Trout Fishing the Lower Bow River

A Few Browns, And Loads of Rainbow’s

Five o’clock comes early for me on the weekends, my body is not used to getting up that early anymore. When I was younger I could snap up out of bed, hit the shower and be off to the river as fast as you could say “Fish On”. It now takes two alarm clocks, one on the cell phone and one that makes irritating buzzing sounds, to get me up at four thirty A.M. Today I was meeting my good friend Dean for an outing on the Bow River. I arranged to meet Dean at his house and we were then to drop his truck at McKinnon Flats. After we drop the truck off we drive back into the south side of the city and launch the dingy out of Policeman’s Flats. The weather man predicted a high of twenty eight degrees Celsius for today; this explains why I like to fish early in the morning. It is cooler and the fishing is better at this time.

I fished last week floating the same stretch of river and the fishing was good. The water is cleaning up here weekly after our annual spring run off. This week I must say the fishing conditions have improved to very good. We started our float fishing trip concentrating on the east bank and five minutes into the trip Dean was into his first of many Rainbows. He chose the yellow Panther Martin sonic spinner and casted into the bank for his first fish. He hammered four fish in less than ten casts. After Dean hauled in his fourth fish my silver Panther Martin started to hook into some Rainbow’s, and I too was involved in some scrappy fish. I battled my third big rainbow and netted him into the boat. Barbless hooks make for an easy release and he was gently revived and released back into the murky water.

The rainbows are returning from their spring spawn and they are going back into the classic spots in the river. We casted into undercut banks with excellent success, tips or points of islands were also producing some bigger rainbows and the odd brown trout. Nothing was beating the slower deep sections of the river; this is where we cleaned up on the trout. Not only were there plenty of trout there was lots of other wildlife to enjoy as well. We saw many White Tailed Deer, pelicans, cranes and Canada Geese. Traveling the river this early in the morning has much less fishing pressure, so your odds of catching many fish are greater.

Dean and I lost count of how many fish we caught, but believe me it was over forty. I know you probably think this is far fetched but we were there and witnessed it happen. I warned Dean before we went out that this way of fishing can be very addicting and usually leads to more fishing at a later date. True to my statement Dean asks at the end of the trip if I was busy this coming week. I laughed and offered to take him out this week as I have the whole week off of work. Anyone want to go fishing this week?