Big Bruiser Brown And a Ton of Rainbow’s
This weekend was a great fishing weekend for me. I had two guided fishing trips back to back. A nice couple from Florida was the latest fishing trip. Bob and Betty contacted me from their home in Florida. Bob informed me he wanted to start his holiday out with some Bow River trout. He wanted to fish the day away before they carried on to Banff and Jasper. So MacKinnon to Carseland we went! Before hitting the river we stopped at Tim Horton’s for a coffee. I gave Bob a lesion in Canadian lingo educating him on what I was ordering, two extra large triple-triples. Bob kind of chuckled and stated to me he saw another guy earlier in the morning doing the exact same thing as I. “You guy’s sure do love your coffee out here” he exclaimed with a chuckle. “Yes we do Bob” I replied. “What I do is order two big pails of coffee and down one just to wake up. The other one I leave in my car in the hot sun and drink after the day of fishing. It is still hot by the time we will be finished”. Betty thought that was hilarious.
After I missed my turn to highway 22X, I turned the car around and got back on track. Note to self, don’t talk too much and drive. You WILL miss your turn off! We finally arrived at MacKinnon to an empty parking lot. Perfect I thought to myself, no boats and big fish. I informed Bob that once we floated down river a short distance, there was a fish waiting for him as the water flows into the bank. There is a deep hole just fifty yards from the launch point. Bob was waiting to cast. I instructed him to get his cast as close to the shoreline as possible. He fired away and a big rainbow hit on his third crank. Tip up and steady pressure, Bob landed his first trout just one minute into the trip. As I was releasing his fish, Betty’s camera was shooting the Pelicans that were fishing behind us. Betty piped up, “Gorgeous scenery down here Mike, this is nice”. Indeed it is Betty.
Many fat rainbows were caught during our trip. We pulled the boat off in many prime locations and were able to hook up fish. I was hoping Bob was going to be able to at least hook into something large. What was about to happen blew both our minds. I switched Bob’s Rapala from an OGMD to a silver (S) pattern. I tied the lure for him on our last shoreline pit stop. Bob chucked that crankbait about a foot from shore over his left shoulder. He was using a long pause on his retrieve! All of a sudden his rod tip bent fiercely over practically touching the water. “That’s a big fish Bob”. Don’t loose that beast”. I reached for the net to prepare for the fish to be landed. I figured it was a brown; the rainbows will usually jump out of the water to spit the hook. The browns like to bull dog you. Bob was bringing in this fish perfectly, careful not to lose line tension on the fish. Then I caught my first look at this whopper. My heart started to beat faster and it wasn’t even my fish. The fish caught sight of the boat a darted away peeling line of Bob’s reel like crazy. “Let him do his thing Bob”.
Gaining the line back he lost, Bob coaxed the fish into the net and this baby was in the boat. I snapped several pictures of his prize catch with my new camera. The picture you see above is why many come from all over the world to fish the Bow River. They come for big Brown Trout and powerful hard fighting Rainbow Trout. Shortly after Bob’s monster brown, we were at Carseland weir wondering where the time had gone. Two o’clock and we were back on the road into Calgary talking about the memories of just a few hours ago. What a day fishing the Bow River!
