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:

Top 15 of Canadian 2012 - #11 - Superfine Hoppers

In mid August, Amelia & I found ourselves with a day off - we had a couple together this past August - a joy! The weather was perfect for almost anything. Hot, high cloud, sunny breaks, following up a recent cold spell. Really, it didn't matter what trout species, what stream, what region of the province we fished, it was going to be good fishing.
About 1/2 hour before we were going to leave home, the doorbell rang. Amelia opened the door to find the delivery man with two boxes with our names. Those wonderful triangular, 3 foot cardboard Orvis boxes. New Rods! Oh Boy!
We had purchased 2 new rods for our waters here in Alberta. Two 4 wt, 9 foot Superfine Touch rods. We'd had the pleasure of casting the rods with the Hydros Superfine fly line at the Orvis Guide Rendezvous in the spring and made ourselves promise to but a pair for ourselves. They were in our mitts - Sweet As!
Yes, we took them with.

And they were exactly what we'd been waiting for. They are the perfect central Alberta trout stream fly rod. While the new Helios 2 is a cat's-ass all around rod, the 4 wt Superfine rods are the rod I would fish 90% of my time in my home region. No questions asked. They are a touch softer than the old Scott G-Series rods; a touch stiffer than the old style Superfine full flex rod from 15 years back; definitely more finesse than the original Helios 4 wt, mid-flex rods we have. We've loved the Helios rods unconditionally the past 3 or 4 or so years they've been out and our 4 wts are what we used exclusively in that time - both at home and New Zealand.

But... you know when you arrive at home? Well, for home, we have our new home rods.
See if you can spot the #11 moment of the 2012 Canada season in the "Supperfine Hoppers" video we did for Orvis after that first day on a local brown trout stream. It was magical.

Top 15 of Canadian 2012 - #12 - "Blind-X"

A few years back we put together a short video "Q-The-X", looking at a tiny spring creek in west-central Alberta. Things have changed in that spring as the nearby river has braided closer. During high water of early summer the channel is now part of the river for 6 weeks. The 3 springs that join up to form the body of the main creek are consistent as always and the trout are still there, though there are fewer these days as the high water allows for movement to the main river.
I was guiding a long time guest for a few days in September. The weather had been amazing but completely crapped out this day. Howling winds, cloud, and some showers joined the 20C temperature drop.We needed to find shelter from the wind and a treed back drop to allow us to spot fish. The X was the place to be!
We made our way to the lower end, a couple of hits and a fish landed before we came upon the run just below where the creek turned sharply into the trees - ergo, we had our wind protection and glare-cutting trees providing a dark reflection. Of course, just before that glorious point, we had to fish the tailout of that run. Total glare. We were simply prospecting. Meh. That's not what The X is about, so I hopped up on the bank to have a look. I had to swing far & wide to get a sliver of spotting window and called out to him to cast to the V between bank-side logs. He made a good cast and the hopper sat on the slow water.
"Pop it a couple of times," I called. He did so. Nothing. The fly was about 4 feet off the logs and I suggested a couple more twitches.
In the narrow window of spotting window, I saw a dark shape turn 90 degrees and come straight out. "Here comes a decent fish", I called. He was totally blind to it all - the grey glare a nightmare from his vantage. But he trusted my call.
The brown slowly panned towards the fly but was almost having none of it. It stalled its approach. "Give another twitch". He did. The fish continued its approach. "Two more!" I excitedly called out. The first twitch got the trout moving and just as the second twitch began, the brown's lips broke the surface and sucked in the hopper.
The sight-fishing moment was amazing. It was simply a lucky moment in time played out on instinct and a hunch. My guest was really happy, I was thrilled. It wasn't the biggest brown but it was a moment and engagement that made the day truly special.