Brown Drake Action

 My buddy Byron was at it again a few nights ago. He knows where to look for brown trout and and muddy bottoms of some rivers. He had an epic evening with many browns to hand from 16 to 22 inches. He was on his own and that made photography challenging but the results speak for themselves!

Brown Drakes

This brown drake was hanging out on my front window today. Brown drakes can offer some explosive fly fishing around dusk when they usually hatch. Today is a dull overcast day and on these types of days, brown drakes can hatch even mid day. Trout love these big meals! Often browns in our Central Alberta streams will throw caution to the wind to greedily gulp down these delicacies. The Red Deer River can have some excellent hatches of brown drakes. Often you can see the spinners moving up and down along the bike trails here in Red Deer. Too bad the Red Deer River is running high and close to no visibility. I bet there are some excellent hatches happening along some of our mud bottomed Central Alberta streams.

More Spring Creek Action

 Byron Stearns loves to fish for brown trout. He will gladly stumble around along in the dark along one of his favourite Alberta streams to have a chance at a big brawling brown. Byron sight fished this beauty on a spring creek at dusk! I know Byron will prowl along until the wee hours of the morning to tangle with these nocturnal predators. Well done Byron!

Let the Thunder Roll

Time to head to the dock at Patterson Lake in the Parkland Region of Manitoba! We got to the dock  just in time to beat the deluge!

Central Alberta Spring Creek Browns

Bruce Tilbrook loves to fly fish spring creeks in west Central Alberta. Bruce has his favourite stretches and he is is often rewarded with some beautiful browns. I can picture Bruce with his bamboo rod casting a tempting dry fly (maybe a green or brown drake) over some feeding browns. As you can see Bruce has been quite successful!  Thanks for the pictures Bruce!

Cool image from Doug Pullen

Doug Pullen was enjoying the chironomid action in Tokaryk Lake in the Parkland Region of Manitoba. He noticed a damsel had landed on the side of his pram and was dining on a chironomid adult. Very cool shot Doug!

Throat Sample

 Hi Everybody!

While in Manitoba for the past 3 weeks fly fishing the Parkland Region, we constantly took throat samples to see what the trout were dining on. It certainly helps to have the correct fly on your terminal tackle. Your success rate will certainly increase. As you can see from the three throat samples below, the trout were gorging themselves on chironomids.

I am always fascinated on what other fly fishers think is the most important variable while fly fishing. The typical question is, "What do you have on?"  I learned over the years that the better question is, "How deep are you fishing your flies?"

We tied a lot of black ribbed chromies in the last three weeks. They were the predominate chironomid. We had success with some other chironomids as well but having the right colour, and size is important after you get the depth right.

...third photo courtesy of Phil Rowley

Double Header! Doug Pullen and Phil Rowley

Doug Pullen and Phil Rowley hook up together with some nice Parkland Region of Manitoba trout. I love the expression on Doug's face!