West Slope Cutthroat in Alberta

Our cutthroat trout rivers are open and several are fly fishing very well. This last few days the river flows have been excellent although there is some rain in the forecast. Dry fly action can be sporadic and nyphing can be outstanding this early in the season. My neighbour and his buddy headed to the west country a few days ago and he reported excellent fly fishing conditions. Well done Colin and Bruce. Be sure to check river flows before you head out at Alberta Basins! This is a great time of the year to enjoy backcountry cutthroat fly fishing!

...all photos courtesy of Colin Allison

 

Bathometric Maps

Kare, Leon, Doug and I are gearing up for a trip to Cree Lake in Northern Saskatchewan. Cree Lake is known for its massive lake trout, pike, walleye, whitefish as well as arctic grayling.We are part of a do it yourself group hosted by Out Flyfishing Outfitters in Calgary. It is going to be an outstanding trip.

To get around we are using our Garmin Echo Map fish finder as well as a Garmin InReach!

Because we are on our own, we will be looking very specific areas for lake trout fly fishing as well as shallow bays for those enormous pike. A bathometric map which helps you know what depths are in different areas is a useful tool. Looking for drop offs, reefs, etc will help with our success.

I use bathometric maps of Sylvan Lake as well as several local lakes to find just the structure I am looking for.

Some Fish Finders have a mapping tool that helps you literally create your own bathometric map!

If you are heading to  new lake, definitely take the time to find a bathometric map. It will help you a lot!

 

Brown Drakes, PMDs and Caddis on the Red Deer River

Brown drakes have been emerging in the last week on the Red Deer River as have PMDs and caddis. Brown trout, goldeye, whitefish will all gulp down these tasty treats. Last night brown drake spinners were all along the walking trail close to the Red Deer River as were PMDs and caddis. Brown drakes are usually an evening hatch although I have witnessed them hatching during the day too! I love this hatch and so do the fish on the Red Deer River. In the space of 30 minutes, I could see fish on the Red Deer River at 9 pm gulping down duns on the water. It is time to lose a little sleep and fish the evening rise. There are some excellent rewards to be found!

 

Another Go at Lake Trout

Doug and I decided to give lake trout fly fishing another go. The conditions were quite different and that made the fly fishing quite a bit more challenging. When we arrived a just 8 am, we had the lake to ourselves, it was 4C.  That in itself was surprising. Hmm, ... We motored to a nearby bay and set up similar to two days prior to today. I was focused on water temperature which was 54F. That made me smile. The lakers should still be in the shallows. The lake was glass and we could see thousands of caddis on the surface. The last time we were there, callibaetis were popping in the thousands too, but not today.

After about 15 minutes, I connected with a dandy laker. With the water being so clear we could see the laker during the entire tussle. Doug netted the beautifully coloured laker and it was heavy for the particular lake we were at. I caught it on a blob of all things, ... an apricot jelly slush blob. Well I was excited to get such a dandy laker first crack in the morning.

Well that was the only laker that we landed all day. I did get some grabs and missed a few others. To me today was more typical of the fly fishing for lakers. We did try a number of different strategies and depths. We did find lakers in 15 feet of water but we did not connect. Late in the morning, callibaetis spinners showed up on the lake in the 10s of thousands. It was amazing to watch their dance.

We could have trolled for lakers but we preferred not to. That may have been to our disadvantage.

Well after a while, we switched to pike fishing and caught several. Doug's matuka streamer got him several smaller pike.

The big blue sky was to our disadvantage. In the afternoon, convective clouds moved in and I connected with a few more lakers while it was cloudy but I did not land them.

Doug and I loved our day. It was quite different and that big blue sky was not to our advantage.

 

Lake Trout on the Fly-A Great Challenge

Lake trout on the fly is a lot of fun and extremely challenging because there are so many factors in success! We have several lakes in Alberta that have lakers and they can be tough to catch! Yesterday; Rick, Doug, Larry, Ken and I headed off to try to target lake trout. The weather has been cool and we were hoping that the water temperature would be down so we could have a chance of catching a few before they head deep for the summer!

Lots of fishermen troll for lakers. That can be a great strategy too! Lakers love to follow a streamer for a long time before striking! I have friends that catch lake trout by dangling with balanced flies with full sink lines.

Lake trout can be shallow early in the season and they will target chironomids, callibaetis nymphs and caddis larva like other trout! If the water warms in the shallows, the lakers will not be there. They like the water to be cold. Well after launching my Yamaha G3, we motored to a spot and set up. The weather was not nice. It was 6C and rain/hail was moving in. The good news was the water temperature was 53F, pretty much perfect. It took some time to connect with a laker and it was not exactly what we expected. There was a massive callibaetis hatch along with caddis everywhere and small chironomids on the surface. We started with blood worms. We got into a few fish but as we tried different depths and flies, we were surprised to catch a laker on a callibaetis nymph and then Doug started using blobs. Well Doug connected with a 10 pound plus laker that did eat his blob. Interesting enough, he repeated this quite a few times during the course of late morning and the afternoon! Who knew? Rick caught several dandy lakers as well. I set up on several lakers and lost all of them, sigh.

Timing is everything because when the water temperature climbs, the lakers go deep but we learned that the lakers will eat bugs of all sorts. The key is depth and water temperature.

The swallows and other birds we gorging on caddis and callibaetis adults!

 

The Birds Told Us Where to go and They Were Right and No WIND!

Finally no wind. I have been waiting to get out to Sylvan Lake with my Yamaha G3. It was the perfect opportunity. Sadly we have to pay a $20 launch and parking fee at Sunbreakers Cove but it is the best place to launch! Several trucks with boat trailers had tickets (fines) for not going on line and paying for their parking. Sigh! The APP is not that friendly so get it figured out before you go Sunbreakers to launch!

Well Colin and I loved the big bright sun and warm air yesterday. It was a shorts and t-shirt day and the water temperature was a perfect 54F. We found whitefish in a lot of different places but we had a very interesting experience. We saw a large number of purple martins swooping over the water in a spot not too far away from where we were fly fishing. We motored over to an area that was 10 feet down and fly fished with our bloodworms about 12 to 18 inches from the bottom. It was outstanding. We think caddis were emerging and the whitefish had moved in to enjoy the treats. We certainly caught our fill of lake whitefish. It was a great reminder that at times, birds can led you to the fish. 

We always take the time to attach some forcepts or a weight to our flies and adjust our strike indicators so our flies are just one foot off of the bottom. It works well for us.

 

Sunday Afternoon

What an interesting Sunday afternoon! Karen and I arrived at West Lake at 12:30 pm. We were surprised to see it was not busy! We meet up with my buddy Doug and he had been having success with a Biscuit Blob and a Rusty Nail Chironomid. Well after catching a few trout and seeing a few throat samples, we changed the chironomid to an olive and copper. Basically an olive thread chironomid with a copper wire rib and copper bead. It worked great. There were a lot of caddis adults on the water and the trout were gulping them. I changed to stripping flashback pheasant tails. I connected with 8 rainbows doing this while Karen switched to a Tokaryk Special when the chironomid action slowed. Karen did well with the Tokaryk Special on her tippet. The best news was the water temperature was 59F and clear.

 

Rainbow Warriors and Frenchies for Our Rivers

It is a rainy Saturday morning and I needed to top up a few fly patterns for rivers. Well my two "GO TO" river nymphs are Rainbow Warriors and Frenchies. Lance Egan is the originator of both patterns. Both easy to tie. They are both effective on the Red Deer River and many of our Eastern Slopes rivers which open next Saturday. I find that brown trout and rocky mountain whitefish love both of these patterns as do cutthroat! I like to tie them small, size 16 and size 14. I do modify the rainbow warrior slightly by using a rainbow bead although the original with a silver bead is quite effective too! You can change the hot spot collar colour on Frenchies too. Orange is a popular colour as well for the collar! I stick with the pink ice dub colour.

Be sure to tie some of these up for your favourite rivers!

 

Adapting to the Wind and Fly Fishing Conditions

The wind has been crazy the last few days. I hope wind is not part of the new normal. Well my buddy Larry always says, "Adapt and overcome!" Well going out on bigger bodies of water has not been an option lately. I hope this wind settles but wind can also create some opportunities! Yesterday and the day before we just tucked in to spots to fly fish out of the wind. Our usual tactics worked a bit but we need to change up and adapt. I had a thought about wind lanes and deflections close to windy spots. Yesterday, Colin, Murray and I had to figure out the puzzle. We put the chironomid and blob box away and started using balanced flies, specifically a Tokaryk Special. We looked for wind deflections and started to fly fish along the edges of these deflections. Our thinking was food will move along the windy areas and the fish will move along the edges of these windy areas and feed. We had a decent amount of success with this tactic. We also set up shallow and cast out to the edges of drop offs. We set up fishing 6 feet down with a Tokaryk Special. We did catch some fish with blobs and small chironomids, but it was not on fire. We did see lots of caddis and damsel adults. Those two pieces of information will definitely be part of future fly fishing days! Fish were definitely just below the surface cruising and feeding at times. Stripping damsels and caddis nymphs will be something to keep in mind. I sure hope the wind settles down. Yesterday, we had our lake to ourselves. I am sure wind discouraged many!