Crowsnest up date Jan.21. 2009

There has been a few outings with fly rods lately..Susan was totally excited when she caught a 23 inch rainbow on one of my nice little streamers....but the boys were down stream trashing the water ahead of her ( what ever happened to the polite notion of" ladies first") and no cameraman was available for a picture ,but other trout were caught and Suzie is holding a nice little 16 or 17 in. rainbow in the picture...Other highlites of the week would be Kirby catching a brown trout above Lunbreck Falls , not a big trout, but rare in the upper section... Bigger browns have been known to actually swim up the falls to spawn, and it is hard to imagine a trout making an accent of such height ..there has been witnesses to this epic swim... Down stream of the falls a few decent Bull trout have been caught, one by Gary was 4-5lbs. followed by a breifly exciting foul hooking of a 4 lb. rocky mountain sucker that tore off line down to the backing, and seemed unstopable for a few glorious moments..the ass caught sucker brought Gary back breif memories of our Queen Charolette Island Steelhead adventure this past fall... Suzie and I went out yesterday ,the temperature was great, a bit off tanning happened till the breeze stirred and by that time my wife had caught two rainbows and I followed her down stream , letting her fish bellow me. She worked one of my smaller hand tied minnow patterns, she really wants to catch a big Bull trout lately, usually she only winter fishes if there is chance of dry fly action (she is a beautiful dry fly fisher) I saw her hook one more fish before she disappeared around the bend.. I fished a much larger fly, with a tail that was a bit to long and missed a number of takes ,finnally hooked up on a small bull , 20 inches... easilly landed. Next ,deep under some fast water I hooked into and landed a solid 7-8 lb. Bull trout. it was a good battle for a cold winter fish.... Occassionally a fish rose to a hatching midge.. When I got back to my truck a fish cop had my dog ,thats a whole other story...and I couldn,t find my angling licence. and thats a whole other story....Suzie had said to me when we left home" Al do you have you're licence??" I shrugged it off... so now she is giving me" the look" while I am trying too explain to the fish cop what a looser I am.. He was giving me a break ..but I stated ..I would rather have the ticket ...than the look I was getting from Suzie..The Fish Cop understood and Winston the dog got off too..

almost zero

It was almost zero *C today... The excuses for leaving our Fly shop in Coleman and driving a short distance east , were new tires on the suburban, dog walking, and a few chores to be done in Pincher Creek..Mid afternoon, downstream on the Crowsnest River I was searching for some open water...I found a lot more openwater than expected after this 4 week deepfreeze. Caution on the ice was excercised by myself and Winston the dog , as the fishing situation was iffy , all the frog water was frozen. Multi coloured frozen goose poop on the ice, covered by a skiff of snow, looked like tops of rocks on the streams shallow inside bend.. The creaking of the ice made me look a little closer at what I was standing on.. After a change of position and only 2 casts a nice 17 inch rainbow was hooked and landed on my olive offering. The takes were subtle , more like a pull and a few trout were missed while I was thinking about that increasing tension on the line..( those trout were cold !) Frozen goose poop on the shore ice created other technical problems,the line hooked on those cheeze shaped ones while roll casting and line mending...but good drifts happened and more trout were caught than missed . The Stanleys Ice Off Paste worked again but this time the goose poo was the big technical problem..Seems there is always need for a new fly fishing product , but what would we call it ??? As I drove east towards Pincher Creek there were thousands of geese and ducks flying onto the grain fields . Thousands more birds than on my last frigid days of goose hunting season... they will stay if there is food and open water. It's too bad the migratory bird season is over, they are wrecking my drift and my ice.. Al B.

four days into 2009 and I ain,t caught a fish yet

It,s hard too beleive that trout were caught on a dry fly in December not so long ago.. Just before the deep freeze or actually as the temperature was falling Gary T. the dogs and myself rushed out to the Crowsnest for one last chance to cast a fly and to test that Stanley,s Ice Off Paste that I usually find in the garage mid summer in a secret stash of fishing paraphernalia. This time I just grabbed some off the shelf at the wifes fly shop claiming that I should have it for free, for research and product testing and the betterment of all mankind( at least for the ones that flyfish in the Canadian winter ). Usually we like the temperature to be 2*C above zero at least, for our winter flyfishing but it was already 3*C bellow and dropping..I got out there first and greased my line with the Ice Off Paste ....the line floated noticeably high and did not ice up... Gary had shown up ,I gave him the paste he greased his line and his guides as the temperature continued to drop ,I wished I had also greased the rod guides at minus 10*C my rod guides finally started to freeze..Gary was still doing OK but we could feel it getting colder ...my dog Winston had swam across the river a few times following me .. trout had been caught... product tested...Gary ,dogs and I agreed it was time to go .. We had concluded that the paste was a excellent product to prolong the suffering of dog and flyfisherman alike...