Top 15 Canadian Moments 2012 - #5 - Return to sender

Pierre & his wife, Karen had planned to fish with me in July. July was kind of wet. Kinda ugly. The morning we met in Rocky Mountain House was ugly. The blackest skies. The wind was howling. The forecast had heavy rain. I had just driven through some heavy rain. Ugly heavy rain. Well, a humor filled, ugly kind of rain anyway. I was able to take this photo of the rain on the drive out. Apparently the grain elevator decided to take a quick rainbow-pee before the storm set in!

So, we canned plans for the day & rescheduled for Sept. It just wasn't going to be a good day - and it wasn't.
September came and we again met up. It was a fabulous September this year, the kind that makes you yearn for Sept all year. It was as good as New Zealand fishing, just a different scale of fish and different species / dynamics, of course.

We headed up to fish cutthroat trout for the day. Again, low, clear water and perfect weather for spotting in the canyon. The day did not disappoint. It started as all Sept cutthroat trout days do - sighting them deep in the pools and nymphing with little action on top. By noon in the canyon the sun has peaked over and acts like it found its best friend - a big, bright smile and warm hug.
The first sighted fish was in a seam and quite active. Karen was with me and we practised sighting and casting to the fish. First cast in, her dry - dropper sat on the water on the slack edge. The dark shape came up from the depths to her fly. "Here it comes!" Sure enough, the big, dark, red cheeked male smoked the dry. She missed. Ah well. We worked another nice trout and it took but we missed the subtle take. At the top of the slot, a big cutt whumped the nymph. Bugga again on that one. Fun!

The day went amazingly. We spent time together, watching each other fish. I was able to really put them onto some great sight-fishing moments, with cutts holding on rocks, edges of troughs, slots, at tailouts, in head seams, all sorts of neat stuff. A few fish were caught blind, but 90% were sight-fished then engaged. It was a lot of fun because the pace to the day, their happy contentment to let me do my thing and find fish for them, the conditions, everything was wonderful.

Some nice fish were caught, certainly. Funny, in catching so many big browns the past several years both in New Zealand and Alberta, along with those fat brookies, sizes of cutthroat aren't that important. Big cutts are still big cutts, but you don't generally go fishing to catch monsters.

It was toward the end of the day when that day tied in to the #5 moment of the season, however. We came upon a pool with 5 nice cutthroat feeding. I think we managed to land three. Pierre hooked into the largest fish twice, missing both times. We could see it feeding, then chasing another around the pool a couple of times. After first hooking it, it simply went back to feeding along the wall while Pierre focused on the other fish before returning to it, missing another take. Again, he focused on another fish. The bigger one returned to feeding and again Pierre cast over. This time, after another great cast, the fish took once more. It was a nice cutt, in that 20" range.

After a good fight, the tippet broke! 
Ugh.

We made our way out of the canyon after that, leaving it to a fish story.

Two or three days later I hosted Brian on his 4 days of fishing. We wanted to do a sight-fishing day on a cutthroat river. We did the same reach of water, just coming at it from lower down. Sure enough
our day ended at that pool as well. And this time only 3 trout were in the pool, in the same exact positions they held 2 or 3 days previous.

Brian prceeded to land a nice 20" cutt. And as it came to the net, I noticed something and smiled. When I got home, I emailed Pierre this photo of his flies that we removed from Brian's nice, fat cutthroat:

A fun day up high

Given the water conditions were a little high and muddy closer to home, and given that after 5 weeks of hard work at the lodge (Fortress Lake Retreat), it was time for Amelia & I to take a break. We opted to hit a wee alpine lake that we hadn't been to in quite a time. 2500 feet up from the highway and maybe 200m diameter, it would be a great place to spend a hot July afternoon.

The meadows on the hike in are alive with flowers. If you get the chance, with this week's forecast, now is a brilliant time to enjoy the peak of the bloom.

The last time we visited, the sight fishing was excellent. With quite a few people around, we weren't sure what to expect. We'd never been when anyone else has been around but this day people came and left regularly. Nobody else fished, mind you, which was kind of different given the only people we'd ever seen here 15 years ago were anglers. Good to see. Anyway, back to the sight fishing...

When the fish are cruising like that and there are rises all over the lake, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen! Want to catch fish? Cast! We'd come up with 2 rods but we met up with another fellow we knew from Facebook and gave him a rod for an hour or so. This gave us the chance to take turns on the camera. Not sure if the actual fishing or the camera is more fun. We went barefoot - originally it was an effort to minimize our impact on the mossy shoreline (a decade ago it had been torn up by anglers but it has since grown back in quite well, surprisingly) but it felt so good we spent the entire afternoon barefoot to keep cool!

The cutthroat trout at this lake have always been colorful.

A Day with the wee cutts

Recently, AJ & I decided to head to the high country to fish a spot we hadn't been in years. The stream flows through a high country willowy meadow and is home to wee cutthroat trout. The cutts are rich in color and a hope for the day was to photograph a few and take some underwater video in the right light. The other hope was to simply relax together, enjoy some photos of the surroundings, and stretch our legs in the high country again. After some long hours in front of the computer lately, it was good to get out together before the hectic schedule of Aug & Sept comes. Here's a sampling of our day together.

4 hours

My waders are being repaired. The ones that fit me enough to allow me to hike the Ram that is. The other pair I have at home right now ride high on the inner thigh, and the boys let you know quickly that walking 15km isn't going to be met with open arms. It was a frosty morning in the high country and while the hike in was easy in my wading boots and quick dry pants, I had a hunch my boys weren't going to be overly excited about their treatment down in the shady, frosty canyon waters. But, it was 11 am and they'd be happy enough by 2.
The fall weather continues to provide wonderful fishing. While the Ram in the canyon is slightly off color, levels are way up for this time of the year, and the water is really cold but for 4 hours of the day (which is about when the fish are active), if your expectations are in line with all those factors, things can turn out wonderfully. It was pretty hard not to enjoy +22C with nary a breath of wind or spot of cloud.

The fishing through the entire west country is great right now where conditions merit. The Clearwater, RDR, and lower Ram are all out, but most every other water is in good shape. The lakes are fishing very well.