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Due North of Montana - A Guide To Flyfishing In Alberta. By Chris Dawson. Johnson Books. Spring Creek Press. $16.95.
In Due North of Montana he opens up the great Bow to visiting anglers, and goes on to provide a guide to some other wonderful rivers, like the Highwood, Castle and Oldman. Although the subtitle says the book is about flyfishing in Alberta, Mr. Dawson strays West in one chapter, to write about the Elk River, in southeastern British Columbia. The book is well organized, carefully thought out, crisply written and illustrated with clean maps and good colour photographs that give you a sense of why this part of the world is such a special flyfishing destination. This is as good as a guidebook as you’ll get to fishing in southern Alberta, which as the title says, is Due North of Montana. In the Preface, the author explains that he wrote the book so that visiting anglers would know there’s a lot more to fishing Alberta than the Bow River, which he deals with in the opening chapter. “I remember a time, not that long ago, when anglers equated Alberta flyfishing with the Bow River. Americans and other visiting flyrodders would show up in Calgary, fish the heck out of the Bow for a few days, then pack their bags. If a guide suggested that, “Hey there are a lot of other good rivers here as well, you know,” the client would usually hem and haw a bit and make a beeline straight for the airport and the next stop on the itinerary. “Well, times have changed. The Bow is still one of the best trout streams in the world, but foreign anglers are discovering what we Albertans have known all along - this province is a relatively untrammeled flyfishing paradise.” Mr. Dawson published those words in 1996. Since then, things have changed again. Now the Elk and some of the other lesser known rivers are getting famous. We hesitate to draw more attention to them - but if you're going to go to Alberta, read this book. It will guide you to far more than the Bow. Trout Streams of Alberta. A Guide To The Best Fly-Fishing. By Jim McLennan. Blue Ribbon Books. Johnson Gorman Publishers. $19.95.
Mr. McLennan’s book features good maps, but its real strength comes in his discussions of techniques and methods. An angler arriving in Alberta from out of province, or out of country, needs to prepare in advance, even if planning to use a guide. This book provides a good overview of the major watersheds in Alberta, takes an in-depth look at the way the prairie rivers work. Some of this is a bit too rudimentary - we assume that if you’re planning to travel all the way to Alberta to go fly fishing, you already know a lot of this stuff. That notwithstanding, Mr. McLennan’s book does provide a lot of valuable information. His chapter on fly patterns, well illustrated with colour plates, is particularly useful. Mr. McLennan can also be credited with realizing that in promoting fishing in Alberta rivers, he is also adding to the sports fishing pressure. This is an old dilemma for fishing writers - by drawing attention to the rivers they love, they risk destroying them with overcrowding. “So what of the future of Alberta’s trout streams?” he asks at one point. “Though the current state of affairs is quite good in most areas, if the quality of our fishing is to be maintained or even improved we’ll have to work as hard as ever to foster a conservative attitude among anglers and a proactive position among government policy-makers in matters of protecting habitat and regulating harvest. Alberta is still one of the best places in the world to fly-fish, but the future is not guaranteed. We can go either way from here.” If you’re planning a trip to Alberta, you’ll want to read as much as you can before you go....and after reading these books, you’ll want to schedule a couple of weeks for the trip.
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The Bow River starts in the Rocky Mountains, flows through the foothills and out onto the great flatlands of the Canadian prairies, heading straight for the city limits of Calgary - and writer Chris Dawson’s heart.
Veteran fly fisherman Jim McLennan took a slightly different track when tackling the subject of Alberta flyfishing, and produced a book that compliments rather than competes with the work by Chris Dawson.
