to protect staging fish.

You know you have problems with your fish management when you have to barge down juveniles, to try to keep them from becoming fish puree in the damn turbines.

Soon, we’ll be out of fish, but boy will we have lots of hydro power

Canadian File Sharers - Hold on to your hats!!!  On Wednesday and Thursday this week our Federal Court will hear arguments regarding P2P.  This could be the end of the legal song sharing here in Canada

Share ‘em if you got ‘em.  This could be the end.

Whoa!  Hold the Presses!  Adobe is going to buy Macromedia for a cool $3.4Billion Perhaps they realized that their “Go Live” product sucked, and that Flash is gaining ground as a web medium (for better or worse).  Well….that’s a bit of “consolidation” Eh wot?  Does this mean that the regular groups of Adobe pirates will have to put out a multi-DVD collection of Adobe tools in the future?

Dave Winer points to a CBS marketwatch page which says that Blogger has 8 million blogs. What it fails to mention is that probably 7.9 million of them only have one entry - the one that people do when they first set up a blog, to see if it works.

It would be interesting to see what their ACTIVE count is.

25 years ago today a young man from Port Coquitlam BC, began a cross country run to raise money and awareness for cancer research.  The big difference was that he only had one leg.  He had already lost one to cancer already.  On April 12, 1980 he dipped his leg in the Atlantic ocean and began his Marathon of Hope.  Now, 25 years later, there are runs across the country to honor him, a mountain named in his honor, schools everywhere with his name, and even a newly minted Canadian Dollar coin with his likeness. To date, his run has raised over 360 million dollars. Terry Fox (July 28, 1958 - June 28, 1981) is a household name, even to many kids that never knew him, or saw him.   I watched him on the news, I felt his pain when he ran through driving rain, and when he had to stop for treatment.  It broke my heart to hear that his run was cut short on September of that same year, as we heard that the cancer had spread to his lungs.  While he never finished the run, Canadians around the world have picked up the torch, and carried further than even Terry could imagine.  Terry was a Canadian hero.

From the Book of Joe:

In a story in the New York Times, it has been exposed that 23 of 25 fish sellers were marketing FARMED salmon as Wild!

The magazine containing the article which postulated Moore’s Law - “Electronics Magazine” published April 19, 1965 could be worth $10K USD to you.  This article from News.com discusses it in more detail.  Makes you wish your wife didn’t make you clean up your old magazines all the time, doesn’t it?

Even in the real world, we are seeing all kinds of artifacts due to the new Google Maps service…

Is the Googleplex getting OVERLY personal?

Danger lurks for people near Google Mapped locations

This, might explain some of the odd sightings that people have reported - not UFO’s - Duh!

What’s next?  What if one of those giant pins hits YOU?!?!?!?

It’s true, there’s a duck outside the US Treasury building, and it’s being protected by the very same men and women that would take a bullet for the president.  Wow.  For those of you in the US….your tax dollars at work

I read an post on the Search Engine Watch Blog which points out how to generate your own annotated Google Map.  Great for pointing out things of interest to friends that will be visiting, or others.  It’s in alpha right now, so don’t count on it to direct your wedding guests in to the church and reception hall, but who knows.  It shows alot of potential, if Google doesn’t file a C&D order over it.

Have fun!

There are some places that sailboats just shouldn’t be. As you can see from this slideshow from SFSurvey.com, a good indication that you are sailing in the wrong place, would be the surfers around you.

There’s a good metafilter discussion about it too.

Google Maps now does Satellite imagery.  Cool!  This would be the result of the acquisition of Keyhole a few months back.  Love it!

People are finding their home with their CAR in the driveway…pretty good zoom.

Acccording to the Personal Democracy Forum, the city of SF wants to pass a a city ordinance  requiring all local bloggers to register with the city’s Ethics commission.  What’s next?  Will every home cookie maker have to register with the Health Inspection Agency?

An interesting, and less panic inducing comment on the ordinance can be found at “Riding Sun”