On most days forest fire smoke is in the air. All rivers are at historic lows. Reservoirs are emptying. Angling on all rivers shuts down after 2 pm due to poor flows and high afternoon temperatures. This now seems to be the summertime norm. We need rain. We need a lot of it. We need a Rainmaker…
I’ve been fishing where the water is still cold in the headwaters of rivers at elevation. It seems with every new angling season you have to travel further and higher to find water that numbs your feet and legs.
“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity”–Seneca
A few weeks ago there was cloud cover, rain, some hail and lightening. Then smoke filled skies followed the inclement weather. It produced low light conditions for two or three days. We ventured out, weathered the storms and the heavy smoke, searched and luckily found some good ones sipping. Low light and insect life triggered by the rain brought opportunity. Some nice brown trout…
Late June in SW Alberta. A Cutthroat stream. Clear water. Cold water. The weather was suppose to be mainly sunny today but for the most part it was a mixed sky. Mainly cloudy with some sunny breaks. It made wet wading chilly. My feet quickly became numb. River temperature was 49f in the shallows. It felt much colder in the deeper water when I crossed sections of the river when making my way upstream. Sunny breaks heated the riverside sand and fine dry gravel beds. I knelt down in these soft spots absorbing the heat radiating from the ground and watched a number of pools for rising trout. I only saw two slight surface disturbances all afternoon. Fine Cutthroat they were.
There were a variety of bugs but not a lot of anything. The sum total of PMDs, Drakes, Yellow Sallies and the odd Golden Stone was not enough to entice many fish off of the bottom. Not enough for the river to come alive. Hopefully that will change in several days when the water temperature breaks through the 50f mark. I’ll come back then.
I covered a mile or so searching the clear water. The Cutthroat were caught on a size 12 Drake dry tied on an emerger hook; body of the fly breaking the surface. The river was low for this time of year. All rivers are low. I fished barbless for a quick hook release. I’ll do that all season. Alberta once had a barbless policy. No more.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Cormac McCarthy. One of my favorite writers. I’ve read most of his novels. My favorite, Suttree, and then the border trilogy: All the Pretty Horses; The Crossing; Cities of the Plain. He recently died at age 89, probably writing to the end.
The past few days I visited some mountain streams that are “older than man” and casted dries to Cutthroat, Cuttbows and Rainbow trout.
In the past several years I’ve felt there has been a decrease in hatches (bug life) on many rivers in my region, SW Alberta. Last year it was very noticeable on some of my favorite tailwater rivers which usually have an excess of small mayflies and caddis which hatch all summer long often well into the Fall. People on various fly fishing forums have noticed the same. What has also been observable is that many of the trout I’ve been catching in recent years seem “leaner”; much less robust and energetic.
I’ve attached a brief article and video below called, “no fly zones” regarding bug life decline. Check it out. It is from a fly fishing perspective but there are numerous non-angling articles on this worldwide phenomenon in publications like the Guardian: etc. Google “bug apocalypse”.
Here’s a nice brown trout I caught on a tailwater river where bug life was especially poor last season. It was cycling in the sunny shallows and I caught it on a size 14 black ant. It was more slender than trout I’ve caught at this location in past seasons…lack of bug life?: tough winter?; lower flows?; warmer water?; additional variables?; all of the above?…
Flows are low for this time of year on a local tailwater river and water clarity, for now at least, is excellent. Usually it is high and off-color in late May. I took advantage of the good river conditions and a forecast that called for cloud cover and minimal wind, hoping for a good hatch of Blue Winged Olives. The hatch was good. Fish were up. I casted emerger patterns mainly size 18: fly body breaking the surface and a wing (white or black depending on surface glare) simply for a bit of flotation at eye of fly and for visibility. A few photos of Rainbow trout.
” If a year was tucked inside a clock, then Autumn would be the magic hour.”
Victoria Erickson
FEW BLUE WINGED OLIVES SO FAR this fall. Consistent with the whole season as hatches in general have been poor. I continue to walk local Cutthroat streams. I’m still finding some late season afternoon rising fish. The searching and sight-fishing in the full sun has been spectacular due to rivers being ultra low and clear. The big stuff (flies) in the slow shallow stretches rarely get a response. I’ve had much more success with small fly impressions such as midges, tiny parachute patterns, hackle-stackers, small emergers and ants. Size 18 flies generally. In the low, slow water the trout are on guard and fairly selective. They carefully inspect all that passes overhead. Rises are slow motion events fully witnessed in the Autumn golden light. Dry fly fishing doesn’t get any better.
Dark in the morning. Dark earlier in the evening. Days are shortening. Fading light…
The brief afternoon light provides opportunity to locate a good trout. It’s your chance to sight-fish; your chance for one on a dry fly.
I have been hiking a few very low, clear Cutthroat rivers the past couple of weeks; walking the long distances between pools where there is very little holding water and therefore trout. I always pause in these sections when I see see a small area of slightly darker water, or what seems to be a slight depression in the river bed. A spot that is just a little deeper than the rest. Often it’s just two or three feet of slow moving water. Sometimes less.
Recently I paused and watched one of these spots after noticing a slight surface disturbance. The afternoon sun felt good and I knelt down on the sand and pebble rock and took a moment to absorb the heat, as I had been wet wading the ice-cold river for awhile. As I watched and warmed-up, a rise occurred. The fish displaced very little water. A small one. It was eating the few afternoon Blue Winged Olives that were riding the slow, shallow flow. I watched for awhile then noticed, just slightly beyond, another fish rise. It displaced more water. A better fish.
I side-arm cast to it down and across from my kneeling position and the trout slowly surfaced in full light and ate my small Olive impression.
low,slow…clear
It is a given that in low water conditions that Cutthroat trout, and trout in general, are going to be in the deep pools on a river. Catching them there is always an achievement especially late in the season after they have been fished-over for three plus months. However, finding a good one in between pools in the shallowest of water is for me much more special. It’s the location. A few trout found in the scarcest of water the past few weeks…
Long leaders, fine tippet and relatively small flies.
