WyomingGeorge

Cam Jensen down in the Pincher/Lethbridge area. He fishes dries whenever humanly possible and he pioneered the river that you mention (but should never say out loud in public).

Go fish the Michel. You'll be standing right beneath multiple working coal mines. You'll need to take care not to step on the trout, there are so many. Coal is nearly ubiquitous in Alberta: it crumbles off eroding cutbanks and falls right into the streams. It's everywhere, including in the streambeds themselves. You can pick it up with your hands. Stop being so scared of it. It's just rock. It's not mercury, arsenic or lead. Coal mining, great fishing and cutthroat can all coexist.

I tried this out years ago and never found anybody. The one shuttle company used to do it but it was very expensive and you had to jump through hoops first. You can rent drift boats at most of the major rivers in Montana, typically for US$150 or so per day including the shuttle of both the boat and your vehicle to the takeout. The Missouri at Craig's a great place to practice handling a driftboat if you're new at it, as the upper river is very gentle and straightforward to row at anything but super high water.

Some days the fish are lazy or tentative and it's just plain hard to close the deal. Other days a newbie with slack in their line, turning their head away looking at birds, talking and unaware of what a hook-set even is will get huge fish on the line. Sometime if you stop the streamer the fish will lose interest and turn away. Other times a pause in movement induces the strike.

Then there's also the fact that this year, it has always rained less than forecast. It takes a lot for the Bow to be "blown out", and 4.4 mm of rain isn't even noticeable.

I wanted to do the same thing a decade or so back before I bought my Clackacraft, but found it very hard and/or expensive to find anything around Calgary. I ended up renting driftboats (and confirming that I wanted one) down on the Missouri River at Craig, on the Bighorn River at Ft. Smith and on the North Platte River near Casper. They're typically around US$100-$120 per day, shuttle included, which considering shuttles alone on the Bow start at $60, always seemed like a pretty good deal to me. The nice thing is that down there you can gain exposure to different sizes and models of drift boat.

One time I was being crushed by whitefish in a river full of wonderful trout. Hours of nymphing, nothing but whitefish. I started streamer fishing, went without a strike for probably two hours, and finally hooked a solid fish. I declared, "If that f---- thing's a whitefish, I quit fishing for all time." Turned out to be the only whitefish I've ever caught on a streamer.

Right, the prince nymph is pretty much the whitey's favourite fly. For trout on the Bow you might just need to get a little more technical: smaller and more imitative BWO patterns like lightning bugs, midge patterns down to #20, caddis pupae and larva patterns, copper john's, etc. It's amazing how giant trout will often ignore a worm or a stone and instead eat something tiny. Of course, trout do eat the bigger patterns as well. As Bcube says, it's often where you position yourself in the feature that counts the most...but the right fly is also important when the trout are keying in on a hatch.

Whitefish tend to feed a bit less selectively than trout, hang out in pods and are physically less aggressive, so rule #1: when you hook a whitefish, MOVE because chances are a) there are 10 more right beside him and the trout are either feeding elsewhere or hanging out not feeding. At this time of year the trout will move into faster and shallower water, and by mid-summer will be in the fastest chop you find on the Bow, as well as along the banks. Some of the very biggest fish will be in slow, glassy, shallow water because they are no longer vulnerable to ospreys and can feed without expending energy. In water like that a whitefish would last just minutes before being lifted away to its doom.

What about a single layer of rip-rap laid flat underneath the bridge. That would make it all-but impossible to drive upstream without impeding navigation. Granted, it wouldn't withstand a flood, but few things would. I tend to be with Bron on this one, that there's been an overblown reaction to the use of an exposed gravel bar of large cobble that grows only weeds. People throwing garbage is never good, but one sees garbage on the Bow wherever one goes, sadly, and blocking people from this patch of gravel won't stop those same people from littering at all the other places they go. Nor will it stop litter from floating in from upstream, nor youthful cyclists from chucking their empty Big Gulps beside the bike path. The rest of us pick up litter in whatever locations we happen to launch.

Great article. I've been fishing largely with slower rods (Beulah 5 wt.) for several years and in describing how nice they are to cast have had mainly dubious audiences. But I've found using a slower rod changes the entire fishing experience. In forcing you to slow down your cast and focus on suppleness rather than brute force, it has a distinct relaxing effect, lowering the stress of "getting after" the fish. For me, anyway. The only funny note in the article was that fishing in big wind is an "unusual" circumstance.

Do you think it's been flyfishy all along having you guys on?

If you focus on rowing others in your driftboat for a fee, you at least knock out a good portion of the risks associated with letting the boat out of your sight. But don't kid yourself that you'll be just rowing and not guiding. The oarsman is critical to putting people onto fish, picking out risers, keeping the two anglers working harmoniously, prioritizing water, etc. If you just float aimlessly down the middle with the anglers doing what they want, it's unlikely to be a big-numbers day. So then your conscience and your dedication to fishing get the better of you, and before you know it you're doing a little of this, suggesting a little of that, providing a few helpful tips...and then you're pretty close to guiding for just a rowing fee. There are far, far worse ways to spend one's days, of course.

Louise Shotton, 403-818-1625.

Was it $1,000 each? If so, that does strike me as substantial. If one is truly fishing for sustenance, then saving on $25 worth of store-bought salmon at the cost of a $1,000 fine is a poor economic trade-off and not something one is likely to repeat. If one is killing out of sheer cruelty and bloodlust, or hunting for a record trophy rack or a huge bearskin, that emotional desire is disconnected from economics and a mere fine is unlikely to deter. I know most of you wanted far, far more, but does that view make sense? Do you think the cost will prevent a repeat, or just make them more wily?