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Dreams of ‘that bend’ and its dusk risers

What do you do with a secret outdoors hot spot you can’t walk or wade to anymore? I make a living bequest to my son, John, and a special friend or two, the latest of whom checked out my favourite stretch of the Crowsnest River one evening recently.
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What do you do with a secret outdoors hot spot you can’t walk or wade to anymore? I make a living bequest to my son, John, and a special friend or two, the latest of whom checked out my favourite stretch of the Crowsnest River one evening recently.

“The river was alive with rising fish, but they were all those six-inch rainbows. I did see some rises of what I thought were a little bigger fish along the banks on the way down to that bend, but couldn’t get them to take anything … a 13-inch brown that jumped over my fly was the biggest fish I saw in there.”

Here is my reply and No. 1 in an occasional series: secret spots I’ll never see again.

That short stretch of water from where you start, down to “that bend,” is probably the one I miss most for the amazing experiences it has given me, despite the fact that it is the most ordinary, unproductive-looking water you, or the hundreds of anglers who wade by it, will ever see.

John and I have spent hours there on July, August and September evenings, debating whether a tiny, repeated rise-form is only an entire tiddler flipping at flies, or just the neb (nose) of a huge “banker” rainbow barely breaking the surface to sip something miniscule.

If it is dusk or later, and the suspicious rise is no more than a foot from either bank, in a dozen fish-favoured spots, it is generally a big rainbow. This is hunting, more than fishing, and many anglers will splash on by, heading downstream to beat you to the “good pools” while you sit and watch.

These big bankers are seldom there in broad daylight, unless there is a major hatch on, such as golden stoneflies, or pale morning dun, or blue winged olive mayflies. Where the big fish suddenly come from at dusk remains a mystery.

When I have decided that the small rises are really a big trout and wade over, upstream of it, I can often see the whole fish in the dim light, and maybe even see the tiny insect it is taking. My best results have come with a white-winged No. 18 Elk Hair Caddis, Stimulator, or a parachute Pale Evening Dun or BWO imitation, occasionally a Griffiths Gnat in the same size, cast downstream and across on a slack line.

The top spot over the years has been “that bend,” where the current collides with the high bank, bends sharply and glides left along it. On a very bright, hot day, only once, I took a big rainbow hiding in the shade there, on a hopper. Otherwise, a big trout or two will suddenly appear there and start rising two inches from the bank, just as the sun is setting behind Turtle Mountain and Frank Slide.

Of course, I am just assuming this play still goes on, but I am confident the stage, “that bend,” is the same or similar, despite the recent flood; after all, it endured the 2000 and 2005 floods.

There were two risers down there one evening and I hooked the downstream one first, and landed the 50-cm rainbow in the pool downstream, then went back up and took the other 61-cm rising rainbow.

John hooked a big riser there one late evening that took us down below the little island before we landed a 71-cm rainbow. I doubted my tape, until I read a story in The Pass Promoter from a couple of weeks earlier about a 71-cm rainbow taken in the Crow.

John helped me wade down there five or six years ago, and I took my final trout in that spot, a 66-cm rainbow that hooked me deeply in the left index finger as I released it. Fortunately, by that time I had quit tying flies smaller than No. 16 and this was a fly shop No. 20 parachute pattern tied on a barbless hook. It slid easily out and spared John, who was already ashen at the mere thought of performing, at my instructions, the monofilament, push down-then-jerk barbed hook operation on the old man’s finger.

Then John helped me on my last, long, hard wade back upstream in the dark. The shortcut through the woods became no longer an option the day a grizzly sow and her two yearling cubs came out of those woods behind us, not 15 metres from where John and I were lunch-eating bumps on a log.

Back when I was able to fish as many as 100 times a year, I never had dreams of fishing; now I frequently do. One dream is of being levitated by Buck Rogers Jet Pack, or “beamed” up by Scotty, something, one last time to “that bend,” to see again the big risers at dusk, make a few casts, maybe even hook a brown trout, a new species in this old secret spot of mine.

Bob Scammell is an award-winning columnist who lives in Red Deer. He can be reached at bscam@telusplanet.net.