In the early morning of April 29th, 1903 one hundred twenty million tons of rock thundered down from Turtle Mountain, slammed into the Crowsnest River and valley throwing up and out centuries of deposited silt, killing up to 90 people and destroying a significant portion of the town of Frank before rumbling up the hills on the other side of the valley. From the picture above one could be forgiven for thinking all that rock some how flew over the Crowsnest River. A small barrier to the river was formed by rocks at the east end of the slide area. The subsequent displacement of the silty valley floor and the impoundment created a small lake which, unsurprisingly, was named after the town of Frank.
Back in the 70’s Frank Lake looked more like this photoshopped image and stumbling through the rocks at the base of Turtle Mountain one could dap or cast his flies or lures and catch some nice rainbows. More importantly for me was the fact that the lake was a great depository for silt coming in from the tributaries to the river upstream. So on many of the days the river was running the colour of chocolate milk through the Pass I could put in some where downstream of Frank Lake and fish cleaner water at least for a short time anyway.
It was inevitable that some day the lake would silt in and look more like the river it was before that disastrous event of 1903 but there is little doubt in my mind the emptying /cleaning of Blairmore’s water supply dam on York Creek in the 80’s and the Lost Creek fire of 2003 hastened that process. What happens in the head waters of a river system can and does have far reaching downstream impacts even when we can not see the impact as we can in the lake created by the fall of Turtle mountain.
Frank Lake did provide some good fishing opportunities but it was the river upstream from the slide where I spent much of my time fly fishing in the 70s and early 80s for the bright rainbows that would often eagerly eat my offerings despite my presentation. It was also in the late 70s that I decided it would be smarter to save money and get exactly the kind of flies I wanted when I wanted them. Boy, was it ever naive to believe I would save money and learning to tie effective flies with no guidance other than the odd book I could acquire on trips to the city was difficult, time consuming, and frustrating to say the least but I stuck with it. There were flys I read about and desired that simply were not readily available.
I began my efforts the winter of 78 but it wasn’t until late summer / early fall of the following year that I finally tied a pattern that actually looked like a fly pattern pictured in in Flies of the Northwest put together by the Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club. I quickly took that fly, an American Coachman, down to the river just above Frank Lake and as luck would have it one of the nicer rainbows that lurked beside a big rock ate that fly on one of my first few casts. It didn’t matter that the fly was a streamer, which was supposed to sink, but instead floated over the likely lie when the fish hammered it. I was hooked. Later that week I gave all my store bought (many $$ worth) flies to a friend I worked with.
Alberta on the Fly 