Since moving to Vancouver my fishing has suffered. In Whistler I used to pop out to the lake several times a week, and hit up the rivers fairly often as well. Vancouver was intimidating. Where to go? How could I fish without going shoulder to shoulder with the crowds of tin-chucking meat harvesters? I don’t keep fish often, it’s a pain in the ass to clean, carry and care for them and the truth of the matter is, I’d rather fish for a big trout in a catch-and-release only stream than a million average trout in an overstocked put-and-take fishery. But that’s me, I don’t judge.

Last week I finally got out to the Skagit. To say that it’s “local” is a bit of a stretch, the drive is over 2 hours from downtown. In fact, I could probably get to the Birkenhead faster, but I’m looking for new water and the Skagit is that. Plus I went with Jon Cartwright and he’d spent a productive day there last year, pulling decent fish on the dry fly, so I wasn’t going in completely blind.

First of all, this is some beautiful water. Right now you can wade it everywhere, there are perfect deep holes, riffles, undercut banks and best of all, fish. Almost right away we started to see big silver flashes in the deeper water. Like, BIG flashes. That and lots of surface action. Then I started turning over rocks and what I found blew me away. Huge mayfly nymphs, massive cased caddis, and lots of stoneflies. Eventually I found one of the biggest I’ve ever seen, almost two inches long!

There were a few fishermen and women around but people moved frequently and we never felt crowded. The rainbows here are as cautious as they are plentiful. I found a noticeable difference in my luck when I switched up and fished 5x tippet after a relatively slow patch with 3x fished wet. We had luck on dark stone nymphs, not so much with the golden stones that had been recommended and all sorts of dries. At first we concentrated on elk hair caddis, but after we started to see more mays coming off, we moved to green, yellow and black humpies and had the most action. Really pretty rainbows between 12 and 14 inches were the order of the day.

Near the end of the day I got too curious about those big silver flashes and put a big black bead head leech on my sinking line, dropped it into a deep slow running hole and waited. A minute later as I slowly retrieved I felt a heavy weight. At first I thought I had bottom, then the bottom did a head shake and I knew I was into something better. I could tell pretty quickly that I was into a Dolly. He took a few sharp runs but mostly just bulldogged me and worked his way into the current whenever he could. On the 5 weight, he was a perfect fish. He measured out just over 18 inches when he finally gave up and showed off his vibrant peach-coloured spots and flashy sides. He was a little skinny, but clean. From the flashes I saw, I’m pretty sure that he was small to average, I’d wager there are some of his far bigger brothers in there too. But that’s for another day.

So I’ve got a little gem in my pocket now, I’ve seen some beautiful water, not too far from home, and am looking forward to learning more about this beautiful river.


First look

First fish on a black nymph

Jon tests the banks

A small stone nymph. The huge one I found was a little too active for a photo.

Jon releases a bow.

and casts for another one.

Under these rocks, lots of fish food.

The dolly.

Full length.

End of the day.

Tags: fishing, rivers, skagit, Photography, BC

Now it can be told...

So I started to work with my old friends at Monster again last week. As longtime followers of the blog know, I've been doing all kinds of different media projects in the last few years as a way to keep myself challenged and to continue to add experiences to my list. After the success of the Grenade Games last spring, Monster was nice enough to have me back to work on through the Olympic year. Which brings me to this event. I'm afraid that I can't give anything away yet because details are being pounded out as we speak, but suffice it to say, for all the people who can't afford, or don't want to attend the Olympics, we're going to make sure that there is an event you can get stoked on at the same time.

Stay tuned for details, this one is going to be good.

Oh ya, and then I'll be working on Grenade Games 6 too. My liver hurts already.

Also. I've been taking pictures of the buildings on my walk to and from the Monster Office for a long time now. Eventually the plan is to have photos of every building on the west side of Main, from Alexander to the viaduct, in all sorts of different media (35mm film, digital, large format, paint, whatever) and line em all up on a white wall somewhere so you can experience my walk to work. I'm hoping to get it done some time in 2010. I've been posting a bunch of stuff on flickr lately too. Weird.


121, 123 Main Street. Vancouver, BC.

229, 231 Main Street. Vancouver, BC.

Tags: Monster Energy, Main Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Well! The advance copies of my book "Out West: Snowboarding, Westbeach and a new Canadian dream." have hit some media outlets and all I can say is wow! Great reviews. People are stoked. I'm stoked. Everybody's happy!

I want to talk more about it but I'm swamped in this edit right now. I have a lot of stuff I want to blog about so stay tuned for some recently published shots that I'm stoked of, some of my opinionated rants, and Way more pictures. Until then read the reviews:

ESPN

Transworld


Buy it!



I stole this photo from Transworld.

Tags: Photography, work, Westbeach, book, snowboarding, Canada, BC

This is a shot of my buddy Rob. We met in high school and became fast friends. When I moved to Whistler after high school, Rob did too and we stayed together for the first couple months. When I got interested in Fly fishing, I did it with Rob and we spent days and days on the Birkenhead River tossing out flies and learning how to fool the exceptionally wily Birkenhead rainbow trout. Eventually we knew that river as good as anyone, and Rob became a guide while I chose to keep fishing as a hobby.

As much as we did just about everything together, I never followed Rob into the water when he got into scuba diving. He braved the cold BC waters and was even considering doing his dive master. I didn't understand the appeal at all and left it to him. Fast forward 20 years and I'm completely enamored with diving and he must be laughing. He's coming to Maui for the wedding and after all these years I'm finally going to get to dive with my oldest friend. Amazing.

Robbie's dog Sedge was our faithful companion on all our fishing trips and when he finally passed on earlier this year it was a very sad day. He liked to lick trout while you were trying to release them. He thought they were like funny wiggly sticks put on earth just for him to chase. He was a good fishin dog.

Tags: Photography, Portraits, fishing, BC

My good friend Alex Warburton got married on the weekend in Victoria. The weather held out for him on Saturday and it was spectacular. Sunday morning brought the rains and on the ferry ride home I got lost in all the great colours and textures of the boat. It felt like a really good time for a little photo essay. One of these photos is my favourite. Can you guess which one?


rainforest

pull this lever

lifeboat icon

rainy windows

boat. wake.

Bc feels like this more often than not. Arriving back in Tsawwassen.

from one boat to another

Tags: Photography, canon g9, Ferry, BC

So my girl is away working in Roatan right now. I'm missing her and working away. Sold a shot today to a clothing manufacturer and magazines have been making their selects and I've been shipping them out. Life is good, but a big part of me wants to be in the warm water with my girl, 80 feet down and looking at fishes. There have been both Manta Rays and Hammerheads on the dives in the last week. Here is a pic of T walking the dog a few days before she left.

Tags: t, willie, False Creek, canon g9, BC, Canada, work

My crew for today did a pretty monster drive to get here and shoot in the sun. Unfortunately they didn't make it all the way. It's not a perfect day out there, but it's pretty nice, and I'm waiting. At least it gives me a little time to work on this last minute job that came up for this week. There is quite a bit to get organized in a short period of time so I'm doing a little scrambling. Well, to keep you occupied until then, here are some more G9 shots from around the hood last week.



Tinsletown. Watch your step.

The hood. Pretty stoked that I live here.Except that I'm in Whistler.

Flags and cranes around the Olympic village site.

Tags: canon g9, Vancouver, Waiting, Olympic Village, False Creek, Vancouver, BC, Canada

So…

Where ya been? I haven’t seen you in awhile. Been busy? Happy? Good. Nice to hear. Me? Oh man, so much going on.

I’m moving. Oh you heard. Ya I’m moving back to Canada. No, probably not Whistler. Vancouver. Ya, I have lots of friends there and I haven’t lived there since I was a teenager, so I’m pretty excited about it. I’m loving the city these days. Vancouver is amazing.

I’m getting married too. To T. I know, it’s still really new. Well thanks, I’m stoked too. She proposed just before we drove down to California. No, she’s not here now, in Honduras. I dropped them at LAX and she took Pammy down and taught her to dive. They’re having an awesome time. They saw a frickin sawfish. How is that? I know! I would be too. She’ll be back here at the end of the month. She’s going to help me pack up my stuff.

The mag? Oh it’s doing well, that’s why I feel ok about heading home. I’m showing Crispin Cannon the ropes right now. He has a month to learn how all this works, and then he’s on his own! Ya, I’ll still shoot for FSM, I just want more outside time and less office time. Thanks. That’s nice of you to say. Well ya, we worked really hard on it. Colin is good. Finished his book. He’s shopping it around right now.

Cool, cool. Ok right on. We’ll talk to you soon then. Good to see you…
Pendygrasse snowboard photography, snowboarding photos, photographs of snowboarders, shred photographers, snowboard photographer, snow photographers, pictures of snowboarding, pictures of snowboarders, photos of snowboards, photos of snowboarding. Daniel Stephen Pendygrasse, DSP Photography.

Tags: Home, BC, Transitions