Floating The Lower Bow River

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/pIEAifJ75dc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]Floating The Bow River

On a windy and chilly day in May I decided that it was time to get that dingy back on the water and get the monofilament wet once again. I rang my friend Stacy and asked him to join me on a float from Policeman’s flats to McKinnon flats and he gladly accepted. The clouds broke at ten thirty and the spring sun showed is warm face. It’s about time we had some sun here in Alberta I thought to myself as I tied my Panther Martin to the Berkley XT. I was eager to get the boat in the water and get into some big wild hogs as the last month of fishing has been a little slow. We pushed out of the bank and off we went to seek and hook those scrappy Browns and Rainbows the Bow River is famous for.

Upon entering the cluttered water I could not help but smile as I cannot think of a better way to spend a Friday afternoon. We started off bottom bouncing Panthers and the first half an hour was slow and no bites. We were finding that this technique was not providing what we needed as the river was full of weeds and debris and getting on our hooks. I decided that a cast and retrieve method would work better as the hook stays off the bottom of the river. I spotted a nice drop in the water where trout usually sit and wait for food then casted my spinner bait into the ledge. After a couple of revolutions of my reel a small Brown Trout latched a hold and fought all the way to the boat, even those little ones fight hard sometimes.

We carried on down the river and the wind would not stop howling. I then rowed the dingy around a corner of the river and casted into the shoreline into a deep pocket of water and bam, a nice brown latched a hold of my rooster tail spinner and went airborne. She took three good leaps into the chilly spring air and then dived back into the water abruptly. She was doing her best to shake the hook but it was set and I was in control. I reeled her into the side of the boat and gently netted her into the boat, popped the hook from her toothy jaws and released her back into the murky water. Stacy was happy to see a good sized trout being landed and I think that gave him motivation to hook one himself. We decided to get out of the boat and stretch our sore legs. We stopped at the same place I had just hooked that female brown trout. I thought that there might be more where that came from and boy was I right. I ended up landing six fish from that corner of the river and they were all browns. Stacy hooked and landed the only rainbow trout from that honey hole.

The day turned windy and the fishing was still pretty good from that hole onwards. Stacy landed another eighteen inch rainbow and I hooked into a couple more fish myself, one was a rainbow and the other was a brown. We were doing more rowing than we were fishing today but it was still nice to get out and float the river once again. I noticed the weir has opened up yesterday May 3 2008, and we will start to see the run off happen here in the next couple of weeks. So if you are going to get out and fish the Bow River, than you’d better do it very soon. I am going to float a couple more times before the river turns unfishable and hopefully I can see those scrappy trout once more.