Central Alberta Fly Tying Club: A Fabulous Day on the River with Steve Luethi

Monday, April 5, 2021

A Fabulous Day on the River with Steve Luethi

Steve Luethi photo

The river called both Steve and I today! It was a great opportunity to do some exploring and to cast big streamers and, hopefully, to connect with a big brown.

The day dawned cold, really cold. We had to do some bushwacking to get to our destination. The river was low and clear. Once on the river, slush was everywhere because the mercury plunged down close to -10C the night before. Our streamers has trouble sinking through the slush. Luckily that quickly changed by late morning. We worked our articulated streamers through lots of water. I finally connected with a mid-sized brown that tried to destroy my 5 inch white streamer. That was cool!

Steve Luethi photo

We got another smaller brown on a big streamer. It was holding in a long run.

We constantly stopped fly fishing to watch eagles doing a very cool mating flight. Neither of us had seen that before.

As the day warmed, we found tiny winter black stoneflies everywhere. It was neat to take some time to photograph them scurrying on the ice shelves.

I finally decided to switch to nymphing early in the afternoon. That was a great decision. I put on a wiggle worm and a small flashback . We suspected that there were Rocky Mountain whitefish in the run we were fishing. Well, the next hour was constant action. The classic riffle-drop-pool was filled with rockies and a few browns. We had a lot of fun taking pictures of the rockies. Steve had a new lens he wanted to try out. And that he did! Steve has an amazing eye for picture composition.

As we continued to explore a braided section of the river, we found a beaver house. We connected with three browns in front of the beaver house. The browns were not large but an added bonus to an already fabulous big blue sky day on the water.

We both got back to Steve's truck with a bit of a sunburn and I know I needed to rehydrate! The drive home was fortunately not too long!

What a day. The best part of the day was spending it with my friend. If we had connected with a giant brown, the day would have been perfect. We will have to settle for a close to perfect day! We will be back to find that big brown another time.