Intro | Equipment | Seasons | Methods | Calgary Fly Shops

The benchmark for bragging-sized trout in North American streams is 20 inches. On most streams, 20-inchers are rare or nonexistent; on a few streams they are occasional, pleasant surprises. On the Bow River below Calgary, they are expected. The size of its fish has been perhaps the only constant on this river known for both great fish and great unpredictability. The Bow below Calgary produces larger average trout than virtually any other stream in North America. It continues to give capable fly-fishers many rainbows and browns between 20 and 24 inches long.

Yet, as great as this river is, it is difficult to know intimately. Anglers new to fly-fishing, as well as experienced fly-fishers new to this river are usually frustrated by this water, at least for awhile. They hear the stories, see the TV shows, read the fishing reports on the Internet, and still have all kinds of trouble.

The main difficulty is the size of the river. Often 100 yards wide, the sheer volume of water puts many people off their game. The best advice I can give is to concentrate on parts of the river with character. Character can be defined as variation in depth, current speed, current direction, bottom type, and surface type. Look for places where these variations meet one another. The Bow has areas with plenty of character and other areas with very little character. Learn to focus on the former and bypass the latter. I often encourage new anglers to concentrate on smaller side channels to help reduce the level of intimidation.

The shortest path to good fishing on this water comes from up-to-the-minute local knowledge. Even experienced fly fishers will benefit from hiring a guide or fishing with a local angler for their first few days on the Bow.

Equipment

Though you might hear otherwise, it is not necessary to have a boat to fish the Bow. There is no question that a drift boat or pontoon boat is a substantial asset, but there is also a reasonable amount of good wade-fishing available. The best way to find it is to walk for 15 or 20 minutes from one of the public access sites between south Calgary and the town of Carseland. You can access the river at the Highway 22X Bridge, Deerfoot Trail Bridge, Policeman's Flats (off Dunbow Road), MacKinnon flats, and near the Carseland weir. Ask for exact directions to these locations at local fly shops.

To catch Bow River trout consistently throughout the day, anglers must be flexible and able to employ a variety of dry-fly, nymph, and streamer tactics.

Since it's not uncommon to cast tiny dry flies and enormous streamers the same day, some care must be taken in choosing tackle. If you're fishing the river on foot, it's best to pick a versatile outfit, like an 8½- or 9-foot 6-weight that provides adequate finesse and power. If you're floating the river you might prefer to have two outfits ready - one an 8½- or 9-foot, 4- or 5-weight for nymphs and smaller dries, and the other beefy 9-foot 7-or 8-weight for full-contact streamer fishing.

All dry fly fishing and most nymph fishing can be done with standard weight-forward floating lines. Streamers are best fished on quick-sinking sink-tip lines early in the summer, and on floating lines later on.

Any quality reel will suffice on the Bow, but take note that this is one of few trout streams where backing is required. The fighting quality of Bow River fish, especially the rainbows, is legendary. I vividly recall fishing with Dr. Charles Oyer one September when he had trout take all his fly line and part of his backing 15 times in two days.

It's worth mentioning leaders. When used with sink-tip fly lines, streamers are best fished on leaders 6-feet or shorter, with tippets of 1X or 2X. Nymphs and big dries like hoppers and stoneflies are fished on conventional 9-foot leaders with 3X or 4X tippets, depending on the size of the fly. Dry fly fishing during mayfly and caddis hatches is usually done with 9- to 12-foot leaders of 4X or 5X. If these tippet sizes seem a bit heavy, it's because they are. You should use the heaviest tippet you can, because you'll need it.

Seasons

The Bow between Calgary and Carseland is open to angling all year, but only the upper portion of that section remains ice-free through the winter. Most visitors to the Bow are interested in fishing the other three seasons.

Spring. After the ice leaves the river sometime in March, the days lengthen and the nights warm. Once the water temperature in the river approaches 50 degrees F. the fish begin to behave like summer trout. They move out of the deep, slow wintering holes and spread throughout the river, establishing lies in bottom-depressions, riffles, turbulent runs, and quiet water along the banks.

April and May are pre-runoff months, and though the fishing is generally quite good, there are some things to know about. First is the fact that many of the mature rainbow trout move out of the Bow into the Highwood River to spawn in April and May. This leaves less total trout in the mainstem Bow, but it doesn't seem to affect overall fishing success.

Second is the fact that there is very little pre-runoff dry fly fishing. The most notable demonstration of this is during the heavy spring Baetis hatch, which the trout usually ignore. The water's surface gets fuzzy with these mayflies on the right April afternoon, but you've got to look long and hard to find a fish eating them. A somewhat better possibility is the "Mother's Day Caddis" hatch which generally appears in late May and and at this latitude should be called the "Victoria Day Caddis," in honor of the Canadian holiday that falls near May 24. About one year in three this hatch provides a short period of great dry-fly fishing for big trout. More often, it coincides with the start of runoff and is wasted on dirty water.

The most reliable ways to catch Bow trout in spring are on streamers and nymphs. Good streamers for pre-runoff fishing are Bow River Buggers and Clouser Minnows in #6 or #8. Nymph fishers rely on proven patterns like the San Juan Worm, Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear, and Prince Nymph. In May, it's good to fish caddis larva imitations, Pheasant Tails, and Golden Stone nymphs.

Runoff begins in late May or early June and makes the river unfishable for a period of one to three weeks.

Summer. The most important thing to know about early summer on this water is that the fishing gets good before most people think it does. Once runoff has receded to the point where you can see into the water 18 inches, it's ready to go. The five or six-week period from the recession of runoff until the end of July is one of the most popular times to fish the Bow. Everything seems to be happening at once. Streamer and nymph fishing are at their best as the hungry rainbows return from their spawning journey. Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) are on the water from late morning to early evening. And if that's not enough, the sun doesn't set until about 10 PM, which is just about the time the nightly caddis attack begins. Many local anglers don't even start to fish until about 9 PM. This way they can return home from work, have a leisurely dinner with the family, put the kids to bed and then go fishing for a few hours.

Hopper time—late July through September—is an excellent time to fish large dry flies from a drift boat or by wading and casting the flies upstream and along the banks.

This is when versatile anglers have an advantage. A typical day in early July might go like this: Start the morning with big streamers on a sinking line; watch for fish rising to PMDs in the flats in early afternoon; fish the top of a pool with a double-nymph rig in the late afternoon; cast dry caddis to rising fish late into the evening.

One day in late July someone will whisper to a friend in the back corner of a Calgary fly shop, "I caught four fish on hoppers yesterday." Within hours, similar whispers will be heard in other fly shops, in oil company boardrooms, and at boat ramps along the river. Grasshopper season, one of the most enjoyable times of year, has arrived. Hopper fishing is appealing because it catches large fish regularly and allows fly-rodders to use big dry flies.

By the beginning of August, summer is at its peak. The water is low and clear, weeds are apparent on the bottom of the river, and the grass along the top of the river valley has turned a sun-baked brown. Along with hoppers, three other bugs—Tricos, and Blue-winged Olives, and caddisflies—dominate the August hatch chart. Tricos begin to hatch in early August and continue daily for six to eight weeks. Spinner-falls occur every morning, but they are only available to the trout for an hour or so and the fishing is often disappointing. The Baetis (Blue-winged Olives) are a better bet. They begin to hatch in August and continue through to mid-October, with the heaviest emergences coming on cloudy or overcast afternoons. Though the trout ignore these bugs in the spring, they eat them in August and September.

It's important to understand that though Bow remains quite stable downstream of Calgary through the summer months, the water can become dirty very quickly following a severe thunderstorm in the city. The good news is that once the rain stops, the river clears just as quickly. After a heavy shower the river may go from completely clear to completely muddy and back again in as little as 24 to 48 hours.

Fall. The best dry-fly fishing through September and into October is to Blue-winged Olive mayflies. As the nights get cooler and the days get shorter, the window of opportunity for finding rising fish gets smaller. In early September, you can find rising fish throughout the afternoon and evening. By mid-October, though, the best chance at rising fish is during the warmest part of the day—from about 2 to 5 PM. Grasshopper fishing remains good through September and wanes when the nights begin to freeze.

Streamers and nymphs are good choices through the fall, though heavy weed growth in the river sometimes becomes an obstacle to overcome. During an autumn that follows a hot summer, the volume of aquatic weeds in the river is substantial. The problem is not with the weeds attached to the bottom, but with those that break loose and drift with the current to hang up on flies, lines, and leaders. The severity of the problem varies from day to day. Since water levels fluctuate a small amount daily, the amount of weeds adrift in the current also fluctuates—increasing after a slight rise in water level, and decreasing after a slight drop.

The drifting weeds sometimes make it impossible to fish a standard streamer pattern, so some anglers use flies tied with weed guards. You can also reduce the difficulties by avoiding the outsides of bends where the drifting weeds collect. It also helps to fish any sinking fly—streamer or nymph—by having it drift with the current rather than swinging it or moving it across the current.

Nymphs continue to take fish through the autumn season. Because of the heavy weed growth in the fall, it is sometimes necessary to concentrate on channels through the weeds or on areas of faster, broken water where weeds don't grow as densely.

Methods

The most important asset for a Bow River angler is versatility. It is essential to be comfortable with a variety of methods, and to be prepared to change them frequently, letting the fish decide which one is most effective.

Dry flies. As is the case on any trout stream, there are two times when you can fish with dry flies—when the fish are rising, and when they're not. The latter, often called "fishing blind," or "fishing the water" is most successful on the Bow after the fish have been conditioned to feed occasionally on large insects like adult stoneflies and grasshoppers. This kind of dry-fly fishing can work anytime from early July through mid-October.

Fishing the water can be done on foot, but it's a method that seems to have been invented for use with a drift boat. A good rower keeps the boat a comfortable distance from productive water near the banks while the casters aim their flies ahead of the boat, make upstream mends, and watch the flies drift drag-free for 100 feet or more. The best places are along bankside deflections, at the heads of pools, and on the inside corners of large bends. On the Bow, as on most big Western rivers, the "hopper-dropper" method, wherein a big dry fly is paired with a small nymph like a Pheasant Tail or Lightning Bug, is very popular.

To fish the water on foot, choose a section of river that has good character and depth of 18-inches or more near the bank. Look for places where moving water meets still water. Cast your hopper or stonefly upstream so it drifts without drag along the current edge. Sometimes this current seam is just a few inches from the bank and sometimes it's a few feet from the bank, but it's a safe bet that the fish will be lying within a few inches of the inside edge of the moving water.

For some fishermen it's all about numbers—throwing a #18 dry fly at a 22- or 23-inch fish that's feeding in 12 inches of water. This kind of dry-fly fishing gave the Bow its reputation in the early 1980s. It still happens today, but finding the rising fish is sometimes the trickiest part. The fish do it best during times of low light, such as on cloudy days or late in the evening. The best hatches for bringing big fish into shallow water are caddis, Blue-winged Olives and PMDs, but in order to catch trout during these hatches you must hunt before you fish. Search the slow flats, the tailout bays, and the shallow water along both the outside and inside of bends. Look for the gentle head and tail rise that indicates a big fish. When you find one, sneak into position below the fish, check your knots, and cast your dry so it drifts down to him without drag.

The drawback to this business is that some days you look for rising fish and don't find them. If you knew it was going to be like that you could have caught more fish if you'd simply fished with streamers or nymphs. But don't worry about it. This is one of the ways of paying your dues on this river, and when you do find big trout pigging out in the shallows you'll be plenty glad for the time spent hunting for them.

Nymphs. Like dry flies, nymphs can be fished from a drifting boat or while wading. From a boat, most fishermen use two flies—often a San Juan Worm or Golden stonefly nymph, paired with a smaller nymph like a Prince. Extra weight is often needed to get the flies down into the deeper water, and most nymphers use a large buoyant indicator to regulate the depth of the flies' drift and to tell them when a fish has eaten. In this type of fishing, the oarsman's role is critical. He must position the boat so the anglers can get long drag-free drifts through current seams, along drop-offs, and around bottom structure. An advantage of boat-nymphing is that it allows anglers to work both bankside water and mid-river chutes and runs.

Nymphing with a tandem nymph rig is one of the most common and productive techniques on the Bow. A San Juan Worm took this fish but other good patterns include Prince Nymphs, Hare's-Ear Nymphs, Pheasant-tail Nymphs, and other impressionistic mayfly and stonefly nymph imitations.

If you like to wade and fish nymphs you can do it a variety of ways. Most popular is the long-line method which uses the same tackle as boat-nymphing. The casts are made up-and across-stream, and mends are used to help the flies drift drag-free through the best lies. Whether you're in a boat or on your feet it's important to keep the flies near the bottom of the river, so adjustments to weight and indicator position must be made frequently.

Light nymphing is also a productive way to fish the Bow while wading. It requires a 9- to 12-foot leader, a fly like a Bead-head Pheasant Tail and a small yarn indicator. Throw the fly along the current seams near the bank and upstream of depressions in the bottom. This method is most effective in water two feet deep or less.

Streamers. Always a staple method on the Bow, streamers still account for most of the largest fish each year. They are perhaps most effective in late June as the river is clearing from runoff. At this time of year the fish often hold very close to the banks, making early summer the best time for "pounding the banks" from a drift boat. A sink-tip fly line and big streamers like the Bow River Bugger or Clouser Minnow are used. The casts must be made to within inches of the bank, and the fly is retrieved just a few feet before being recast. Streamers can also be fished by wading, using the down and across method favored by Atlantic salmon fishermen

The Bow River Bugger—a cross between a Woolly Bugger and a Muddler Minnow—is a popular and effective streamer pattern. Also try Clouser Minnows, Ganders, and various leech imitations.

The Bow is truly one of the world's great trout streams, and every angler owes it to himself to try it. But be warned: It can become an addiction. Perhaps the only bad part of the Bow River experience is that it causes some anglers to exclude other waters from their plans. As many Alberta fly-fishers put it, "Why would I go someplace else when I can fish the Bow?"