Backyard Trout

Spring is returning to the prairies.  The snow is all but melted, the grass is beginning to turn green, and most importantly the ice is beginning to come off our area lakes here in Calgary.  Over the last month I have walked down to my favorite community lake a few times a week to check on the ice.  Ice still covers portions of the lake, but open water is likely only a week away.

Winter is going

Calgary has several communities with man made lakes that offer recreation activities like fishing, boating and swimming to residents and their guests.  Lakes like Auburn Bay and Bonavista are already ice free, and many others should be opening up shortly.  You will typically find healthy populations of Rainbow Trout that eagerly attack even the most sloppy of presentation.  If you do have access to one of these lakes, they are tremendous places to kill a few hours.

I began fly fishing in 2013.  To say my learning curve was steep is a dramatic understatement.  Luckily for me I had a community lake at my disposal that helped expedite my learning process.  Multiple times a week I would wander down to the lake and throw some flies around for a few hours.  Not only was I able to practice casting, I was also able to better understand how a trout behaves in a lake.

Many of our community lakes were not designed with fishermen in mind.  The lakes typically have very uniform underwater geography.  Here are a few traits that most of our community lakes seem to have in common:

• rocky areas near the shore
• a consistent drop off that moves away from the shore
• a flat deep shoal that runs to the other end of the lake
• relatively featureless bottom with light weeds

Uniform depth changes nearly across the board

Trout in a lake are relatively predictable.  The fish will stay close to transition zones where there is an obvious change of depth.  They will scour the bottom for any food sources they can find, and will move up and down the water column when they identify a food source.  When bug life is active on the surface the fish will often rise dramatically to feed; I have seen trout slam mayflies off the surface in less than a foot of water.

I have the luxury of fishing off a dock.  Fishing from the dock is a very visual experience.  I have a bird's eye view of the fish and can often quickly find the drop off where the trout are patrolling.  By identifying their path, you can ensure that your fly ends up on trout highway.  My favorite presentation is a leech pattern at a depth of seven feet under a strike indicator.  A few subtle twitches of the indicator is usually enough to trigger a strike from a passing trout.

Community lake fishing is a great time to experiment.  I love to go down and try new retrievals, new patterns or new casting techniques.  The stocked fish in these community lakes are significantly less picky than their river cousins and make for a terrific confidence booster.  What these fish lack in intelligence they more than make up for in spunk.  These fish fight like crazy and usually offer a terrific aerial display.

The quantity and quality of these fish is pleasantly surprising.  The harvest of the fish at my favorite lake is very low, and I suspect that osprey and loons take home more fish than the residents.  Despite the low take home, the lake still gets adequately stocked every year.  You would think this aggressive approach to stocking would restrict the size of the fish, but surprisingly that has not been the case.  I can routinely go down to the dock and pull out a dozen fish in an hour with many of them being in the 20" range.  

Nothing beats getting out of the city and finding a quiet lake with a healthy trout population.  With the busy lives that all of us have, it can often be difficult to find the time to get a line in the water.  The quality of fishing at some community lakes can equal bodies of water you may have to drive a few hours to get to.  Whether you are teaching a friend how to fly fish or just trying to kill some time in the evening, your local community lake is a great place to drop a line.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drops to drink.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

March 22 is 2015 World Water Day.  The UN established World Water Day in 1993 as a day to talk about how we will manage water in the future.  The topic for this year is Water and Sustainable Development, a topic that should resonate well for folks living here in Alberta.

Canada has the third largest supply of renewable water in the world after Brazil and Russia.  With such abundance, it is easy for us to take this resource for granted.  Not only is Canada blessed with an abundance of natural resources, we seem to have the ideal mix of resources.  Energy and water security are two enormous issues that our world will face in the 21st century, and Canada will have a key role to play.

Radical and Proud
Humans make a bigger impact on our environment than any other being on this planet.  We have identified resources that are critical for our survival, and we are willing to make a considerable impact on our environment to extract and exploit raw materials from the earth.  The environment and the natural resource industry are often at odds with one another, and historically a compromise between progress and the responsible development of resources has been difficult to identify.  Those who identify as conservationists or environmentalists are often portrayed as radicals that are standing in the way of our economic potential.

Hatch Magazine contributor Todd Tanner recently wrote an open letter to American anglers.  I encourage you to read Todd's article, as I feel it is also very applicable to Albertans.  I think Todd sums it up perfectly when he states that "it is almost as if our love of the great outdoors is standing in the way of progress".  Somehow a desire to pass along a green and clean environment to our children is a radical idea that threatens our futures.  What a fascinating concept that is.

Industry is synonymous with progress.  When our economy is fraught with uncertainty, as we currently experience in Alberta, environmental considerations often take a back seat.  When the economy is more stable, then we have time to acknowledge environmental concerns.  Environmental concerns cannot be issues of convenience, they must be a priority regardless of the economic circumstances.

Wherever we walk, we leave footprints.  In some cases the prints we have left are irreversible.  While we may not be able to reverse our historical impact, we can ensure that present and future impacts are mitigated.  I fail to see how protecting the future of our environment is a radical notion.  The future of our resources and our environment has implications for each and every one of us.

Athabasca River running through the Alberta oil sands

Social Licence
Social licence is a term that the natural resource industry throws around a lot in North America.  Social licence is what exists when a project has the ongoing approval within the local community and other stakeholders.  Social licence mandates that industry play by a set of rules that are created by local stakeholders.  Should industry not abide by these rules, projects cannot move forward and will face considerable public scrutiny.

In my estimation social licence is a very romantic notion.  The stakeholder engagement process involved can be very costly and time consuming.  While many operators are talking the good talk, I am still not convinced that they view social licence as something that is good for business.  Shell Canada receives a considerable subsidy from the Albertan government for the Quest Carbon Capture and Storage project, but would they still be moving this project forward if that subsidy did not exist?  Industry needs to reach a place where they accept social licence as something they MUST obtain, rather than something they are forced to obtain.

Site of the Shell Quest Carbon Capture and Storage facility

A paradigm shift is required in regards to the natural resource industry. Saying the right things needs to result in doing the right things as it relates to sustainable resource development.  If you read the mission statements of companies like Suncor or Cenovus, they both reference operating in a manner that makes Canadians proud and demonstrates responsible stewardship of the land.  Many companies are now including environmental performance reports as a part of their annual reporting.  The industry is trending in a more positive direction as they are investing more resources into sustainability than they have in the past.  This trend must continue.

Environmental performance must be a key pillar for oil and gas operators.  As resources are developed, the industry must focus on ways to reduce the impact it has on our fresh water supplies.  There is some terrific work being done in the Alberta oil sands that I feel is not getting the attention it deserves.  In their 2014 Sustainability Report, Suncor reported that in 2013 their oil sands mining operation consumed 2.01 cubic metres of water to produce one cubic metre of oil - a 13 percent reduction in water consumption since 2007.  That six year trend is positive, but that progress must continue to move forward.

Green Means Go
Environmentalists and conservationists have an important role to play in Alberta's future.  The conversations about the responsible development of our natural resources will play a critical role in the future of our fresh water supplies.  Today is World Water Day, a day for reflection on what role we as individuals can play to protect our most precious resource.  Water is vital for all forms of life on this planet, what are you willing to do to protect it?

Ice Ice Baby

Ice Ice Baby
- Robert Van Winkle, American Poet

Before I go any further I want to make one point very clear: I really don't care much for ice fishing.  For me ice fishing is a necessary evil to help get me through the winter.  Despite my clear disdain for the cold, ice fishing always makes for a few fantastic fish tales.  I want to share a couple of great stories from this season and also give you an idea of what worked well for us through the bitter cold of winter.

Winter is the only time I don't smile while holding a pike

I did more ice fishing this year than I have in any year previous.  The big reason for this; Guide Dionne got a power auger which made our lives SIGNIFICANTLY easier.  We struggled through the 2013-14 season hand drilling holes through three feet of ice, and we were miserable because of it.

All of my negativity aside, we actually had a pretty productive hard water season this year.  I do want to offer you some words of wisdom on what made us successful this year.  Here are a few things to consider for next season:

• Like every other style of fishing, find those transition zones.  If you can find a drop off that offers cover and a food source, you should find the fish.
• Stay mobile!  If something isn't working, find a new spot.  I know this doesn't work for those less rugged fishermen who like to use tents or sheds, but some days you will have to really work to find the fish.
• Experiment with presentation: set on the bottom with some slack, set just off the bottom with a tight line, set suspended in the water column.  Until you figure out what is working, keep playing with it.
• Experiment with the colour of your jig head.  Sometimes the smallest detail can get a fish to bite.
• Don't be afraid to go shallow.  We typically start the day by looking for 11' of water.  If we don't pick anything up, sometimes we will move into 4-8' of water just to see what's happening.  Some of our bigger fish this past season came from a shallow hole.
• Walleye can be tricksters.  They often strike very delicately and you'll miss it if you don't have your hand on the line.  If you feel that gentle tap, set that hook.
• Don't forget to tighten up that line before you set the hook.  We fished with my younger brother quite a bit this past season, and he earned the title "The Noob".  He gets really excited when that rod tip starts to bounce and immediately runs over and sets the hook as hard as he can.  The problem is if you don't tighten down first, you'll crack that line like a whip and break the fish off.  Needless to say we had quite a few laughs at his expense this season.

We had really good luck on walleye in January, but they seemed to entirely disappear by the time February arrived.  They likely moved out to deeper water as the ice got thicker.  Our range for finding fish fluctuated between 4-17'.  We finally hit some bigger pike in February, but the majority of our season was made up of some of the smallest pike I have ever seen.

Lunker alert!

Now I want to get to the real purpose of this blog...to share my favorite story from this past season.  Guide Dionne and I pretty much only use jigging rods with cheap wire rod holders that fall over with a small gust of wind.  Typically we try to anchor the holders with some snow and ice, but we aren't always that smart.  You should also note that we typically put some distance between the holes we fish from.  It isn't uncommon to see someone from our group sprinting 40 metres across the ice to get to a rod that is about to go down a hole.  These stories don't always have a happy ending.

Let's get one thing out of the way: Guide Dionne and I are athletes through and through.  There are countless examples of perfect baseball slides to grab a rod that is following a fish down a hole.  Unfortunately for us, athletic ability seems to go hand in hand with lack of intelligence.

Guide Dionne was out fishing by himself in January at one of our favorite Southern Alberta destinations.  He watched in horror as a rod that he set up 30 metres away tipped out of the rod holder and went straight down the hole.  Guide Dionne licked his wounds and kept fishing for a few hours in the same bay.  He worked around the bay, and eventually came back to the spot that he had lost the rod.  He dropped a smelt down the hole and waited.

Within a few minutes the rod tip started to bounce; fish on!  Guide Dionne began reeling the fish up through the hole and realized that something odd was happening...he had a fish on, but he was also bringing up an extra line.  He finishes pulling the fish up, and starts to hand bomb the extra line up through the hole.  Up comes the rod that he lost earlier with a fish still on the end of the line.  He reeled the poor exhausted fish up through the hole and sent him on his way.  This fish had dragged that rod around for about four hours before accidentally running into the second line.  What are the odds!

Now I know what you are thinking; lightning can't strike twice, right?  Wrong.  Guide Dionne and I were out a few weeks ago and decided to drill a bunch of holes relatively close to each other.  I set up a rod in an area that didn't have much snow or ice built in the general vicinity, so I had to leave the rod holder without an anchor until I was able to get a few hand fulls of snow.

I wandered out a few yards and found a snow bank.  With an arm full of snow I watched in horror as my rod tip began to bounce.  I threw the snow and sprinted as quickly as I could to the rod holder.  The ice around the hole was very flat and clean, so naturally I slid right past the hole.  I eventually came to a stop and lunged for the hole a few seconds too late; we made another donation to the pike tackle club.

Guide Dionne and I remained silent for a few minutes as we tried to process what just happened.  Were we really this dumb?  Was that fish a new Alberta record?  Which one of us was going to stick our head down the hole to find the rod?

All of these questions were put on hold as Guide Dionne got a hit on a hole a few metres away.  He reeled up the line, and to our surprise we began pulling up another rig!  I quickly grabbed the extra line and started to hand bomb it up through the hole.  Guide Dionne was able to land a small pike, and I was able to land a rod and reel covered in mud and freshwater shrimp.  The fish had broken off the line, but we saved a rig none the less.

In summary:

We lost two rigs down holes this year, and were able to recover both of them.  You can call us crazy, or you can call us stupid...neither would be incorrect.  We clearly live on the edge.

I am so very pleased that spring is upon us.  The pike season has just closed until May on most Southern Alberta lakes, and I we won't see many of these fish again until the ice clears.  This past hard water season was the most productive one I've had in my life, and I have been able to take away many fond memories.  All of that being said, bring on the open water!

So long Chinooks!

March of the Anglers

For optimal experience please imagine Morgan Freeman reading this article to you

"March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb".  This might be one of the most obnoxious phrases a person could say, right after "that's why they call it fishing and not catching".  March is a time of change here in Alberta.  While we all brace ourselves for a few last blasts of winter, signs of spring's arrival are everywhere.

March is the last test of a fisherman's patience.  After enduring months of bitter cold and fishing through an 8" hole in the ice, we are ready to dust off the fly line and get back to the river.  March also gives me the opportunity to cross something very important off my angling bucket list: to catch a trout of 20" or greater while floating down the river on a chunk of ice.

My heart will go on

As we approach the middle of March the snow pack in the lowlands begins to melt away.  This means fluctuating water levels, off-colored water and ice breaking away from the banks.  A word to the wise: if you do plan on wading the river at this time of year, be sure to take a peak upstream every once in awhile for those pesky ice flows.  The obvious reason is that you may see me battling an epic trout on my frozen drift boat, but the more serious reason is that even an average sized chunk of ice could give you a religious experience.  Head to a stretch of river that you are familiar with; the last thing you need at this time of year is to go in over your waders.

Spring fishing gets me giddy.  Some of the early melt causes the river clarity to change on an hourly basis.  This pre-runoff period brings fish close to the banks eager to feed.  For anyone who has spent time with me on the Bow, you realize very quickly that I am a ninja with a fly rod.  I can sneak up to even the most skiddish of trout even when the water is gin clear.  I almost feel bad for the trout when the water turns to chocolate milk, as even the most splashy waders can nearly get on top of the fish before they notice an intruder.

I have a few simple pointers when fishing cloudy water during this pre-runoff period:

• cast tight to the banks.  As the water levels rise, the trout will often move tight to the banks to pick off early season bugs that may fall into the river.  
• use a darker pattern that moves a bit of water.  Visibility can be a big issue at this time of year.  At times the fish have less than a foot of visibility to find your fly.  Large dark patterns can cast a stronger shadow and give the fish a better opportunity to pick up your presentation.  If you plan on throwing a streamer, try something with rubber legs that causes a bit more disruption through the water.
• strike like a viper.  Due to the lack of clarity in the water, the fish may take a strike at a presentation they would usually ignore.  The strikes may be subtle, so your window of opportunity might be limited.  If you are fishing with an indicator, the fish may not even take the indicator all the way under.  If you see a small jump to the side or upstream, give that line a tug.  Remember, hook sets are free.

I am not a proud fishermen.  This time of year is absolutely terrific for San Juan worms, leech patterns and stonefly nymphs.  Often times I will shamelessly set up a rig with a worm and a stonefly, and watch the magic happen.  A stonefly nymph can have a lifespan between 1-3 years, which means that these tasty treats are available in the river throughout the year and often serve as a terrific searching pattern.  

Stonefly nynph

Early Spring fishing on the Bow has proven to be some of my most productive fishing of the entire season.  As the water changes from winter clear to spring cloud my inability to present a drag free float isn't be nearly as apparent.  With the passing of day light savings time, anglers also have an opportunity to get an hour or two in on a weeknight.  Wives and girlfriends rejoice!

Now I have a reputation as a lover of Northern Pike to maintain here.  Most of what I have written thus far focuses on technical presentations to catch early season trout.  Trout aren't the only predator looking for an early season snack in the shallows.  The biggest fish I have ever caught (in any body of water at any time of year) was from the Bow River on a beautiful spring evening in April.  It was an evening I will never forget and I always get a little bit excited when I think about getting down to the river this early in the season.  Get that sloppy casting out of the way now, the season is about to start!

My friends and family are sick of hearing this story, trust me

The Art of Fishing - Photography

Anyone who has picked up a fly rod knows that fishing is an art.  The action of fishing itself is a beautiful display of artistry, but art is a much larger part of fishing than having a perfect looping back cast.  Fishing is about telling stories (true or otherwise).  This week I want to talk about photography and how it shapes the stories we tell.  How you tell a story is often just as important as the story itself.

One more cast!

Photography helps us freeze a moment in time.  There is an incredible visceral connection when we look at photographs of some of our fondest memories.  Over the course of this article I am going to share some incredible photos from amateur photographers that I have been on the water with over the last year.  These photographers have little to no formal training and took all of these photos with relatively basic gear.

The maiden voyage

Advancements in modern photography have changed how anglers share their stories.  While underwater cameras, zoom lenses and rapid fire shutters have made amateur photography easier for the average person, there is still an incredible art in taking a beautiful photograph.  Fantastic photographs allow you to relive some of your most incredible experiences and share them with others.  Besides, if you don't get the catch on camera, did it really happen?

Gorgeous day at Lower Kananaskis

The remarkable thing about fishing in Western Canada is that we get to interact with gorgeous creatures in some of the most incredible settings in the entire world.  True artists find a way to use the setting as a perfect canvas for telling the story.  I want to extend a sincere thank you to all of my friends who have allowed me to use their stunning photographs in this article.  At this point I'm going to stop rambling on and allow the photos to tell the rest of the story.   

Western Painted Turtles enjoying the view

Gorgeous Brookie

The hunter on his perch 

My pick for photo of 2014 from Lake of the Falls