NEW Short Course: “Breaking Down A Cutthroat Trout Stream & Observing Changes Using Multi-Years Footage”

We recently published a new video that shares multi-dimensional considerations of trout habitat, movement and environmental considerations and impacts on our sample trout stream. The following is the ‘Producers’ Notes’ that accompany this production. The video is available by becoming a member of our Digital Membership.

This is a multi-dimensional video that combines several concepts, points, angles and agendas. It’s a bit of a geeky dive into a cutthroat trout river and is loaded with water reading, tactics, subtle knowledge and observations. It shares clips from multiple seasons and various edits. 

As you’ll see in the lead, it was originally supposed to be a sunny day sight-fishing video for cutthroat trout sharing where we’re looking for them in the differing micro-habitat types and why they’ll be there. We do exactly that and share those details, however, that day proved a challenge and we caught one random fish at the top end of what is typically 2 days of fishing for us. The habitat has dramatically changed through the top end of this river and true trout holding water through the year’s seasons has almost been eliminated, pushing trout out and downstream.

3 years earlier there was a massive storm that pounded the top end of this small headwater river. Typical late July flows are about 5 to 8 cubic meters per second (176cfs) and the storm hammered at nearly 350 m3s (12,360cfs). It was a punchy storm and we noticed a lot of the baby head rock and cobble runs at the top section were filled with sand, the inside bends filled with fine gravel piles. The next year we noticed the sand and fine gravel had been pushed further downstream and ultimately the year this video was shot the sand had drifted well down into the entire reach. Where the first year and prior we’d enjoyed sighting 30 to 40 fish a day in 1/2 the water, the next we engaged 15 a day and this season (in the video) we fished it twice to catch one trout in long days efforts. Obviously the cut from the storm in the headwaters is ongoing and being pushed downstream during high water events. And of course there are seasonal pushes and drought impacts atop this discussion and the natural trend is more fish early spread throughout the river, then they pool as the season wanes – the effects of the fine sand and gravel is different and well defined. 

We run into this situation a lot in New Zealand where massive storms alter river courses, push trout and change everything. The fish there tend to return the next season (though fewer) because they’re large & powerful, and there’s far less likelihood that the seasonal rains allow sediment dumps to linger, flushing sand from the rocks and freeing up holding structure. That isn’t the case in this stream and it’ll likely continue to decline until the sand flushes through. That could be this year. Or in 150 years. Nature does what it does. That said one hidden discussion of climate change is the severity of our storms. Where everyone is concerned with summer heat or drought, the severity and punchiness of storms is a concern as well. You can’t point a finger here and absolutely say this was climate change, these things have been happening for thousands of years, but we have to be mindful of the effect on severity and heightened incidence from climate change. I’d love to delve into the discussion of climate change but I suspect it wouldn’t be pop-culture enough, being more George Carlin in the mind of we are but one small snapshot in time in the history of this planet and like trout in these streams our human population will certainly see similar responses to our habitat despite our fighting of that inevitable change. But that’s at least 100 to 10,000 years from now. We hope. 

This all also spells out why I look first to habitat carrying capacity issues long before I look at the impacts of harvest or catch & release on these kinds of waters. Many locals are bemoaning the impact of this river being part of a new provincial park in SW Alberta and the increase of angling pressure through the pandemic. I simply don’t see things that way, so cut and dry. It simply doesn’t get enough pressure as yet. I look at what has changed in the carrying capacity (the upper finite limit of trout production per unit weight per reach length, including all life stage habitats from spawning, fry emergence, juvenile recruitment, maturity, wintering, drought, whirling disease, etc). If there’s a sudden change to any of these the impacts will be felt that year or 4 to 6 years down the line. Generally on Alberta waters the wintering habitat is the #1 limitation, however, on some other low productivity headwater streams that receive extreme pressure, trout handling in C&R has surpassed wintering habitat limitations. 

In fishing this stream and seeing what has transpired, and seeing how storms and flood seasons rearrange New Zealand trout populations… we’ve come to learn one hard rule with trout streams. Nothing is forever, change is inevitable, not to marry one’s mind to tomorrow’s hoped for result despite what our mind’s eye memory is, appreciate today, and fish it when it’s good because change is coming. 

Let’s get into it. The concept to this video is that we’re working our way upstream and sharing where we’re looking, why. Then we’ll share a previous 3 years’ footage with fish from the exact same pool or run. As you watch, pay attention to the flows, the lines of sand, water depth, and other subtle changes and note even the slightest changes can cause pushy water with no current breaks and leave a reach, a run or pool of a river fishless, as we found this day. Note that each run or pool where there are multiple years or sessions are segmented by hard black screen spacings. Do take the time to scrub back and forth on the scenes with prior years’ footage to see these subtle differences. The older scenes with fish are cut from prior Youtube edits and our style may have changed – thank you for allowing for that! 

Dave & Amelia