I started fly fishing in Alberta (after moving from BC) in the early '70s. Seldom would see anyone on our rivers or streams. Huge hatches that were so big that some days you had to keep your mouth shut or automatic lunch. Only one fly shop in town and very little interest in the hobby. In those days we would catch the odd Brook trout and Cuttie in the Bow on a regular basis. The dry fly fishing was often stellar with big Drakes and other Stonefly species that are now seldom seen.
Read a report the other day in
Scientific American that first evidence that soft-membraned fish eggs, eaten and pooped out by birds, can still hatch into viable young. So it may not be so much bucket brigades as Quackers. Wonder if this will make the "cleansing" of lakes a questionable step.