This Stream Should Really Be Better Than It Is.

[greatbigdiddy]

Just wondering if anyone has come across this type of stream in your explorations of this fine province. You know you leave your usual streams for a day of exploration not necessarily to an unheard of secret place but just a place you don't normally go to and when you arrive everything just looks so perfect lots of awesome holes runs and riffles all set out in a perfect way you just know it is going to be an amazing day filled with 18 inch trout of whatever variety but as you hike along casting switching flies switching methods maybe with a little success or maybe none at all but the farther you walk the better and better the stream looks but the big payoff just never comes and you sit there and wonder why ... why isn't this place as good as such and such place it should be there is no reason for it not to be. eventually you head home left wondering WHY? then a couple years later you find yourself in the area again and you convince yourself that you will try it again because you know it has to be a big trout mecca its just to perfect not to ... so you go and start hiking and the story repeats it self once again WHY?

 

For me one of the streams like this is the Burnt timber creek, over the years I have fished this creek a handful of times I have had some minor success but I am always left wondering why this stream is not so much better than it is, it just oozes with what should be prime bulltrout/cutthroat water and it just seems like it should be so much more than it is ... I find this to be true of a lot of streams in the upper reddeer system. so beautiful so perfect looking they should be legendary trout streams, now don't get me wrong I have had some really good fishing in my life in this area but there just seems to be some streams here that should be unreal and at least for me they have not been. when I research and try to find out why they are not as good as some of our best cutthroat waters I read about and consider issues like the growing season down south is longer so that's why the fish are bigger and more abundant but my answer to that is a couple streams up in the north Saskatchewan system that are just as good for big plentiful cutts as those streams down south so why has the northern latitude not hindered them ... next I consider C&R regulations this might explain why these streams never reached top notch status in the 80s and 90s but I believe they have been C&R for a good portion of the 2000s but still no amazing cutthroat streams have developed here and once again I am left asking WHY??

 

What streams do you guys feel fall in this category for you??

 

Do any of you have any opinions or answers to my conundrum ??

 

All related thoughts and opinions appreciated ... thanks ... DIDDY.

[BigFoamy]

Burnt Timber LOL, thats awesome! Used to have a place out in that area and couldnt say it any better than you just did. Just great looking, I always left there feeling like i didnt know what the hell I was doing, which may very well be true the funny thing is (like you said) I kept convincing myself that because it looked so awesome i would go back and give it another try...

 

ive caught 2 fish out of that stream, in total

[Ricinus]

James River, it looks like it should have fish everywhere..

 

Mike

[greatbigdiddy]

James River, it looks like it should have fish everywhere..

 

Mike

You got it Mike the James is what I'm talking about here that place looks amazing but it just seems like it should fish so much better than it does ... now the james in its upper reaches and some tribs have been pretty good to me for brookies back in the day but the middle and lower reaches just feel like they should be chalked full of big browns and bulls and whiteys but I just can't find a lot of them however one day almost 15 years ago during a snowstorm in late JUNE the james did however deliver me a nice little surprise I was hiking and fishing a 5km stretch and was landing to my surprise 12-15 inch rainbows in every nice run yeah rainbows I guess they worked their way up from Dickson/glennifer dam. I thought the james was finally gonna become the river it looks like it should be chalked full of trout and Rainbows no less ... but alas that snowy day in June was the first and last time I got bows from the "JIMMY RIVER" and I still go back every few years and "HOPE" that this beautiful stream has finally reached it's potential only to leave asking WHY???

[Smitty]

Barry Mitchell's book "Trout Highway" can provide some insights;

 

1. Short growing season.

2. Relatively infertile.

3. Anchor ice in winter; poor survival rates.

 

All I got.

 

Smitty

[greatbigdiddy]

Barry Mitchell's book "Trout Highway" can provide some insights;

 

1. Short growing season.

2. Relatively infertile.

3. Anchor ice in winter; poor survival rates.

 

All I got.

 

Smitty

yeah Smitty that is a great book one of my faves but in that book Barry actually has the same notion that the james should be far better than it is. also the growing season for sure would make a difference but why the success in some cut streams even further north maybe the answer is bugs but I don't think so Barry also talks about deep wintering holes being of utmost importance maybe that's it.

[greatbigdiddy]

I had a thought maybe the reasoning has to do with bad timing, I think I read an article maybe in AFG or maybe it was in Trout Highway but wherever it was it talked about the fact that a lot of the streams in the upper redder system received a good stocking of cuts in the late 80's or early 90S I think but there were no C&R regs in place at that time so the population never took off ... and dwindled away. Now that there are C&R regs in place has there been substantial stocking of cutts in this system or have they just hoped it would gain success on what little amounts of cuttys were still there??

does anyone have any info about this??

[DonAndersen]

Guys,

 

The Fallen Timber, Jame and Little Red got blasted in the last drought. Lost <>80% of thier fish and there wasn't a lot there to start with. Between floods and drought, life is tough in these streams.

 

Don

[Ricinus]

I hate to admit it, but I'm getting old enough to remember a few droughts..Which one do you mean Don..

 

Mike

[Chadillac]

certain stretches of Fallen timber in the fall have been amazing. mostly browns coming up from RDR.

[greatbigdiddy]

Just so everyone is clear I was talking about the Burnt timber creek and North Burnt timber creek at the start of the thread not the Fallen timber creek.

[cheeler]

Burnt Timber has fish, but you have to go into canyon sections or to the mouth for whitefish. Poaching, damage from ATVs, and #$%@heads using it for a garbage dump is rampant on the lower sections.

[Taco]

Took a certain stream down here 7-8 yrs to restart restocking itself after the drought of '03 killed off 90+% of the trout. I had great hopes of a newly resurrected cutthroat stream until the goddamned rainbows showed up a couple yrs ago.

[Hawgstoppah]

did one of those last year to a certain creek really close to home. Funny thing was it had fished very well before for me, and in the past 5 or 6 times it's been relatively dead. Left me wondering, for sure.

[SilverDoctor]

I certainly experienced the same on the streams listed here with good and bad days. Although flooding did play a huge role on many of them, affecting not only trout but food sources, there seem to be a real problem with poaching and lack of policing, once a resource is removed it takes a long time to recover public education is still lacking. And the bait containers that festoon the areas close to roads are a testament to that.

[Vagabond]

One possible explanation I haven't seen mentioned yet might be clear cutting in the headwaters and the resultant excessive siltation of streams with runoff from haul roads,skidder ruts,and the general inability of the watershed to release cool groundwater gradually.

A fisheries biologist that I met once while fishing back east was taking water samples from a previously wonderful salmon/trout river told me that Atlantic salmon and brook trout are quite susceptible to a fatal gill infection from heavily silted water.I know rainbows can tolerate more silted water and fare better then Brookies in same.Just guessing,but I would assume that cutts and bulls having evolved in the pristine environs that they did might also be vulnerable to excessive silt?Rivers get "blown out" and run dirty far more frequently these days due to humans altering the landscape then they ever would have historically,which surely can't be good for our little finned friends?

[trailhead]

Could be a harvest issue. I know a fellow that used to live in along the James and he told me they would net fish out in the fall.

[Jayhad]

Burnt Timber has fish, but you have to go into canyon sections or to the mouth for whitefish. Poaching, damage from ATVs, and #$%@heads using it for a garbage dump is rampant on the lower sections.

Pretty much bang on, except the ATV damage goes all the way to the head waters.