Back From Grand Prairie

A quick update – my internet access in Grande Prairie during the Canadian Fly Fishing Championships was horrible so I didn’t have much chance to update the blog with the daily events and my observations.

I’ll have more shortly on the event – but in the meantime, I found the conditions to be very tough! The first morning on Moonshine Lake, there was snow on the ground.  Throughout the sessions, high winds and often wind direction changes were hard to deal with.  During one of the sessions, we were dealing with winds of 50 KM/hour and whitecaps on the lake while struggling to row the 14′ boats against those winds in order to begin a new drift.

I also had a hard time keeping fish on the end of my line.  I’m not sure why that happened. There were two sessions which I should not have blanked but did.

Yes, lots of whiskey and other warming beverages were consumed during the event and lots of great camaraderie with other other fly anglers I have not seen in over a year!

Ah, fine whiskey, fly fishing, and women! ;). Even with the tough conditions, it was a very enjoyable event for me and a great learning experience.

My hat is off to the organizers including Jim Epp of the Peace Country Fly Fishers Association for pulling off such a great event with very few noticeable hitches to the anglers that had flown to Grande Prairie to compete.  They did a fantastic job!

I’ll have more as soon as I have managed to settle in back home, get all my laundry done including that of the new clothing I had to pick up in order to better deal with the weather conditions.