Karen and I finally were able to get away on our first fly fishing adventure of the year! We put the long winter behind us and headed to Washington State to visit some friends and then we hit one of our favourite lakes for a few days to fly fish! It felt great to load up our Tiguan and cruise across the Rogers Pass and beyond on a beautiful big blue sky day. The light traffic and spectacular scenery helped us change gears mentally and enjoy our first trip of the year.
We finally crossed the border, did some shopping and got settled. We were quite shocked by the cost of things in the USA. Cross border shopping isn't as attractive as it has been in the past.
It was wonderful to see my friend Leon again. His daughter drove him up to see us. We were very grateful for that! We also had a chance to stop and visit a boat builder. We needed some advice on repairs to our one boat. We ended up having a great visit.
Well, we had lined up all of our fishing licenses on line and arrived at our lake on April Fool's Day. It was blustery but it was quite a bit warmer than Red Deer. We bundled up with our backpacks, fly rods and extra layers of clothes.
Convective heating brought some unsettled weather across the lake but we never got rained on. That was a nice bonus! The mercury crawled up to 11C each day. That was a bonus.
We brought our chironomids and tried using them. A friend gave us some excellent advice and we were prepared to chironomid fly fish. We did not bring a boat. Well our boats were still frozen in the backyard so we had no choice although we found out there was little need.
Karen and I knew where to look. We set up with chironomids and we had some hook ups but we decided to start using our "Go To" for this lake. We love cutthroat trout and this lake was full of them. Once we tied on baby damsels and Tokaryk Specials, we hooked up regularly. We did throat samples. Our intel was quite accurate. But size 16-20 chironomids were not getting Karen and I too excited. We fished over the drop offs with a lot of success. It felt great to be back on the water and having a great time.
We wanted our first trip to be just the two of us. It was wonderful. We ate out and treated ourselves to some excellent restaurants.
We headed home after a great visit and some badly needed time to ourselves. The long winter is behind us and we have a lot to look forward to. I hope you have some trips on the horizon too!
If you would like to share some pictures with our gang, please drop me an e-mail. I do see several fly fishers having great days on the Bow River. and on some of the rivers to the west of Red Deer that opened on April 1. Don't forget to pick up a 2023 fishing license at Alberta Relm.
Tiny Chromies!
Midges-The swallows were after them too! So were some of the cutthroat!
Tokaryk Specials Got the Attention of the Cuthroat
A Las Vegas Leech tied balanced was also quite effective!
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