Fly Fish Alberta ~ Fly Fishing Stauffer Creek, aka North Raven River

The North Raven River, locally known as Stauffer Creek, is highly regarded as Alberta's best, and certainly most prolific, spring creek. While the stream can be popular with fly fishers at given times of the year, it is certainly not busy throughout the entire season, and often leaves fly fishers wondering how to crack the code to find success. It is by no means an impossible stream, just a challenging one. In the grand scheme of fly fishing, Stauffer Creek is temperamental and forces anglers to methodically think and work their way through the day to have greatest success.

Stauffer boils out of spring headwaters, flows through pasture lands and spruce thickets before joining the Red Deer River. It’s a small stream, only about 15 to 20 feet wide, but don’t let size fool you, this is an exceptional brown trout stream.

Trout Unlimited worked extensively on Stauffer Creek, which had been beaten down by cattle farming practices for decades through the 1970s. Over 15 years, TUC did in stream habitat work by stabilizing banks and dredging silt, as well as installed stream riparian zone fencing to keep cattle out. Since works have been completed, this ecosystem has flourished. New willow and alder thickets have all but hidden signs of previous cattle use, and song birds, deer, and moose use the valley. It’s a success story on that level, let alone the brown trout fishery that has re-taken its former hold.

Stocked in the 1930’s, brown trout populations are stable and offer good fly fishing for trout reliably in the 10 to 18” range. These are shy trout in the peak of the season, following the script of most other spring creek browns. Also present in the headwaters area are brook trout. Large brookies for Stauffer are 16”, though most will be 5 to 10”.

The stream gets weedy in summer but has prolific hatches. The season’s hatches begin in March with various small, early stoneflies, followed by a light hatch of skwalas, before the reliable dry fly fishing begins in late April with blue winged olive mayflies. Once mayflies begin, the fishing continues with march browns, pmds, green drakes, brown drakes, hexagenias, as well as caddis. The summer continues with pmds, caddis, and hoppers, before the famed backswimmer hatch of late August carries us through fall with a return of blue winged olives. Hatches can often be heavy.

Stauffer is not too often heavily fished, though the green and brown drake hatches of early to mid June are popular as they are good hatches with good dry fly fishing at a time when most rainbow and cutthroat trout streams are in spring runoff. Stauffer seldom is unfishable, as it’s a small, spring fed drainage. Field runoff and heavy rains of early June are the two periods it may be high and muddy.

Stauffer does have some large brown trout, pushing 30”. For three springs we’ve chased two trout in one run, landing the smaller 26” trout a couple of times. The much larger brown plays coy, spooking once the smaller is hooked. Another run holds a fat 30+” trout that we’ve now hooked twice, getting spanked by a large tail once and broken off both times. Anglers shouldn’t expect trout near this size, but they are present. Most large browns hide during bright conditions, tucked into undercut banks that can lean 3 or 4 feet over the stream. It’s one of Alberta’s best streams to hone in on spooky trout that rival the wariest of other waters.

We offer walk and wade fly fishing trips for 1 - 2 anglers per guide on Stauffer. More than 2 is highly impractical. While guiding 2, we expect guests to use gentleman's fly fishing, taking turns and allowing each to have a go at a fresh run as we work our way upstream.