Clearwater Adventures Fly Fishing

Oldman River: Fishing Recap 2

July 17, 2006 · No Comments

July 9, 2006

Today I was able to get out to the mountains with John and Quinn, a couple of my fishing buddies. We decided to check out a section of the Oldman River that we hadn't fished before and we ended up having a great day. The first three fish I caught were a whitefish, a rainbow, and a cutthroat and I ended the day with a bull trout so it was a four species day. I fished a dry fly with a dropper while I walked upstream and then switched to a couple of streamers when I headed back downstream. By far, the majority of fish were caught on the dry with a few taking the small bead head dropper. The two largest fish I landed, shown here, took the streamers. Both the bull trout, in the top photograph, and the cutthroat were pushing the eighteen inch mark.

July 10, 2006,
Elvis and Mimi, my first clients from Asia, decided to spend their last full day in Alberta fly fishing before heading home to Hong Kong. Despite never having held a fly rod, both caught on quickly and we had a great day fishing both the Livingstone where the fish readily rose to dry flies. As we drove south to the Oldman River, cooler temperatures, rain, hail, and thunder showers, gave way to a beautiful, clear evening and a frantic hatch of green drakes. During the feeding frenzy we managed to hook a number of good sized fish on mayflies, stimulators, and large nymphs. I really enjoyed introducing Elvis and Mimi to this great sport and showing them a couple of our beautiful rivers.

July 13, 14, 15, 2006,

Thursday though Saturday were spent on the Bow River. While we did have some success, fishing was too slow for my liking and most of the other guides and fishers I spoke with reported similar results. There were a couple of fishers, however who reported good results. I had been told that there had been some success using golden stonefly nymphs with a leach dropper but that wasn't the case for us. During the three days we tried a variety of nymph patterns with and without weight and a variety of streamer patterns. Hopefully things will pick up.

July 11, 12, 2006,

Continuing with this week's international theme, Australians, Tim and Leah, joined me for two days in the mountains to try their hand at fly fishing. Most of our time was spent on the Livingstone River on Tuesday but we did finish up the evening on the Oldman near The Gap where we caught the tail end of another hatch. It took a bit of time to match what they were feeding on but we finally enjoyed some success using a small Mann's Midge. Fish readily rose to dry flies most of Tuesday but results were sporadic on Wednesday. We fished a variety of nymphs, streamers, and dry flies with occasional results until about 3 PM when the fish suddenly got active. I enjoyed a good two days with a great young couple.

Technorati Tags: Mann's Midge, Oldman River, stonefly nymphs, streamers