North Raven River

The North Raven, which most anglers still call Stauffer Creek, is a spring creek in the farm country west of Caroline. It rises from springs at the Leavitt and Stainbrook Springs conservation sites and winds about 34 km east and south to the Raven River at Highway 54. Wild brown trout carry the fishery, with brook trout in the upper creek and the odd northern pike lower down. The creek was worn down by cattle and farming by the 1960s. In 1973 Alberta's Stauffer Creek Habitat Improvement Program began to fence cattle off the banks, and the Buck for Wildlife fund, the Alberta Conservation Association, Trout Unlimited Canada (now Freshwater Conservation Canada), the Alberta Fish and Game Association and local landowners have kept the work going since. About 70% of the creek is now fenced, and in the fall of 2019 ACA crews counted more than 1,600 trout redds above Highway 761. It is open all year with a bait ban, and every trout you catch goes back.

This is small, slow, technical water. The creek averages about 9 m (30 ft) wide, with deep undercut banks, weed beds, soft silt that grabs your boots and thick willows that leave little room for a back cast. The spring water stays clear through most rain, so the trout see you before you see them. Move slowly, keep low and expect to work for a few fish. The browns are not leader-shy if the drift is clean, so a stronger tippet than you expect gives you a chance to turn a good fish away from the willows. Blue-winged olives start the dry-fly season in spring. Green drakes come in the first two weeks of June, best on overcast afternoons, with brown drakes in the evenings over the same weeks. Pale morning duns follow in late June and early July, and caddis hatch through the summer. From late August, hoppers, beetles, ants and backswimmer patterns bring up the bigger fish. The springs keep about the top quarter of the creek free of ice all winter, so you can fish a nymph or a small streamer in January when the streams around it are frozen.

Almost all of the creek runs through private land, and you fish it by agreement. The ACA and its partners hold conservation sites and habitat leases along both reaches, with gravel parking at Township Road 37-3, off Range Road 5-3, and beside Highway 761 at the Coulson site. Stay inside the fenced riparian corridor unless the landowner gives you permission, leave gates as you found them, and treat every site as foot access and day use only, with no fires. Trout spawn from mid-October into December, mostly above Highway 761, so step around clean gravel beds in the fall. Beaver dams back the creek up in places, and the ACA removes some each year to keep the spawning gravel clear. The creek's reputation draws about 2,500 anglers a year, so expect company at the main lots on a summer weekend. Caroline, about 15 minutes away, has a motel, food and fuel. If the North Raven is too hard on a given day, the Raven River, which it joins at Highway 54, holds brown trout too and opens April 1.