July 24, 2006,
Rod, and his young friend, Vincent, who is visiting Alberta from France, joined me on the Oldman River today. While Vincent is an avid fisher in France, he had never fly fished before. We spent some time working on his cast and talking about reading a river and then set him loose. He was a very quick study and was soon casting proficiently to locations on the river where one would expect to catch a fish. Vincent caught several fish today including this good looking cutthroat trout. Several fish were lost and many other strikes were enjoyed. Most of our success today was with dry flies, the most productive being a royal wulff or a royal trude. Despite the occasional rain shower and thunder, we enjoyed a great day in the mountains.
[tags]royal trude, white fish, royal wulff, cutthroat[/tags]
Technorati Tags: cutthroat, royal wulff, white fish
Filed under: Recent Trips on July 28th, 2006 | No Comments »
July 18, 2006,
Scotty and Lynn, from Florida, are back in the area again for their third straight year. I had spent time with them the previous 2 years so this was a day I had been looking forward to for some time. They are hooked on our mountain streams so we headed out to spend a day on the Oldman River. I spent a lot of time with Lynn who enjoyed great success. Scotty also landed a number of fish and missed several as well. I was surprised to see how much the water level had dropped during the past week. Hopefully this doesn't continue. Read more »
Technorati Tags: beadhead nymphs, Bow River, Oldman River, stonefly nymphs
Filed under: Recent Trips on July 24th, 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. Read more »
Technorati Tags: Mann's Midge, Oldman River, stonefly nymphs, streamers
Filed under: Recent Trips on July 17th, 2006 | No Comments »
July 6, 2006,
Pierre and Jim floated the Bow with me today. The river was in great shape and the weather was perfect today for our drift from Fish Creek Park to McKinnon Flats. Most of the day was spent fishing nymphs and streamers with streamers being most effective. We landed four or five smaller fish and four nice sized rainbows. We spotted the occasional rising fish and Pierre spent some time fishing an elk hair caddis with an emerger dropper but it failed to produce any fish. Towards the end of the day a thunder shower came in from the west so we got off the water for about 45 minutes and waited for it to blow over. Read more »
Technorati Tags: Bow River, elk hair caddis, Fish Creek Park, McKinnon Flats
Filed under: Recent Trips on July 9th, 2006 | No Comments »
June 25, 2006,
Phil and Sherry were in town for a few days from California and fishing was on the agenda. We had a few days of heavy rain so the Highwood River was dumping a lot of dirty water into the Bow. We decided to float through the city since it is running much clearer here than south of the city. We enjoyed a very warm outing but had to contend with some pretty strong winds throughout the day. Despite the high water there was two to three feet of visibility. Fishing proved to be very slow today. One brown and one whitefish was all we had to show for our efforts. Dry weather is in the forecast so I expect the Bow will be fishing much better in a few days.
Read more »
Technorati Tags: bow, Bow River, caddis emerger, caddis fly, Highwood River
Filed under: Recent Trips on July 2nd, 2006 | No Comments »
June 25
Phil and Sherry were in town for a few days from California and fishing was on the agenda. We had a few days of heavy rain so the Highwood River was dumping a lot of dirty water into the Bow. We decided to float through the city since it is running much clearer here than south of the city. We enjoyed a very warm outing but had to contend with some pretty strong winds througout the day. Despite the high water there was two to three feet of visibility. Fishing proved to be very slow today. One brown and one whitefish was all we had to show for our efforts. Dry weather is in the forecast so I expect the Bow will be fishing much better in a few days.
Read more »
Filed under: Recent Trips on June 30th, 2006 | No Comments »
June 27
I had a couple of hours this afternoon so 
I headed down to the Bow to see how it was looking. The gravel bar in this photo was completely covered with water on Saturday so the river dropped a good two feet in forty-eight hours. You will also notice that the Bow is much cl
eaner than it was in the photo below, taken on the 17th. Fish Creek was still coming in quite dirty this afternoon, but it should clear up quickly. I wandered the banks for awhile and spotted three rainbows feeding on the surface. I caught this rainbow on a caddis emerger and one larger rainbow on a caddis fly. There's nothing quite like sight fishing for rainbows on the Bow. The river is really shaping up and I'm looking forward to some good fishing in the coming days. Read more »
Filed under: Recent Trips on June 29th, 2006 | No Comments »
June 10th, 2006,
Brad and Carl joined me on the Bow today. Brad had some time constraints, so the outing had to be a quick one. We decided to drift a couple of city sections of the Bow that under normal conditions would take about seven hours. Today the water was high and very fast so we were done in four hours. Despite the high water, due to run-off, visibility was fine at two to three feet. Most of the time was spent throwing streamers tight to the banks but we did try some nymphing as well. Lots of mayflies were out today but no rising fish were spotted. Carl landed this nice 20 inch rainbow with a streamer. Fishing was quite slow today with only one other fish landed. From the reports I have heard, it sounds like other fishers had similar experiences on the river today.
[tags]bow river[/tags]
Technorati Tags: Bow River, nymphing
Filed under: Recent Trips on June 11th, 2006 | No Comments »
June 17th, 2006,
River levels are normally high this time of year due to run-off caused by melting snow in the mountains. Combine run-off with heavy rainfall, similar to what we have had the past two or three days and water levels rise substantially and visibility is reduced to just a few inches. Needless to say, the Bow River today is not the same river that it was last Saturday. I thought I'd take a drive down to the southeast end of the city to check things out for myself. As you can see in this photo, the clear blue water that we normally enjoy on the Bow has been replaced with something that more closely resembles chocolate milk. To get a sense of how high the water is, the vegetation on the right side of this photo is usually several feet from the river's edge. Hopefully the rain will stop and give the river a chance to settle down and be fishable by the weekend. Click here if you are interested in monitoring the flow and water level of the Bow River.
June 16th, 2006,
I was up in the mountains today and had an opportunity to spend half-an-hour or so fishing a beaver pond that I like to stop at when I'm in the area. I had several hits and landed this nice brook trout before I had to move on. Run-off and heavy rainfall over the past few days has resulted in lot of water flowing out of the mountains and feeding the rivers and streams we like to fish. As a result, water levels are quite high right now and wading is really out of the question in several of these streams. Unless we have a repeat of the constant, heavy rainfall that we had last June, our mountain rivers should be looking good in a week or two.
Technorati Tags: Bow River
Filed under: Recent Trips on February 18th, 2006 | No Comments »
With the 2005 fishin
g season long over and a new year upon us, the Recent Trips slate has been wiped clean in anticipation of the coming season. While I can't report on every trip that is taken during the fishing season, I do try to report on a regular basis. The purpose of this page is to give you an accurate indication of how our rivers are fishing so I'll let you know about our successful and our not so successful outings.
It's January 15 today and we have had a mild winter so far. Temperatures have been well above average and there has been very little snow in the Calgary area. As a matter of fact, the skiff of snow we got last night and this morning is melting as I write this. Our mountains however are getting lots of snow which bodes well for the water levels in our rivers this summer.
I do hope to get on the Bow River in the coming weeks and maybe even take a drive down to the Crowsnest River so check this page occasionally. In the meanwhile, here are a couple of photos to remind you why the Bow River and the mountain rivers of southwest Alberta are such a special place for fly fishers!
Filed under: Recent Trips on January 5th, 2005 | No Comments »
