Intrinsic

 

Hey there folks!

Here is a quick water report for the Elk River and SW AB!

After you read the water report you will find a little piece that I started writing about a month ago and now have finally finished. I definitely got on my soap box for it.

Enjoy!

What of the Elk you ask?

Well the Elk has been a little inconsistent this summer and this past month hasn't been much different. Regarding dry fly fishing, sometimes its amazing and sometimes its a bitch. I have had the fortune of having only a couple of slow days on the dry and not because I'm good but its because I shit horse shoes.

Of late the fish have be keying into just about anythings, mayflies, hoppers and other terrestrials  have all been rocking fish. In chatting with my chums I have come to find that it really doesn't seem to matter what pattern you are fishing, but I have also found that it matters if you are fishing with confidence.

Two pieces of advice if you are having troubles hooking up with our lovely Cutts:

- Change your fly!!!!!! Quit using shit that isn't working! 

-Change the water you are fishing! 

Keep pounding the same type of water with no fish looking up? Well you may want to consider not fishing the same type of water all the time...  After all, variety is the spice of life.

 SW AB:

Admittedly I haven't Spent nearly as much time east of the boarder as I would have liked to, but here is what I know... 

The CROW:

Knocked the dog shit out of fish on it the other day with a chum of mine and it was awesome! Rainbows are wicked fun with all the jumping and carrying on!! I'm not telling you where or how or what we fished, all I am telling you is that it was on! So if you have the minerals get yer butts over there and have some fun.

Upper Oldman:

I haven't been there all year, but all reports I have gotten have been favorable.

Lower Oldman:

Was there today, its not for the faint of heart.... There are fish and there are bugs... Good luck...   

 

 

 in·trin·sic 

:belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing

dry fly

:an artificial angling fly designed to float  

 

The Elk River and dry fly fishing are synonymous, by its very nature the Elk begs to be tickled with a dry. It's long runs, side channels, foam lines and soft riffles are the ideal habitat for Cutthroat trout and dry flies.The Elk's population of native Westslope Cutthroat trout are renowned for their size and  willingness to take a dries, and thus the Elk River has become a destination for fly anglers from around the world.  It would seem though that somewhere along the way the intrinsic dry fly values that the Elk holds have begun to disappear. 

 Things are a little different on the Elk this year, the fish seem to be a little jittery, they're not so willing to eat the shit out of any dry fly they see. Who can blame them though? For the past two seasons they had to deal with prolonged high water and then this year they got blind sided buy a 1000 CMS flash flood! On top of that there is a little Teck Coal issue and increased angling pressure, if I were a fish I would be giving us anglers the "fin" too. 

So what is it that we anglers do when fish decide that they do not want to eat on the surface? We put on a dirt snake and nymph the little f*ckers out! Thats what we do!!

 Or is it?

 

Westslope Cutst are pretty things, olive orange and freckled with a brilliant red slash on their throats. They tend to be hungry little strumpets, if you are lucky you will witness one feeding on mayfly's as Homer did on chips in space, and it is this single minded gluttony that makes these fish so special. No where else have I witnessed a trout move twelve feet up through the water column  to eat a dry fly, no other kind of trout I have seen will feed in mid river heft to gorge on a Drake hatch. A Cutt it seems was built to eat dry flies, its apart of how they are programmed, apart of how they live and thrive and it is how we fish for them. Here in lies the problem, if a Cutt will not eat on the surface how badly do you need to catch one?

If I cannot get a Cutt to come up and eat my fly, nine times out of ten I will move on. You see, Cutts rarely jump and aren't very good at running but they are good at eating dries, and it is this quality that makes me want to catch one. I want to see the deliberate take, I want to slow my set and let it take my fly, its a visceral experience that I crave. Just as I crave the reel screaming run of the Rainbow or the crushing blow of a Brown eating my streamer. I do not fantasize or want for the lazy head shakes of a Cutt caught on a pink "thing" hung from a bobber and for some reason I find it hard to believe that most anglers would.

Its seems to me though that the more I am on the Elk the more I see people nymphing for our lovely creatures and I often wonder if its all that they hoped for.

Is it wrong to nymph or streamer for Cutts? No. I have done and will do it again and probably for money. I will tell you this though, the more we nymph them the harder it will be to convince them to eat as they want to, on the surface.

Happy hunting friends!