Ok, so here we are in the doldrums of the Alberta fishing season. From the beginning of April until mid-May most of our lakes are closed to fishing.
Naturally, I’m looking for options, so I hop in the jeep and head down to the North Saskatchewan River. I’m thinking some early season whitefish, and there are some nice size fish in our area.
So I pull up to our local river access only to find its still frozen solid. We had that crazy record breaking year around the Edmonton area where we had 168 days in a row where the temperature were at 0 degrees Celsius or below, breaking the freezing record set in 1975.
Just great, now what’s a guy to do with himself?
Yes, I know the answer might seem obvious to many, it was to the wife. Clean the gutters and start the yard work.
I said,” Yes Babe”, and sullenly headed towards the garage. I did manage to stumble three times on the way by tripping over my own poopy lip, but eventually made it to the tools, rakes and ladder. Even a nice cold beer didn’t perk me up so I got on with the chores.
As I do have two weeks off at a time from work, I’m sure you can all imagine that I checked the river every day with no success, still frozen.
Being the charming gentleman that I am, of course I would never whine, and hid my frustration from the wife. I’m sure she hardly noticed.
For some reason though she did say, “why don’t you plan a fishing trip with Tony in June.”
Sooo, that immediately meant it’s time to go through all of my fishing and camping gear to get things ready. Yes, I know it is months away, but you can never be too prepared for a good trip. I mean a really good trip. We are planning Great Slave Lake for some trophy class hand lining, and some video for the website. Yee Haaww (This is a fishing word for “this will be fun”).
One of my favorite set ups for the Hand Fisherman is to fish flies. As I have mentioned previously, I have been an avid fly fisherman, and fly tier for many years. Avid means the same thing as obsessed right?
For flies with the Hand fisherman your best options are either flies with float or weight systems depending what part of the water column you are chasing.
As our target species will be Northern Pike, Walleye, Lake Trout, Arctic Grayling and Inconnu, we’re looking at big terminal gear for all but the Grayling, so big flies, spoons, plugs and jigs.
For the flies, my choices are:
Sea Ducers -These were originally a saltwater tarpon fly done up in red and white, but I also use red/yellow and red/orange combinations. For the hackle portion I do a wire wrap over top. You can’t see it, but with big pike you do need to keep the teeth from tearing the flies up with only one or two fish, so this works well for longevity.
Bunny Leach – Again the yellow with red hackle is top notch, but black, purple, blue, and white combinations with the red hackle also produce very well.
Egg Sucking Leach – This is one of my all-time favorites as a searching fly in almost any waters, it’s just a variant of the Woolly Bugger, and I tie these in many sizes depending on target species. They were originally more of a trout/steelhead pattern, but work great on walleye, pike, and even Arctic Grayling in smaller sizes.
Well, tying these up kept me busy and I must say, a bit more chipper for a couple evenings.
Tight Lines
Dave
