Prairie Creek

Prairie Creek is a small foothills stream that rises in the forest west of Rocky Mountain House and runs about 110 km east and north to the Clearwater River just south of town. It is local water, not a destination: a creek you fish for an evening or from a campsite, with modest numbers of fish. Brook trout and brown trout are the trout. Both were stocked from the 1920s into the 1960s, and neither is stocked today. Mountain whitefish live in the runs, and northern pike in the slow water of the lower creek. The upper creek is the part most anglers fish. Highway 752 crosses it at Prairie Creek Provincial Recreation Area, the Prairie Creek Group Camp sits just upstream, and Strachan Provincial Recreation Area sits just above the North Fork Road. Above that road you may keep 2 trout until August 31. Below it every trout goes back.

The creek opens April 1 and runs high and coloured with snowmelt in May and June, and a summer rainstorm can raise it again for a day or two. Read the Lick Creek gauge, on the upper creek between the campgrounds. It runs from March to October and stops for the winter. The Rocky Mountain House gauge near the mouth runs all year and shows when the lower creek has settled. Once the creek drops and clears, usually by July, fish nymphs and small streamers through the riffles and runs of the upper creek, and try dry flies and terrestrials when fish are rising. On the upper creek you may keep trout only until August 31. From September 1 it is catch and release until the creek closes on October 31.

The upper creek's recreation areas are public, with easy walks to the water. Below the North Fork Road the creek winds through hay and pasture land, and almost all of it is private: reach the water at road crossings and stay below the high-water mark, or ask the landowner. From the Vetch Creek mouth down to Swan Creek the creek closes on September 1. The province has published no recent survey of the creek's trout, so treat Prairie Creek as a pleasant small-water outing, not a trophy stream.