The Oldman River
Jim McLennan

This is supposed to be a fishing story, and I'll try to remember that, but Alberta's Oldman River is a stream that tugs an author in many directions.  The valley of this river has been revered by the Peigan and Blackfoot Indians, settled by the Mounted Police, coveted by the oil and gas industry, defended by environmental groups and flooded by the provincial government.  The Oldman's history is still a work in progress, and meditation on such issues as these puts the significance of things like pale morning duns and green drakes in new perspective. 

But make no mistake, the Oldman River is a trout stream - nearly 100 miles of fine trout stream, in fact.  Its first exposure to the fly fishing world came with a small mention in McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia in 1965.  In the entry for Alberta, the late A.J. McClane said, "the best stream fishing for rainbow trout in Alberta is to be found in the Bow River for approximately twenty-five miles downstream from the city of Calgary and in the Oldman River as it winds through the foothills northwest of the town of Pincher Creek."  Since then the Bow has received its share of public attention, but the Oldman has remained largely unheralded beyond the borders of Alberta. 

The Big Picture
The Oldman begins as numerous named and unnamed trickles of snowmelt along the continental divide southwest of the city of Calgary   These join and take on a formal name west of Highway 40, a gravel road running north and south through the edge of the Rockies.  Highway 40 is also also called the Forestry Trunk Road, and is the major means of access to the high country of the upper Oldman watershed.  The Oldman is joined by the Livingstone River, its major northern tributary, and Racehorse Creek before squirting eastward through a narrow opening in the mountains appropriately called the Gap.  According to Peigan legend, the Old Man is Na'pi, the Great Spirit and provider of life.  It is said that he watches over all he has created from a vantage point near the headwaters of the river.  While powerful and omnicient, the Peigans also knew Na'pi to be something of a sly practical joker.

Once through the Gap, the river moves southeastward into the cattle country of Waldron Flats.  Part of this lovely area of rolling foothills, rocky outcroppings, grass, and limber pines is called the Whaleback and is currently the object of a struggle between environmentalists and advocates of oil and gas exploration.  For now the Whaleback is free of such development and its hidden coulees and windy ridges are known best by cowboys, hikers and fly fishers.

Downstream of Highway 22, the river dekes around the south end of the Porcupine Hills and enters the Oldman Reservoir north of the small farming community of Cowley.  In the early 1990s a dam on the mainstem Oldman below its confluence with the Crowsnest and Castle rivers created this huge irrigation reservoir in the valleys of the rivers.  Twenty eight miles of three trout streams were lost.  The project was a source of major controversy involving natives, environmentalists, farmers, anglers, angry taxpayers and the provincial government, who ultimately claimed victory.  While the dam was under construction, Alberta's legendary cowboy historian, outdoorsman and best-selling author, Andy Russell, told the story of the river and the ill-advised dam in a book calledThe Life of a River.  But even Andy  Russell, a man appointed to the Order of Canada by Queen Elizabeth, and enormously respected as the most practical of environmentalists, could not slow the engineering juggernaut, and the dam was completed in 1991.

Below the reservoir the new tailwater portion of the Oldman flows six miles before entering the Peigan Indian Reserve.  Below the reserve the river cuts through the town of Fort Macleod, named for the Northwest Mounted Police colonel who led troops west to quell the activities of American whiskey traders in1874.  Downstream further the Oldman is joined from the south by the Waterton River which comes out of Waterton Lakes National Park, and the St. Mary, which flows north out of Montana  The Oldman bisects the city of Lethbridge before entering the prairie and flowing toward its confluence with the Bow River and its new name - South Saskatchewan River - west of the city of Medicine Hat.

To a trout fisherman there are three distinct sections of the Oldman.  We'll consider the reach from the headwaters to the Gap as the upper river, from the Gap to the reservoir as the middle Oldman, and the river from the reservoir to Lethbridge as the lower river.

Upper Oldman (Headwaters to The Gap)

The upper river smells.  In summer the aroma is cool and green, a delicious mix of thin air and evergreens.  Friday evenings this is joined by a blend of woodsmoke and gravel dust as campers from Calgary and Lethbridge arrive for the weekend.  The upper river flows through high-country wilderness, but it is wilderness made touchable by a well-travelled gravel road.  Access is good.  Camping is good.  Fishing is good.

This part of the Oldman qualifies as a river I suppose, but just barely.  Twenty to fifty feet across, it spends most of its time in a narrow gorge.  Deep pools, tight corners and big boulders provide hidey-holes for the fish.

The fish in the upper Oldman are the wilderness trio of westslope cutthroats, bull trout and mountain whitefish.  Cutthroats are the correct and proper fish for wild country like this, and few things epitomize our sport more succinctly the sight of a gaudy cutthroat swivelling purposefully up through six feet of clear water to take a floating fly.  Upper Oldman cutthroats are not large, but fish to about 17 inches can be expected.

The whitefish like Hare's Ears and Golden Stone nymphs dead-drifted deeply through the heads of pools, and the bulls are partial to big gobs of marabou and over-sized Clouser Minnows.  But don't get me started on bull trout.  Since Alberta-wide no-kill regulations were placed on these fish in1995, their continued recovery has me headed for full status as a B.T. Junkie.

As bull trout go, those in the upper Oldman are not particularly large either.  But remember, a large bull is one over10 pounds.  Most of the deep pools in the upper river are patrolled by a couple of pale predators18 to 24-inches long.  The baby cutthroats are nervous.

In a story like this the author is expected to display his expertise in entomology by knowingly discussing the important insect hatches and the latest high-tech imitations thereof.  But we're talking about cutthroats and bull trout here.  Cowboy trout.  No speak the latino.  The cutts usually eat dries, and the bulls want streamers.  For those who consider this a cop-out I'll add that experts tell me the most important hatches on the upper Oldman are golden stoneflies that show up in mid to late June and Western Green Drake mayflies which arrive a couple of weeks later.  Reliable attractor dries, like Stimulators, Trudes and Wulffs, are good choices through summer and early autumn. 

Following a weekend of heavy fishing pressure the cutts can get a bit pouty and they show it by inspecting and then rejecting dry flies.  When this happens they can often be convinced to take a small nymph like a Beadhead Pheasant Tail, drifted a couple of feet below a dainty yarn strike indicator, or fished as a dropper beneath a bushy dry fly.

Though this part of the river opens to angling June 16, the water is usually too cold for good fishing until July.  It then fishes well through to early - October.  Access to the upper river is available from the Forestry Trunk Road and a gravel road that parallels the river.

Middle Oldman (The Gap to Oldman Reservoir)
As the river leaves the Rockies and enters the foothills it flows through sparsely-populated rangeland where cattle now graze the hills that were once home to mammoths and bison.  The river gains some nutrients from the land as it flows, and this natural enrichment allows it to grow bigger fish.  Rainbow trout begin to appear downstream of the Gap and become the dominant fish by the time the river passes the campground on Highway 22.  Details are vague, but the rainbows seem to have been introduced to the river in the 1920s and '30s.  

Maybe it's because rainbow trout have a higher IQ than cutthroats, but it seems more important on the middle Oldman to carry a nymph seine, insect I.D. handbook and fancy flies in your vest.  There are still green drakes and golden stoneflies here, but there are also more of the bugs we've come to associate with richer fisheries - pale morning duns, blue-winged olives and caddisflies.  The grazing land of the middle Oldman is also prime grasshopper country and the afternoon wind that skims over the jagged lip of Livingstone range and touches down near the Whaleback brings both blessing and curse to the fly fisher.

On the middle river the quarters are less cramped than in the confined stretches above the Gap, and a longer rod and slightly heavier line are called for.  A nine-foot, five-weight is perfect.  When the fish are looking up this is lovely dry fly water, but it's a difficult place to fish nymphs when they're not.  There are many sudden changes in depth and some of the deep water is too deep.  When I try to nymph this water I spend so much time adding and removing weight, adjusting and re-adjusting the indicator, lengthening and shortening the tippet, that I soon wonder where the fun went.  When the trout in the middle Oldman won't look up, I prefer to put on a fast sink-tip line and scour the pools with a streamer for bull trout.  Even when the bulls don't want to play, I sometimes catch bigger rainbows by doing this.

The middle Oldman is not a big river, but it feels like one and sounds like one.  Between the Gap and the reservoir the gradient remains reasonably steep.  There is some canyon water, some fast water, some big boulders and some deep pools.  There is also some treacherous wading.  The rocks are not especially slippery, but there are numerous ledges and sudden drop-offs, all disguised by water that is at least 50% deeper than it looks.

In the early 1990s, in the first few years after the Oldman Reservoir was filled, there were strange goings-on in the river above the reservoir.  The fish got big.  A river that had historically produced rainbows 10 to 18-inches long was suddenly full of16 to 22-inchers.  It stayed like this for a few years and then returned to normal.  No doubt there is a scientific explanation for this, relating to the new dam and reservoir, but I prefer to think it was the Old Man, displaying his weird sense of humor.

The middle Oldman is accessible from bridges on Highway 22 and the next gravel road downstream, and along Highway 517 which goes through the Gap and connects Highway 22 with the Forestry Trunk Road.

Lower Oldman (Oldman Reservoir to Lethbridge)

Oldman Dam to Peigan Indian Reserve
Some of the best pale morning dun fishing in Alberta occurs in July on the five-mile portion of the Oldman River downstream of the Oldman Dam.  I know this is true because so many people have told me about it.  I've tried to get in on it myself, but on the July days when I've been there the river has been strangely quiet.  And perhaps it's this lack of consistency that best summarizes the fishing on one of the most puzzling pieces of water in Alberta.

While the dam was under construction government officials were eager to put a counter-spin on the loss of large parts of three trout streams, and told anglers that a great tailwater fishery would develop below the dam.  And it has.  Sort of.  When conditions are right 12 to 20-inch rainbows seem to come out of the woodwork.  The problem is that nobody seems able to predict when conditions will be right.  Vic  Bergman, proprietor of the Crowsnest Angler fly shop in the nearby town of Bellevue, has watched the development of this fishery.  "It's a strange piece of water," he says.  "You never know from day to day what you'll find.  One day the river is clear, the next it's silty.  One day fish are everywhere, the next day you can't find them"

In the first few years after the completion of the dam, the river downstream was always clear.  But as silt accumulated and settled in the reservoir, the clarity of the water has become more easily affected by wave action.  During windy times (of which there are plenty - the reservoir is a favorite with wind-surfers), the river carries silt and is less than clear.

The river below the dam is also subject to a summertime growth of a gray algae that accumulates on the rocks of the stream bottom.  It provides no particular difficulty; neither fish nor insects seem to be affected by it, yet it is not something I've seen on other trout streams.

The river here looks like a minature version of the Bow downstream of Calgary.  Each bend is bounded on one side by a high sandstone cliff and on the other by a low, grassy flat.  Hawks wheel above and swallows nest in the cliffs and river banks.  This water is big enough for a driftboat or inflatable raft, and there is a short, pleasant float from the dam to the Summerview bridge just north of the town of Pincher Creek.  I especially like making this trip in August when the hoppers are chattering from the dry, south-facing banks.

One of the best times to fish below the Oldman Dam is in late winter or early spring when ice on the reservoir prevents the wind from stirring the silt.  Small nymphs like the South Platte Brassie and Pheasant Tail in size 16 and 18 are good here, as are streamers like the Bow River Bugger fished on a sink-tip fly line.  On warm days there is the prospect of winter dry fly fishing to heavy midge hatches. 

The tailwater section of the Oldman is open to angling year-round and is the only part of the river that is always free of ice.  This part of the river is accessible at the dam, at the Cottonwood Campground a short distance below the dam, and at the Summerview Bridge.

Below the Peigan Reserve

Six miles below the dam the river enters the Peigan Indian Reserve, where access and fishing are not permitted.  Consequently the rumours are entirely predictable - that is, that the fishing is spectacular.  For now these fish, however many they are and however big they may be, are off limits to all but band members and their guests.

Below the reserve the river is something of an unknown quantity.  There are still rainbows, whitefish and bull trout in this part of the Oldman, but the mystery fish is the brown trout.  Over the past 10 years at least two plantings of100,000 browns have been made in the river near Fort Macleod in an attempt to develop a self-sustaining fishery.  The problem is that the fish seem to disappear.  A few are caught every year, and fall redd counts indicate some spawning activity, but the general whereabouts of these fish is unknown.  Below the city of Lethbridge the river begins its gradual transition from trout stream to warm-water river, where pike, walleye and even sturgeon take over from the trout.

Public access below the reserve is available at bridges on Highway 2 and Highway 3, and in Fort Macleod and Lethbridge.  Other access requires crossing private ranchland, and permission to do so must be obtained from landowners. 

Tributaries
Most of the Oldman's tributaries are also good trout streams.  Upper tributaries are the Livingstone River and a number of small creeks that provide good fishing for cutthroats.  The Crowsnest River joins the Oldman from the south, their confluence now hidden within the Oldman Reservoir.  The Crowsnest is the most productive fishery in the system.  It is one of the most heavily fished streams in Alberta and provides good technical fishing for rainbows.  The Castle River joins the Oldman after flowing out of an wilderness area to the south  The Castle is good for small to medium-sized rainbows and cutthroats and good-sized bull trout.  (See the Winter 2000 issue of Northwest Fly Fishing for Vic Bergman's story on the Castle River.)  The Waterton River flows north out of Waterton Park, through a reservoir of its own and joins the Oldman west of Lethbridge.  It can provide good fishing for browns and rainbows both above and below the reservoir.  The St. Mary is another southern tributary that has good fishing for rainbows in those summers when it isn't severely de-watered for irrigation.

It was late October, and I was on a photographic mission to the Oldman River. My companion and I first visited the headwaters where we captured a few small cutthroats, some photos and a flat tire.  Then we climbed a hill for a spectacular view of the river coming out of the Gap, and we finished the day near the Forestry Trunk Road.  With just an hour or two left in both the day and in our season, we split up.  I walked upstream and fished three pools.  In the first there was a 16-inch cutthroat rising nicely and I caught him.  In the second there was another fish rising that I messed up on.  In the third there was another fish rising that I hooked on a dry fly.  This was a15-inch cutthroat, and it seemed to be fighting with unusual vigor.  As I dragged him toward the rock I was standing on, I saw the reason.  A two-foot bull trout was hot on his tail, charging and snapping and nearly beaching himself on my wading shoes as he tried to remove the cutthroat from my possession.  I landed and released the cutt, and took the hint.  I cut my leader back and put on the biggest, ugliest, marabou-iest streamer I could find.  Then I pitched it above the spot where the bull had come from and tried to make it behave like a cutthroat with a problem.  The bull slid up behind the pulsing streamer with fins flared and blood in his eye.  I watched him open his mouth an inch from the fly before changing his mind, slowly backing away and gliding into to the deep.  He would not come again to any of the half dozen different streamers I tried.  I could see him clearly, lying lying pale green in the heart of the run, and the vision has stayed with me ever since.  I know where he is, and I know I'll be back with new flies and new ideas when the new season begins on Na'pi's river.

Notebook:
When.  The river from the headwaters to Highway 22 is open to fishing from June 16 to October 31.  Runoff occurs in late May and lasts a couple of weeks.  Fishing is best from early-July to early October.   The river from Highway 22 to the reservoir is open April 1 to Oct. 31 though it doesn't generally fish well until late June. The river between the dam and the edge of the Peigan Indian Reserve is both open to fishing and free of ice year-round.

Regulations.  Special limits apply on different portions of the river at different times of the year, and it's important to check the regulations before fishing.

Appropriate Gear.  Four to six-weight rods with floating lines (and sink-tips for bull trout).  Nine-foot 3X, 4X, 5X leaders for cutthroats and whitefish.  Six foot 1X or 2X leaders for bull trout.

Useful Fly Patterns:  Royal Wulff, Humpy, Royal Trude, Adams, Bastard Adams, Green Drake, Stimulator, Pale Morning Dun, Griffith's Gnat, Dave's Hopper, Elk Hair Caddis, Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear, Golden Stone Nymph, Pheasant Tail Nymph, Clousser Minnow, Wooly Bugger.

Necessary Accessories:  Sunblock, rain jacket, insect repellant, bear spray.

Licences:  Anglers are required to purchase a Wildlife Identification Number for $8, which is good for 5 years.  A five-day non-resident licence costs $20, and non-resident season licence is $36.  Canadian residents pay $18 for a season licence.  All prices are in Canadian dollars and licences are subject to 7% Federal Goods and Services Tax.

Books/maps/videos:  The Life of a River by Andy Russell; Trout Streams of Alberta by Jim McLennan; Due North of Montana by Chris Dawson; Alberta's Trout Highway by Barry Mitchell; Leaning on the Wind by Sid Marty; Fish & Tell & Go To Hell, edited by J. Gregg Norman; Fly Fishing Alberta's Chinook Country (video) by Vic Bergman; Southwest Alberta Fly Fishing Map; Backroad Map Book- southwest Alberta edition; The Fishin' Map - Crowsnest area.      

Article Copyright Jim McLennan & authorized use by Anchor B Ranch.