Weekend Hiking Snaps

Posted on November 15, 2015 by troutondries.com

” It’s gettin’ harder and harder to cut wood out there. You need all sorts of permits and there’s all sorts of restrictions on where you can, and can’t cut. Pretty soon you won’t be able to cut at all. You won’t even be able to touch a tree. They say they are protecting the wilderness for the animals. Animals…how about us! Pretty soon they’ll be makin’ beds in the woods for the Grizzlies so they can get a good night sleep! ”

Local Fire Wood Cutter

frost covered frozen shirt and bone

alberta sea anemone

mini donkey

Eastslope Grasslands

Posted on November 9, 2015 by troutondries.com

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

Posted on November 2, 2015 by troutondries.com

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

Posted on October 25, 2015 by troutondries.com

“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

Posted on October 20, 2015 by troutondries.com

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

Posted on October 16, 2015 by troutondries.com

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

Posted on September 29, 2015 by troutondries.com

“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

Posted on September 22, 2015 by troutondries.com

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

Landscape

Posted on September 18, 2015 by troutondries.com

I finally stopped fishing, looked up and here I was…

Changing Weather

Posted on September 11, 2015 by troutondries.com

“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.