The Secret to Success
Success is earned most times and fishing is no different. Success comes with studying your quarry and knowing its habits, as well as its habitat! There is a lot to learn about fishing and how to be successful on most outings. There are many resources to help you maximize your catch ratio and your time on the water.
The first part of the recipe is being organized and choosing the right fishing hooks for water conditions. The size of your imitation baits will also be important here. I like 2.5-3 inch baits in the summer and fall as last year’s minnows have grown to this size. These sized baits are perfect for larger fish, that are on the feed early morning, and late in the evening. When the water is clean, use more natural color patterns like the rainbow color, the brown trout pattern, brook trout pattern or anything that matches the forage in your river. I like greens in the Bow River as they match a rocky mountain whitefish minnow.
Fishing the right time a day will also play a huge part in success! I have been fishing very early in the morning, 5:30 AM sun up, and packing the days trip up at noon. The temperatures have been far too hot later in the day which is harmful to the fish not to mention, they lay low and don’t really feed! You can still find a few fish feeding in bumpy runs or chutes during the heat, but your odds go way up if you fish early in the morning when water temperatures are ideal. Getting on the water before any other anglers puts you ahead of everyone else and on top of those hungry fish. Your odds of catching more fish of greater sizes go way up. Remember anglers, the early bird does get the worm!
Once I hit the water in the boat, I pay close attention to what types of water I catch my first few fish in. If its ledges, I focus my efforts more on those locations, and stop and fish them for greater duration’s of time. Sometimes I spend twenty to thirty minutes on those prime lies. If it is fast flowing water in the middle of runs, then I will look for that kind of water all along my float trip. Lately the fish have been concentrated in corners of the river where the water flows off the bank choppy, and into deeper sections of the deep parts of the center of the river. Its subtle places like this where people often overlook, but if you have caught fish here in your previous outings, you will know that this water is prime and needs to be probed with the right depth hook.
I have had an incredible summer finding big fish in these structural points in the river, and I hope you have been catching them as well. These are some pictures of the fish we have been enjoying the last month here on the Bow River. Both myself, and my clients have been extremely happy sport fishing the River this month. I hope you have been finding success on your’s as well.
