Help monitor the health of the river by volunteering at an electrofishing station near you. This monitoring technique is used to inventory fish species and populations and volunteers are typically required to help carry out this valuable work.

The Credit Valley Conservation Authority is having an electrofishing Volunteer Day on Thursday, Aug 5th beginning at 9:00 am at the Terra Cotta Conservation Area.

To register by phone please contact 905-670-1615, ext. 221 or for more information or http://www.creditvalleyca.ca/

Deb Freele, a friend of many in the Ontario fly fishing community and of WILSON’S, is recovering in hospital in Cody, Wyoming today having had the misfortune of being attacked by a grizzly at the Sode Butte Campground in Montana yesterday morning. Our thoughts go out to Deb and we hope she has a speedy recovery. If you like you can pass along your wishes to Deb on her Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=518290224&ref=ts

To see one of the interviews Deb did yesterday describing what she went through go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5uyn3qqy5U

I don’t usually comment on politics but I recently received a letter from Jerry Ouellette (MPP for Oshawa and a former Minister of Natural Resources for the Province of Ontario) that included a copy of the Special Purpose Account Annual Report from the Ministry of Natural Resources Fish and Wildlife Branch for the years 1999-2000 through 2007-2008. This report was recently tabled in the Ontario Legislature and it includes a troubling message.

The Fish and Wildlife Special Purpose Account (SPA) was created to ensure that fish and wildlife licence revenues would be dedicated to the management of these resources. The report documents the annual revenues of the SPA based on the 3-year cycle of the Ontario Outdoor Card and also outlines the goals and achievements of the Ministry’s Fish & Wildlife program and specifies significant expenditures for each fiscal year. The report is supposed to be tabled annually in the Ontario Legislature but the current Minister had failed to table it for the last 2 years. To Mr. Ouellette’s credit he questioned the Minister in the Legislature as to why this report had not been tabled and having now looked at what the McGuinty Government has brought forth it is abundantly clear where anglers, hunters and the MNR rank in the eyes of the McGuinty Government.

Under the previous government 1999-2003, 67% of the fish and wildlife program budget was obtained from the SPA and 33% came from the government’s consolidated revenue fund (CRF). Under the stewardship of the current Minister, Linda Jeffrey, the percentage of the fish & wildlife budget obtained from the SPA ranges from 72% to 83% What this means is that the government of Dalton McGuinty has decreased the funding of the MNR and Ontario hunters and anglers are having to pay more to get less.

The staff of the MNR are overworked, underpaid and increasingly underfunded. I trust the current Minister is a well-intentioned person but in light of what is going on at the Ministry, I suspect she does not fish or hunt on a regular basis otherwise she would do something about this situation. At the very least this report illustrates that she fails to understand the needs of MNR field staff and the the Ontario angling and hunting community. Most importantly, this report illustrates that the Government in office is intent on managing the status quo into the ground instead of addressing a situation which is is dire need of improvement.

If you would like to get more information please contact Mr. Ouellette in his constituency office at 905-723-2411 or via jerry.ouellette@pc.ola.org

I have met a lot of people in municipal, provincial and federal levels of government and can count on one hand the number of people who are the right person in the right position committed to doing the right thing instead of doing the right thing for themselves… The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO) is one of those people.

Many people in Ontario have not heard of Mr. Miller but the work he and his team are doing is making our province and our country a better place to live. The Commissioner is basically the environmental ombudsman for Ontario who answers to Queen’s Park but not necessarily to the Government in power. This position makes the ECO office independent and free to comment on any and all aspects of government policy. To that end, Gord Miller is a conservationist who has not hesitated to lambaste government policies during his tenure and yesterday’s comments on the failed Environmental Fee policy drawn up by the McGuinty Government under the guidance of Stewardship Ontario is a further example of the good work this Commissioner is doing. Why would a fly shop comment on this ? Because if we don’t have people looking out for our environment we won’t have any place to fish…

For more information on the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario go to http://eco.on.ca/

I flew in from Edmonton the day before yesterday and made a point of looking out the window as we passed over the Credit River in Mississauga. I have to admit I was a bit disheartened to see that it was a dark chocolate brown and even from a few thousand feet I could tell that it was running high. So I made a phone call last night…

My friend Eli lives on the banks of the river at the Forks of the Credit and when I asked how the river is doing with all of this rain she chuckled. “You’re itching to get back up here aren’t you ?”, she asked.

“Guilty as charged but I don’t want to waste my time if the water there is as cloudy and high as it is here in Mississauga.”

“What is it with you folks in the city ?”, was the reply. “This isn’t the mouth of the river and although I don’t fly fish even I know that the conditions are great!”

So… if you can get away from work make sure you bring the following in your fly boxes:

Spotted Sedge 14-16 (early afternoon)
Tan Caddis 14-16 (early afternoon)
Mahogany Dunn 10-12 (late afternoon, evening)
Giant Drake 6-10 (all day)
Trico 20-24 (early morning)
Grasshopper 8-12 (all day)
Ants 14-16 (afternoon)

For more information on the hatches of the Credit River go to www.discoverflyfishing.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/credit-river-hatch-chart.pdf