I put the dry fly rod away in its quiver for another season. Walked along the lower Crowsnest river valley and took some pictures of the rolling grasslands.
Halloween
Overheard at a pumpkin bin:
“Look at all the pumpkins. You know they’re not just carving them anymore…they’re painting em too! They’re painting em! Isn’t that something?”
Here are some pictures taken while driving around and trout hunting the past couple of weekends. A tough Autumn for taking trout on dries. Few bugs. A real absence of BWO’s and a lot of wind. There has been a different hatch: jack o lanterns.
carving by r dewey
rainbow on dry fly
Wild Rainbows in the Coulees
“And Fall, when yeller harvest moon and the hills growin’ brown and golden under a sinkin’ sun.”
Roy Bean
wild rainbow trout
wild rainbow trout
Coulee Landscape
Some of my favorite sight fishing trout rivers run down in coulees out on the high dry plains. Here are some landscape photos from my last outing.
Coulee definition: Kind of a valley or drainage zone. The word comes from the French Canadian coulee, from the French word couler meaning “to flow”.
searching for trout, looking into the flow
looking up
still looking up
gull skull
beautiful trout dorsal fin
The Beach
LOW WATER. FINALLY CLEAR WATER. No bugs. Still windy but not gale force like on the weekend. Sunny and some high clouds. In fact, beautiful clouds. I started seeing a few trout mid afternoon. The lighting was good but past prime time; the dimmer switch was being dialed down. Days are short in mid October. The first trout I missed. He ate but the hook didn’t set. I thought, “my one chance”. I soon spotted another but he bolted before I could exhale. Two strikes, one left! I then decided to walk a river section I call the Beach. It’s a perfect late day spot: the sun over your shoulder; shallow water; consistent light colored bottom. I see well there and it’s all about seeing. Trout sometimes prowl the shin deep water along the Beach. They inch up the river with the sun in their eyes, blind to an angler just upstream. I walked softly on the pebble edge, controlled my shadow and spotted one. A downstream cast…feed line. Slow current, slow drift, slow motion rise to the caddis imitation. Then four high speed runs. Two right across the river. The trout didn’t want to give up.
the beach
Plan B
“You better cut that pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six”
-Yogi Berra
river path
Sight fishing is generally not easy. You need the right conditions to be successful and rarely do all the stars align. When things do come together it can be quite memorable; it makes your season. Lately the sight fishing in my region has been real challenging. Of my three favorite tailwater rivers, two are off color and the third, every time I go there, is being wind beaten to a froth. The reservoirs that feed two of the three rivers are so low they are releasing cloudy/silt-laden water, and it is going to remain that way until next season. Too bad. The visibility on them is only about two feet. That’s a huge limitation when you’re trying to sight fish.
silt flow
brown trout
On Saturday I hiked a lot, covered a few rivers and did manage to locate one good fish in spite of the off color water. I couldn’t entice him to take on the surface. After several casts he moved off and disappeared. I returned the next day with a different strategy; Plan B. I showed up around the same time and found him subsurface feeding in the same area. Like us, trout have their feeding spots. This time I tried one pass overhead with a grasshopper pattern. Like the day before, no reaction. I tied on a small bead head nymph (fished subsurface) but had no success. I then tied on a larger heavier nymph and connected. As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”.
brown trout
It was a tough weekend. I covered a lot of water in high wind and connected with only one trout…but it was a good one.
cloudy water
road out of river valley
“He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious”
-Yogi Berra
East Slope, West Slope
I’m a fortunate angler to live along the Continental Divide. If I don’t like the river and weather conditions on one side of the Rockies, I can drive fast and cross over in one hour or less and check out the situation on the other side. The east slope and the west slope are like night and day. They are completely different environments and sometimes have contrasting weather patterns. The Alberta east slope is dry, more wide open and breezy, and the British Columbia (BC) west slope is wetter, therefore has more vegetation (trees) and is usually less windy.
east slope river
west slope, elk river
west slope, elk river side channel
elk river
I crossed into BC this weekend as there were 100km an hour wind warnings in my region of Alberta. I fished the Elk river. With the predicted relative calm and overcast sky I was hoping for a Blue Winged Olive hatch. There was a very brief one late afternoon and I eventually found some rising cutthroat trout. An early trout was caught on a cricket pattern and afternoon rising fish on a size 20 Olive pattern: natural color deer hair wing tied forward, a turn or two of medium dun hackle clipped on the bottom, grey thorax dubbed and grey body, amber trailing shuck on a Klinkhammer style hook that allows the body to dangle. Sounds kind of complicated but I’m sure any fly tied the right size would have worked. Here are a few weekend pictures of the east slope, the west slope and some BC cutthroat.
The skin of a cutthroat feels just like a brook trout…silky smooth.
west slope cutthroat
west slope cutthroat
west slope cutthroat
Landscape
I finally stopped fishing, looked up and here I was…
Changing Weather
“Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather”
Ilka Chase
snow on the great divide
Some pictures taken over the long weekend. The conditions were tough: some snow, heavy rain, and worst of all high winds when the sky started to clear up which dampened the Baetis hatch. Some rivers were off color; some ok. Sight fishing was real challenging. Oh well. Here are a few trout picked up on dries.
brown trout
riverside cottonwoods
brown trout
a calm clearing moment
rainbow trout
Late August
Getting back into a fishing groove wasn’t easy after a two-week absence. A lot changed while I was away. There have been river closures in my area: low, hot water. Most are now re-opened. My favorite sight fishing river is still off-limits. The smoke-filled skies have made spotting trout difficult (reflection) and the hatches have changed and are quite sparse, which is not unusual for this time of year. Fall blows (wind) are also underway.
walk down to river
I spent a couple of days on a river (tailwater) I used to fish a lot but haven’t in recent years. It holds some great trout but not a lot of them. When you go there you have to be prepared to get skunked as the river can be quite fickle. It can be a frustrating place, which is why I generally see few anglers there. Often it seems void of trout. However if you “hang in” and put in your time, it can be quite rewarding…sometimes! Rivers like this can be quite special. They’re a challenge. If they were any better or easier, anglers would be all over them. Since they are not easy people tend to go elsewhere. Therefore, on many days you can have the place to yourself.
brown trout
I saw a couple of young guys fishing it the right way. Their backpack vests suggested they were out for a full day and they were covering a lot of water with their black Lab…working pool after pool.
Most people who fish it seem to cast over one or two pools with a streamer and then go home. They either hit a home run or strike out…the latter usually being the case. In good grasshopper years you can switch from a streamer to this big bug and have some exciting angling. This hasn’t been one of those years even though it has been hot and dry. After run off some fly fishing guides float the river with their clients as there is enough water. Once the water level drops the rafts disappear and angling pressure is minimal as visitors who pay to fish generally don’t want to walk far.
brown trout
I learned several years ago that this tailwater fishery (bottom release from a dam) can have some good (not great) small fly hatches which can get the attention of some sizeable fish. It was one of the few local waterways I was seeing some bug life on and the occasional riser, so past experience taught me to stick with it.
smoky sky
The river meanders out on the prairies way down in a coulee. From a distance you wouldn’t even know it was there. To fish it you have to walk a lot of steep hilly terrain…it’s all up and down. The holding water (pools) are often a quarter to half mile apart, sometimes further, so you have to cover great distances to improve your odds. I use the elevated areas to locate fish when the lighting is right. Much of the river bottom is covered in a yellow sometimes tan to brownish algae so it is difficult in most places to spot trout hugging the stream bed as they simply blend in. High flow areas polish (clean) the river stones and trout show up better in these locations, so it is always wise to carefully watch these spots. Rainbows with their dark backs and flashing silver sides show up better than the brown trout. The browns, master camouflage artists, just don’t show up.
brown trout
The trout generally need to be actively feeding on emerging insects (rising to mid levels or near the surface) in order to be seen, or prowling the surface current lines for grasshoppers which blow off the cliffs when they are around.
All the trout I spotted were eating small stuff and being ultra picky. They were focused on emergers and rarely poked their heads through the surface. However, some shallow water feeders were enticed to do so. The trout featured in this post were caught on dry flies. I put in two long days watching the water and was rewarded with a few good fish.
old river valley homestead
best of the day, brown trout
The river is a challenge. It’s a sleeper. It’s a special place.
rainbow trout
grassland hike to river
trout on dries 