Day 1 - post-West Yellowstone FFF conclave shindig. We have now arrived at Tecumseh Mountain Lodge. The weather is delightfully warm, the sun is bursting through and the relief of not driving is palpable. The journey from St Anthony in Idaho looked so do-able and slight on the map (a few miles and one would be there, some 800 miles and a solid 14 hour slog later) suggested that illusion and delusion were fast becoming part of aching anatomy. Oh well, I’ll l know for next time.

The group arrives tomorrow so my son Alex, Kai (lodge owner and guide) and Alex’s friend John (known from the days when they competed in youth world championships and who is now guiding for the local Crowsnest Angling store) all set out for a series of backwater springs and tails and braided channels and beaver ponds that flank the Waterton river, just beyond the Crowsnest Pass out on the prairies around Pincer Creek. You know the sort of thing; the type one sees so often in southern England ... The idea is to track down and try catch some of the legendary big Gerard rainbows that haunt the ice-cold crystal depths.

Well, to cut a long story short, we tallied two pike … one rendered my finger a bleeding bear-attracting gooey mess (why is it always the little ones?), Alex had a couple of small rainbows and a fine brook trout from an outfall that most would just walk past, and Kai had one small ‘bow and I had a small rainbow teased from the depths by a damsel nymph fished along the weeds. And also a slightly larger one which sipped in my nymph like a gorilla eating a seed. My it was a big so and so; when we finally landed the beast we reckoned it was well into double figures, possibly 12lb maybe 14. Big.

Oh! and I also found that bears do indeed crap in the woods … and so do you when you see it freshly delivered and steaming! Bear attacks are real and possible. That is why you carry bear spray almost like a holstered Remington “Peacemaker” six gun. I am being serious, you are in the wild and the surrounds seldom let you forget it.

A good day marred only by a bleeding finger that leaked down my waders, a massive thunderstorm and the disturbed looks of the staff of the local Walmart Store as we swung into the store, be-wadered, me bloodstained and all of us soaked; we did truly look like a gang of ruffians from a Sam Peckinpah movie, and not a pleasant one either.

Day 2: Go to Calgary. Cities, yeough. Group gathers whilst Alex catches feisty angry tail-water, line-wrenching backing appearing rainbows. Me, envious? Of course not …

Day 3. Lost. Never trust a guide's directions. Especially, oh never mind, more tomorrow.