About me continued

So, the family moved to Edmonton when I was nine (turned 10 in grade four here) and right away, dad went out and bought a 12 foot aluminum car topper from Sears. He did a little research at the local tackle shop and we started fishing Hasse Lake and often. We also fished some other trout lakes as well as Pike and Walleye lakes and even a few streams but Hasse was our second home.
This is where I really learned about flies, fly tying, fly rods, etc... But my Dad seemed to be getting farther away from traditional fly-fishing and was doing more and more trolling. He always used his fly rod but even when trolling hardware like flatfish, he never picked up his spinning rod (unless we were after Pike or Walleye which wasn't very often). I on the other hand used my spinning rod way more often than my fly rod. Not really because I wanted to but rather because dad sort of insisted. I don't know, maybe dad was to cheap to buy me sinking line and an extra spool but all I had was floating line and that's what he used 95% of the time. His philosophy was; never have both rods presenting at the same depth, if ones on top then the other is below the surface. Of course his fly line was always on top so I would use my spinning rod with the help of some split shot and a swivel to keep my fly -usually a Doc Spratley- about 3-5ft under the surface. As I grew up, I saw my father cast less and less, and I from the dock or from shore was casting more and more. That is until I turned 17. Everything else seemed more important at that age. There was girls, partying, football, friends and girls (yah I know I said girls already). Then when I was about 19, me and a buddy started fishing together and I realized how much I missed it. I even started taking girls fishing, you know just for some alone time. I continued fishing into my mid twenties maybe getting out a couple dozen times over a summer but only picked up my fly rod a few times. Then one day I decided to get into fly fishing more seriously. I was tired of sitting on shore waiting for a bell to ring and wanted to be actually fishing even if I wasn't catching anything. I had this recurring memory of my Dad casting to this lunker trout at Hasse and hooking into him. It was the biggest trout I had ever seen and that's the experience I was after. So I set off to buy myself a new fly fishing outfit and I've been hooked ever since.

So that's my story, hope you enjoyed it. I could have went on for ever about my DJ years and how I got the name Doc, how I ended up buying into and owning Santannas Nite Club for 15 years, becoming an electrician, going back to college and taking the Emergency Medical Responder course and so on but that doesn't really have anything to do with fishing. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about when I decided to start my guiding company, Edmonton Stillwater Adventures.