The Livingstone is southern Alberta’s most popular cutthroat stream. Early in the summer its westslope cutts hammer big attractor drys on 4X, but by September they’ve quit that game. Late in the season small drys, small nymphs, and light tippets work best. Much of the Livingstone is accessible from the Forestry Trunk Road, and the stream gets a lot of weekend fishing traffic in July and August.

The Crowsnest is one of the West’s best small rivers, with strong trout populations and excellent fishing for rainbows and cutthroats between 10 and 20 inches. It is the most heavily fished stream in the drainage and has many good hatches: Salmonflies, Golden Stones, Pale Morning Duns, caddis, Green Drakes, and Blue-winged Olives. Recently it has become a more technical trout stream, characterized by selective and sometimes difficult trout. There is good access to the Crowsnest from secondary roads off Highway 3, the major east-west highway in southern Alberta.

The Castle River flows out of the rugged and remote Alberta Rockies and into the Oldman Reservoir from the south. The Castle and its tributaries--the West Castle, South Castle, Lynx Creek, Carbondale River, and others--are excellent cutthroat and bull trout streams. In 1995, floods destroyed or damaged many backcountry roads in the Castle watershed and access became difficult. Some parts of these streams are still accessible on decent gravel roads, but much of the upper Castle watershed is available only to adventurous anglers prepared for serious hiking or mountain biking. This is wilderness country, an area where you’re as likely to meet a grizzly bear as another angler.

The Waterton River is a good stream that has yet to find its way onto the fly-fishing radar. It flows north out of Waterton National Park and into a reservoir created by a dam above the park. Above the reservoir the fish are a mix of cutthroats, rainbows, browns, and bulls--below are rainbows and browns. The Waterton is accessible from Highways 2, 6, 505, and 810.

The St. Mary is a good rainbow river but because it is flanked by private land on one side and by a large native reserve on the other, access is limited.

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Jim McLennan is the author of Fly-Fisherman Western Trout Streams (Stackpole Books, 2003) and owns and operates McLennan Fly Fishing Schools (www.mclennanflyfishing.com) in southwest Alberta.

This article originally appeared in the July 2007 issue of Fly Fisherman.

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