Stilly report, holding a fish, new year's resolution

[Vincent Pons]

If you want to avoid chum and silver, don't fish the Stilly, it is full of fish. However, I haven't seen any SRC and dollies in the NF. I fished with regular nymphs (but heavier than what you buy) and caught a few chum, one silver and missed or lost several fish. Lot of people out there, it was a beautiful day even though the morning was windy.   I also read something interesting on the bulletin board of flyshop.com. Someone was upset because a lot of fishermen don't know how to hold a fish and release it. I totally agree, I have seen too many fishers (flyfishers and other) taking a fish by the gills and throwing it back in the water several feet away. Before you learn to fish, you should learn how to release a fish. That should be the first thing that someone learns and not how to catch a fish. Sometimes, I don't even touch the fish, I just want to fool them, I don't have to take the fish in my hands to show it to every single fisher around, I don't care and they don't care.  My new year's resolution is going to be no more strike indicator at all. This year, I used a strike indicator every time that I fished the Snoqualimie and I'm still ashamed of it. I don't use them when I fish for salmon, steelhead, SRC... why should I still use them when I fish smaller fish?? No reason, bye bye indicators (by indicator I mean a dry fly or something else on the leader).  Vincent