Welcome to the Freestone Fly Anglers Guides Blaaahhg. The intention of this blog is to keep people updated on the fishing season here in the Kootenays and Southwest Alberta, so it will act as our fishing report.
This year started sloooooooooowww with cool temps and precipitation temporarily shutting the caddis hatch down on the Columbia. Meanwhile the East Kootenay's saw the river rise after opening day due to rains and heat but it slowly settled and began clearing by the beginning of July. My first guided trip was with Ray Robinson Jr. who returned to the Elk for his 7th year. Ray turns 90 in October and still crushes fish on the Elk. It's inspirational to watch someone of that age put so much focus and determination into angling and it's been a blessing to have shared over 100 days with him on the water.
After a few evenings of good dry fly fishing on the Columbia River near Castlegar I began the trip in Fernie with Ray. The first day on the Elk River was cold and wet. After getting hammered with rain we pulled into an inside bend and watched a green drake unfold in front of us. We pulled about 10 good cutts off the spill over before retreating to the Stanford Inn for some lunch and some warmth by the gas lodge fireplace.....thanks Joan!!
After a warm up we headed back into the damp weather and were greeted with an epic pmd hatch. An amazing moment as we switched to from a size 10 grey hair wing drake to a 14 mahogony biot dun and began crushing fish with impunity....the old dog certainly had his day.
He followed with 4 more great days of dry fly fishing with about 80% of the fish coming on drake patterns. The last day (today) was hot and caddis took place of stones but feeding was sporadic on the lowest Elk float.
Tommorrow's a day off and then back out Saturday for some more geeeding.....'til then
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