Post-Flood Highwood River Report, August 24, 2013

We went back to Alberta's Highwood River, between Hogg Park and Longview, on Saturday for a second attempt to fish the river since the flood. The water has lowered quite a bit from the last time we were there and it has cleared considerably. Despite still being a little higher than normal, we were able to cross the river in several spots.

The fishing was pretty good. I cast small inline spinners and managed to catch 8 fish; three rainbows, one bull trout and four Rocky Mountain whitefish. White and red was the colour of the day. I lost a few fish as well. My friend Terry managed to catch two decent whitefish in the 18-20 inch range. He got them both in a single long pool that had been significantly lengthened by the flood.

We saw many other incredible changes to the river brought on by the flood. Debris was found wrapped 10-15 feet up tree trunks a good distance from the river. A cliff with a large undercut that we used to fish is now just a large rock in the middle of a rubble field as the river cut the cliff away from the bank and then moved itself 100 feet north. (see pictures below)

Also, the deep pool that used to be where Pekisko Creek enters the Highwood is much smaller with a much larger rapid going into it.

It was a great day exploring a familiar, yet different river. There is lots of new fish-holding structure and the presence of fish of every size leads me to believe that there's a good chance the river will be fishing well for a while longer. 

Enjoy the pictures below.

A 13" rainbow.

A Rocky Mountain whitefish.

A flattened tree on a new beach.

Flood debris wrapped around a tree.

A trailer.

Another Rocky.

That line of dirt in the bottom left is the high water mark.

The hole where Pekisko Creek enters the Highwood.

A 14" bull trout.

We used to cast into this undercut. This used to be a large deep pool.

The grassy shore used to continue to that large rock in the upper right (the old cliff/undercut).

A little rainbow.

Looking back to normal...but different.

Post-Flood Highwood Report

This June, as most people know, Southern Alberta experienced severe flooding that halted life in Calgary and basically destroyed several smaller communities, most notably High River.

Many people are still struggling to get their lives back in order but as life returns to normal in most flood-affected areas, people are getting their minds back on regular life stuff...like fishing.

After seeing the flood waters in Calgary first hand, I could not help but wonder what our favourite trout streams would be like this season. Late summer is the best time to walk and wade the many beautiful streams that flow out of the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains. My favourite of these is the Highwood River.

My friend Adam and I were especially eager to get down to our regular stretch of the Highwood this year to see how the raging flood waters had changed the structure of the river. We knew things would be different but truthfully we didn't expect much more than a few new trees brought down from the mountains and maybe some new undercuts.

We did certainly did not expect what we found.

What the Highwood River looked like this time last year.

Even before we got down to the river we noticed a difference. As we approached the edge of the coulee Adam asked, "Can we usually hear the river like that?" We could clearly hear the river roaring below which is definitely not normal this late in the summer.

When we actually got close enough to see the river we really couldn't believe what we saw. The water was still very high and chocolate-milk brown. The bank across the river had been washed away and there was rubble and exposed rock where the once grassy, tree-lined bank used to be.

The river as we arrived. It's usually half as wide.

As we got down to the river and began to walk up stream, the force of the floodwater became more and more evident. There was wooden debris a good distance up the coulee walls and a flat rock that we used to stand and cast off of was now at least 50 feet away from the river. The river had carved out a new channel as the floodwater pounded the cliff on the outside of the bend.

Wooden debris deposited well up the bank.

We used to cast off that flat rock in the middle of the picture.

This used to be the river bed.

On the inside of the bend, the willow bushes that used to come right down to the edge of the old high water level were now flattened.

You can see where the floodwater flattened the willow bushes above the high water line.

Most disturbing was the level of sediment that had and was still accumulating on the river bed which leads me to wonder what this will mean for the resident fish populations and the Bow River rainbows that spawn in the Highwood.

Despite the murky conditions, we did try to cast toward the undercut banks to see if there were any fish hiding from the rushing currents, to no avail.

One glimmer of hope is the new structure carved out and dropped off by the flood. I truly hope the river will recover and clear up soon so we can take advantage of what the flood left behind.

I can't wait to fish this when the water drops.

A nice new piece of fish holding water?

Cold Front Bass Fishing in Ontario

Calgary, Alberta is a dream city for any angler. From the city, one can easily access world class trout streams, great ice fishing, stocked trout ponds and numerous lakes and reservoirs with plenty of walleye, pike and perch. Heck, there’s even a Blue-Ribbon trout stream, the Bow River, flowing right through the middle of the city.

The only thing I truly miss while living in Calgary is bass fishing. I love everything about catching smallmouth and largemouth bass, from the way they fight as hard as fish twice their size to how easy it is to lip a hooked bass, pop the hook out and successfully release them alive and well. Unfortunately, there is no bass fishing in Alberta.

That’s why bass fishing is at the top of the list of reasons I get excited for our annual summer trip back to Ontario (just behind seeing family and friends of course).  Not only is the bass fishing in Ontario so fun, but I also happen to have access to a family cottage, complete with a 14 foot tin car-topper tied to the dock below our cottage.

A Fifth Depot Lake sunset

About 40 minutes north east of Kingston, our cottage is on a little lake with a healthy population of both smallmouth and largemouth bass along with some small pike and a supposed population of walleye. (More about these rumoured walleye to come in a later post).

A Fifth Depot Lake smallmouth

This year, we arrived in Ontario in the middle of a heat wave that saw humidex temperatures in the mid 40s. It was brutal. The only thing that got me through this agonizing heat was the thought of drifting over weed beds hunting bass.

The night before we left for the cottage a band of thunderstorms rolled through Southern Ontario and we awoke the next morning to one of those days that you often read about in fishing books and magazines…for all the wrong reasons. The high blue skies and cool breeze that we rose to only meant one thing: I would be spending at least a couple days of my precious bass fishing time in a post cold front nightmare.

Although the conditions were less than ideal, I clearly wasn’t going to spend my days at the cottage sitting on the shore thinking about the weather. So on the day we arrived, I took the boat across the lake to an island point where I’ve had plenty of success in the past. This particular point continues underwater for about 50 feet as a triangle-shaped weed bed before it drops off sharply into about 20 feet of water; a text-book fish-holding spot.

Usually, I kill the motor at the apex of the weed bed and cast crank baits or inline spinners along either side of it. On this particular day, the fish were having nothing to do with these fast presentations so I decided to slow things down by wacky rigging a Roboworm plastic worm on a #8 octopus hook. The simplest of rigs, a wacky rig is just a softbait with a hook stuck through the middle of it, instead of the end. You don't even use a sinker. I cast the worm out and tried my best to let the worm sink as naturally as possible through the water column. A few seconds later, I was fighting my first largemouth of the trip.

Fell for the wacky rig

Despite working immediately, the wacky rigged worm wasn’t without its problems. Because the technique relies on the nearly neutral weight of the worm, hook and line to sink, any slight tension on the line caused by boat drift or choppy water was enough to pull the bait back toward the surface. This technique is also infuriatingly slow.

After struggling to submerge the wacky rigged worms for another half hour, I decided to switch to a drop shot rig. If you’ve read any bass fishing publication over the last couple of years, you’ve read about the drop shot. Basically, a drop shot rig switches the usual positions of the hook and sinker, putting the sinker below the hook. This allows the hook to suspend at fish-mouth level while the sinker maintains contact with the bottom.

A fat little smallmouth

I used a 3/8 oz. cylinder drop shot sinker about 12” below a #8 octopus hook on which I stuck a Smoke Purple X Zone Slammer. Instead of casting the rig, I let the sinker drag along the bottom as the boat drifted along the edge of the weed bed. I also dunked the rig vertically into holes in the weed beds as the boat drifted directly over the thick mats of Eurasian millfoil and cabbage. This turned out to be the technique of the week. Despite the poor weather conditions, I managed to hook into at least one decent smallmouth or largemouth bass in every weed bed and rocky drop off I fished. I also caught a couple of small pike along the way.

Early morning largemouth

A little pike caught on the drop shot

None of the fish I caught this week were huge but when the fish you catch fight as hard as bass do on days that aren‘t supposed to yield fish, it’s really quite okay.

At Northern Alberta's Island Lake Lodge, the Five of Diamonds Reigns Supreme

A Big Island Lake walleye

Last month, my friends Adam Ellis, Steve Priestly and I went on our first fly-in fishing trip to *Island Lake Lodge on Big Island Lake in Northern Alberta.

Island Lake Lodge is a full service fishing lodge in Alberta's Birch Mountains Wildland Provincial Park. Guests can target trophy walleye and northern pike on Big Island Lake and on neighbouring Gardiner Lake.

A year of anticipation mixed with the lodge’s isolation and my tendency to believe everything I read in fishing magazines meant only one thing; some of the most epic tackle shopping trips ever embarked upon by amateur fishermen.

Organizing new gear

Pre-shopping conversations went kind of like this: “Oh look, people are slaying big pike on these big, 24k gold-plated spoons with the treble hook swapped out for a siwash hook dressed with white curly-tailed musky grub. I better get a couple of those spoons, a box of those hooks and a bag of big grubs and extras of everything ‘cause you know, we can’t just walk to the local tackle shop when we’re in the middle of nowhere…”

Needless to say, we spent nearly as much money on new gear as we did on the trip itself. Still, throughout the whole planning process one lure kept appearing in our research. Every so often during our reading, we would be reminded of the effectiveness of the classic Len Thompson Five of Diamonds spoon. The day before the trip Bob, from Island Lake Lodge, called to see if we could bring up some supplies for the lodge on our flight. He concluded the phone call by saying, “Hope you got your Five of Diamonds ready for the lake!”

The Five of Diamonds

Not unfamiliar with the classic yellow and red spoons, we each bought a few in different sizes to top off our tackle collections. After all, the five dollar spoons were just a drop in the tackle pond when the smoke cleared and the receipts were handed across the counter.

New tackle carefully unwrapped and organized, the much anticipated trip finally arrived. We made the seven hour drive from Calgary to Fort McMurray, stayed a night in a Fort Mac motel and flew to Island Lake Lodge the next morning. As soon as we got off the plane and introduced ourselves to the lodge proprietors and other guests, the conversation predictably turned to fishing. Again, we were reminded of the Five of Diamonds spoon and Bob even went so far as to say that it was "the hottest lure on the lake."

To keep things simple, and inline with our tendency to believe every tip we hear, we all tied on a Five of Diamonds and decided to start by casting the spoons along weedlines and at points for pike. As expected the pike action was fast and furious almost immediately. More surprising to us were the incidental walleye hookups we started getting while casting traditional pike spoons toward traditional pike structure.

Adam's river walleye

This continued all week. Many trips out started and finished with a Five of Diamonds spoon on the end of our lines. Adam even caught a 7 pound walleye casting a Five of Diamonds spoon into the little river we were waiting to travel down to Gardiner Lake. Actually, most of our best fish of the week were caught on Five of Diamonds spoons. Naturally we lost a few of the spoons as well and Steve ended up buying the entire stock of the deadly yellow lures for sale in the main lodge.

Of course, numbers of fish were caught on other lures as well. Trolling plastic swim baits was my favourite walleye presentation of the week and Steve did well with a perch-coloured spoon too. Still, this trip reminded all of us that there is a reason certain lures, that don’t look like anything a fish will ever encounter let alone eat, consistently sell well over the years.

And in case you’re wondering, I did tie on one of those 24k gold plated spoons with a single siwash hook dressed with a white curly-tailed grub…just to say I used it before I tied my Five of Diamonds back on and got back into the fish.

A decent walleye caught while casting Five of Diamonds for pike

A nice pike Adam caught on the the Five of Diamonds just before we left

Steve with a nice Gardiner Lake pike

A pike caught on the Five of Diamonds

Adam, Steve, me and our unofficial guide, Dean, at Island Lake Lodge

*If the pictures don't speak for themselves, we had an amazing and successful week at Island Lake Lodge thanks to Jim, Bob and Agnes.