TR: Southern Alberta

Today was my first fishing day of 2004. I had hoped to get out in
January, but the -30C temps but a bit of the damper on those plans. It
has been warm, by local standards, for the past few weeks (Today saw a
high of 12 C), so off I went. I started the day by scraping the frost of
the car windows, but by the time I arrived at the river, all had warmed
up. My fishing buddy arrived in due course, and we had tea and caught
up before fishing. I fished nymphs for part of the morning, but didn't
get a nibble. After lunch. we moved downstream. My friend caught one
bull trout, but I wasn't having much luck. I fell in the the river, and
took a pretty good drenching. I also lost my landing net, so was
beginning to think the day was going to be a bit of a bust. Then,
success. I was drifting a black woolly bugger through a run, and close
to a rock, felt the tell-tale tug. I set the hook, and started to pull
in the fish. It turned out to be about a 24 - 25" bull trout. It was in
remarkable form, and very fat. I have caught longer bulls, but I think
this one was the heaviest. It fought reasonably well for a winter fish,
at one point shooting right between my legs as I reached down to tail
it. I finally landed it, and my friend took a few pictures before I
released it. I decided that was good for the day, and headed slowly
downstream back to the car. My luck continued, as I even found my
landing net.

Interesting thing about this stretch of river is that it was predicted
not to be able to support bull trout. It is below a dam, and the feeling
was that the bulls would be trapped below and not be able to move up to
find spawning grounds. For a couple of years, TU even had a program to
catch bulls below the dam and release them above the dam. It seems to me
that folks are catching a lot of bulls in the area, including some
smallish ones, so it very well may be that they are spawning below the
dam. It will be interesting to see how this fishery develops.

Tim Lysyk