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

I was up in Whistler all last week doing a project for Whistler/Blackcomb and Origin Design, as well as catching up on some personal thing. One of the personal things was fishing.

Fishing is on of the things that evens me out, it keeps me humble, happy and calm. I love casting flies and catching fish and I don't do it nearly enough. Even though I couldn't convince anyone to go out with me, I braved the wind and went out on Alta Lake. It was a pretty crappy day to be out there, casting was tough and there was no visible surface action, so I fought the wind for a couple hours before getting a text message from my buddy Rob that he was back at the house with Mojitos and bbq. I conceded a loss to the lake and started to kick back to shore. Just as I had given up hope I felt a strong tug on the line and the slow head shake that meant I wasn't just dragging weeds.

5 or 8 minutes later, and after a nice showy jump, a beautiful golden 17 inch cutthroat slid into my net. I was too busy pulling the fly out of the corner of his mouth to take a picture before releasing him back into the lake, but sometimes it's better that way. I don't want to give away all my memories after all.

Thanks to Brian at Whistler Flyfishing for the help picking out new waders and the good deal too!

Here is a picture of a bubble.

Tags: fishing