A Day on a Central Alberta Spring Creek

Bruce Tilbrook has been out enjoying our Central Alberta spring creeks both as a guide and fly fisher. The pictures below were all taken by Bruce and represent a fairly typical day for him. You may have seen an episode of the Dimestore Fisherman on WFN as their host, Jim Hoey, spent a few days fishing in Central Alberta. Bruce was guiding Jim on some of local streams during his stay. Very cool Bruce. Bruce says he enjoys seeing a brown trout came charging out of it's hiding spot to smash one of his hopper patterns. Thanks Bruce for sharing some of your adventures with us.

Chasing the Hexagenia limbata (Hex) Hatch

Hi Everybody!

We have some very dedicated hatch chasers within our fly tying/fishing group here in Central Alberta. About the second week in July, the Hexagenia start to hatch on some of our waters. These mayflies are big, real big and the trout will throw caution to the wind to eat these treats. The hex hatch usually starts near dusk. I have gone with both Shane and Reid Stoyberg looking for the hex hatch.  I  have stepped into holes, slid down banks into water I had no idea how deep it was, tripped and fallen on rocks and been devoured by blood thirsty mosquitoes that love dusk in order to chase this hatch . Once the hexs start popping on the water, you will forget about those inconveniences because the big browns will be out. You will stumble back to your vehicle in the pitch black, sometimes in the early hours of the next day.  The rewards can be amazing.

...all the photos below were taken by Shane Stoyberg (thanks Shane!)

Shane photographed this hexagenia at dusk.

Reid loves to chase the Hax hatch. He doesn't mind the night shift.

Shane with another beautiful brown caught on a hexagenia dry fly.

Just to show that Shane is not totally a nocturnal fly fisher, he added this photo.

Fly Fishing in Southern Alberta

Hi Everybody!

The thunderstorms are dumping large quantites of water in Central Alberta and that means are rivers are  high again. Eastern slopes rivers west of Red Deer are also high although they should come back into shape with the warm sunny weather that is expected in a few days.

The rivers in Southern Alberta are in great shape. Karen and I had a great time camping on a tributary of the Oldman last week for three days. We armed ourselves with green drakes and golden stone patterns. We saw lots of golden stones around and so we tied on the reliable "Orange Crush" and hit the river. The cutthroat were quite aggressive. We did have one cloudy day but the drakes we saw were grey and yes the trout were after them. A parachute adams did very well when the drakes were on the water. The Oldman drainage has lots of options as to where to go. Get a backroads map book and have fun!

The golden stones were out and laying eggs. The cutthroat know what to do when they splat on the water!

Karen hooking up.

We had to do some climbing to hit this run. It had lots of willing cutthroat.