March Fishing The Bow River

Bow River Fishing Report

As the weather warms up my fishing gear comes out. I almost could open my own tackle shop with the amount of lures I have amassed over this long cold winter. I have put in many hours on the internet and in fishing stores collecting the gear I will need to guide the river this season. I figured I may as well mosey on down to the Bow River and see if those fancy new colors will work. I called Todd and we met at Wholesale Sports. Todd bought a new fishing rod and reel, the Berkley Series One fishing rod and added a Pflueger Supreme spinning reel to it. We briefly browsed the shelves and picked out some more fishing line, eight pound Berkley XT monofilament. We left the store and jetted to the river. A hike in and we were there, the water stained and high from the melting hot sun.

On goes the hot new color and out into the river casting far to improve my odds of hooking a fish. A second cast rewards me a nice brown trout about sixteen inches in length which I unhooked and released. There was a great deal of ice along the shore so we settled into a spot a little further down river of where I caught the first fish. I managed to catch another nice rainbow, and then another, and another. Here is a piece of advice for you, I almost always do this but failed to do yesterday, check your hooks and your knot after hooking every fish you catch. Sometimes your knot will come loose or the line will fray a little from the fighting fish or the hook will straighten a little. I chucked my lure back out without looking at the knot or the hooks. In the middle of the river I get thumped, bang and no hook up just a good hit. I slow the retrieve and stop the lure, still no fish. I pick up the pace and reel smoothly and wham-o, I am into something large. I fight the fish for a second or two and then the line breaks like a dry twig. I reel in the line and check it, sure enough the knot was good but the line that connected to the split ring was broken. I was disappointed and tied another hook on and tried to forget about the one that got away.

Todd was a little slow to start out but finished with a good day, three large rainbows’ that were all over twenty inches long. His second fish was magnificent, what colors in that rainbow and not a mark on the body. His mouth had a little scar from someone previously catching him but that healed up nicely. I was able to hook and land a dozen fish yesterday, not too bad all things considered. It looks as though we are turning the corner into spring now and hopefully the weather stays on the plus side so we can all come out of hibernation and fish the rivers and lakes once again.

Lately I have been getting a lot of queries for fishing reports on the bow river, so I have decided to make a new category to address these inquisitions. In the categories side you will see the new link “Bow River Fishing Reports”. I encourage each and every reader to contribute to this new link. After you go fishing please send me a quick response to how your day went, once you enter a few posts on the report I will upgrade your status on the Blog to “author”. You will be able to make posts directly without me moderating the information. Please include the date and where you fished in the information you post. In turn we can help other people with the information posted here. I look forward to seeing your reports as soon as you finish fishing the river/lakes you frequent often. Cheers to your fishing successes.