bjbailey

That's a hawg - nice fish! I definitely didn't do enough chronie fishing this year. Good on ya.

As everyone else has said - those are fantastic!

Those are some very pretty browns! Thanks for the post.

Very nice bully indeed!

Great post; thanks for taking the time to share it with us.

Not sure if I need to add another, but, very nice flies!

Beautiful fish Jeremie!

Haha. Thanks for reminding me! Trust me, I was as disappointed as you are now when my visions of pike fishing on the fly failed to come to fruition. I think most of the fish had headed to deeper water by this late in the summer and the available fly fishing on the lake was limited! Thought I'd share the fish anyways despite the lowly techniques.

I spent the long weekend in Saskatchewan and after being defeated by pike on the flies we traded in our fly rods for conventional tackle and looked for some walleye. The regs are so different there than in Alberta! Limit of 5 walleye per day with no size limits or slot size? We enjoyed several good meals of fish over the weekend and I managed to land this one; not something that I see very often in Alberta. This fish measured out at 30.5" and 9.7lbs although I think it was surprisingly skinny. We released this one after a few quick pics. Brandon

Thanks guys, I am really happy with my season so far and certainly wasn't complaining! I am well aware that there are few places in the world where we can catch trout on par with the Bow. I agree that 24" is a lofty goal but one that I hope to reach anyways. As for the age structure comment that I made, I was mostly just trying to learn a bit more about the Bow system and understand if it was just chance that I had caught such similarly sized fish or if it truly was a unique attribute of the habitat/ecosystem. Thanks for the info! Brandon

This is my first summer fishing the Bow and am having a hell of a time breaking the 24" mark. That has been my goal all summer and so far I have maxed out at 23.5. I've also noticed that outside of the one at 23.5, I seem to have hit a ceiling at 22" or 22.5. I have caught dozens of fish at 22 or 22.5 this spring/summer but next to nothing over this or even close under. It seems like fish tend to be 16"-18" bows or 22" browns with very little variation outside of this. Does anybody else notice similar trends with little size variation? Thanks. Brandon

Hey All, The fish were rising tonight and I managed to hook three fish this size on hoppers; this was the first fish I've caught on a hopper this year on the bow. I think it is foreshadowing what August should bring us all! Brandon

I am jealous beyond belief; I love the flats!

Indeed, beautiful pics as usual. Thanks for the report.

Beauty brown. Nice work.

Nice fish Jay. Looks like a beauty bow with some nice browns in the mix. I'm jealous of that big brookie too! Brandon

I'm definitely thinking a whitetail...tough to tell though!

I have thoroughly enjoyed several nights on the Bow lately with great caddis action. This brown was one of many similar browns I found heavily feeding last night. It sure was a great way to break in the new rod! Brandon

That was great. On a related note, I was confronted by a large dog on the weekend that didn't like the fact that I was trying to get back upstream to my car. It was from a nearby farm but was right down to the waters edge and quite upset. I had to cross to an island and walk up around to get back to my car; on the good side, I found a few more rising trout on my detour!

That is too bad Heimdallr. There certainly are some great pothole lakes up there if only you had the time!

Despite higher water levels with less than perfect visibility, I decided to head out on the bow for 2 hours this afternoon. Within minutes of hitting the banks I spotted a good fish in about 18" of water. It wasn't moving a whole lot and after drifting BWOs, a few nymphs, and swinging some streamers in front of it, I started second guessing myself; maybe this was just a shadow in between the two large rocks? I began getting a little frustrated and decided to wade out to see if this shadow was even a fish - sure enough, three steps in the water and it was gone. That was stupid! After moving upstream and not seeing a whole lot of other fish, I decided to move back down to see if he had returned after me stupidly spooking it. Lucky for me, he had settled back in between the two rocks. Again, I drifted several nymphs and swung a few streamers but obviously wasn't getting the presentation right. It was a bit of a difficult drift so I decided to toss on a big dry (#8 Green Drake) to drift a dropper (#10 pheasent tail) a little more delicately. After almost half an hour of fighting with the wind and current, I FINALLY got a take as the drake slipped under the water. A few minutes later I had this nice (although rather beat up) 23.5" male brown to hand.

The river was higher and off colour again today in comparison to last week. I saw very few fish rising despite a good number of BWO on the water. I caught this stocky 21" brown and lost another slightly longer and leaner right at the net. Enjoy. Brandon

Hey Everyone, Fish Creek Park was entirely empty aside from two other gentlemen. I certainly enjoyed the vacant banks while I cruised looking for rising fish. While this guy is not the most impressive brown, the pursuit was rather fun. He was feeding in 5 inches of water about 6 inches from the bank hiding out behind a rock deflecting the current. Given a stong back eddy between me and the fish it was touch to get the drift right. Complicating things further the wind kept pushing my fly out too far from the bank. I ended up having to over compensate for the wind by casting my line up onto shore next to him shooting enough slack leader to swing the fly drag free around in the back eddy. Turns out, he liked that and took the 18 BWO. I hope I uploaded the picture correctly; my apologies if I did not.

Hey Guys, Thanks. I've been doing well on both #18 and #20 BWOs and Griffith's Gnats. I have also hooked up on #14 parachute adams that I use to help keep track of the smaller dries. Tight lines! Brandon

Those are beautiful looking bows. Thanks for posting!