A Snowy Trip to the Eastern Slopes

One more cutthroat trip, why not! Maybe two if the weather holds. Karen and I decided to head out. We were not sure if the roads would be ok with all of the snow last week but we decided to give it a go! The weather forecast looked decent. We were planning to head south but the wind was gusting in the Crowsnest Pass in excess of 100 kph. That is way past our wind tolerance!

We saw a few hunters on the way including a golden eagle that was helping itself to some road kill! The thermometer kept going up at the top of each hill and then plunged to below zero in the valleys. The more west we headed, the roads became quite slick and in several places, snow covered.

We finally arrived at our destination. We bundled up and headed down a side road. The road was frozen, snowy and extremely slippery. We worked our way down to the river. It was crystal clear and in great shape!

Karen and I nymphed for most of our day with flashbacks, evil weevils, CDC Red Tags and Wiggle Worms. They all worked at some point during the day! The wind came up and eventually so did the temperature! We did see the odd sporadic rise but nothing consistent!

The fly fishing slowed at 3 ish so we called it a day. Besides, we wanted to drive home in the daylight! We had a great day. We caught lots of cutts. We did have the river to ourselves.

The drive to the black top was slow. We were glad we had four wheel drive today.

Sunshine On Our Shoulders, ...Makes Us Happy

The sun finally shone and the thermometer got up to a pleasant 10C. It has been a while since we have seen beautiful weather! The temperature was well above zero when Karen, Larry and I arrived at our lake for the day. It was a bit overcast and that as we found out meant excellent fishing. All three of us caught several rainbows in the morning and then once it cleared off, the fishing slowed although we did catch several in the afternoon! The sun felt great, the wind was low and the company was wonderful!

We caught close to 2 dozen rainbows, no real monsters but lots of solid 14 to 17 inchers. The afternoon bit was slow but that sun felt great!

A Fabulous Cold Drab Day on the Water

I have referred to author, Patrick McManus' humour before but it crept back into my brain again today. The mercury never crawled above 0C today, it was dull, it was drab but fortunately there was no wind. In spite of the miserable weather, Karen, Rick and I decided to bundle up and still hit a local pot hole lake east of Red Deer. The drive itself was entertaining with snow geese in the 1000s all over the place. The fishing was surprisingly good. We caught lots of decent rainbows. We stayed warm although hand warmers would have been nice after dipping our hands into the frigid water to unpin caught trout!

A black Glen's Leech size 12 did the trick all afternoon for us!

We had an awesome day. Yes, it was a fine and pleasant misery,  Patrick McManus! We topped off the day with a stop at the Erskine Grill. A tiny establishment with excellent burgers. It is worth the stop!

Rick escaped the city too and tagged several rainbows!