smitty9
05-27-2012, 01:27 PM
Got out for a drive yesterday around the Brazeau River watershed looking for some early season small-creek action. Specifically, I was actually looking for some nice brookie water.
Ended up doing more driving than fishing, including and 1.5 hr stint navigating a road that wasn't on my Backroads Mapbook. Confused as hell, I just followed it to km 0 (it was obviously a major haul road) and lo and behold I end up at pavement! I am thinking "what the fudge, a paved road?" I guessed - correctly it turned out - that I had come out somewhere on the Sunchild road. Got myself re-oriented and carried on.
Anyways, the fishing was bust, didn't find any new water worth mentioning. The one time I followed a road to a gas well that indicated that it came close to a river I wanted, and it was! Except..the river was 100 feet below me at the bottom of sheer cliff. Oh well...that's the fun of exploring, lol.
All the water is very low and clear, which concerns me, since the snow is virtually gone, and with the exception of the Brazeau river proper, none of the waters I looked at will be getting any snowmelt, since their headwaters don't originate in the mountains. So...if the spring continues to be relatively dry, and the summer too, we're looking a low flows for several of the central muskeg rivers. Could be a tough summer temperature wise for trout...
Good day overall, even was a lot of driving. Highlights included seeing about 2 dozen whitetail deer, a great horned owl, and...my first time ever spotting a cougar! Thankfully I was in my truck ambling down a bush road...
Looking forward to next weekend...probably go for some tried and true stillwater action.
Smitty
Ended up doing more driving than fishing, including and 1.5 hr stint navigating a road that wasn't on my Backroads Mapbook. Confused as hell, I just followed it to km 0 (it was obviously a major haul road) and lo and behold I end up at pavement! I am thinking "what the fudge, a paved road?" I guessed - correctly it turned out - that I had come out somewhere on the Sunchild road. Got myself re-oriented and carried on.
Anyways, the fishing was bust, didn't find any new water worth mentioning. The one time I followed a road to a gas well that indicated that it came close to a river I wanted, and it was! Except..the river was 100 feet below me at the bottom of sheer cliff. Oh well...that's the fun of exploring, lol.
All the water is very low and clear, which concerns me, since the snow is virtually gone, and with the exception of the Brazeau river proper, none of the waters I looked at will be getting any snowmelt, since their headwaters don't originate in the mountains. So...if the spring continues to be relatively dry, and the summer too, we're looking a low flows for several of the central muskeg rivers. Could be a tough summer temperature wise for trout...
Good day overall, even was a lot of driving. Highlights included seeing about 2 dozen whitetail deer, a great horned owl, and...my first time ever spotting a cougar! Thankfully I was in my truck ambling down a bush road...
Looking forward to next weekend...probably go for some tried and true stillwater action.
Smitty