Beauty Day on Mitchell Lake

The wind was supposed to blow today on another unseasonably warm day! Well Karen and I love to go to Mitchell Lake on days like that. For the most part, it is protected from gale force winds. We drove under a chinook arch as we headed west this morning! Well it was just 1C when we arrived and the lake was glass. We set up our rods with Glen's Leeches. At our first stop we caught 4 trout from 5 to 8 feet down. Our next stop we fished with Tokaryk Specials and blobs. Our first decent throat sample was full of daphnia and perhaps zoo plankton. The blob brought another trout to hand. We then switched to flashbacks both under and indicator and stripped. We had moderate success doing that!

Action got real interesting once I rigged up a clear intermediate line and stripped blue flash damsels. The tigers were quite aggressive. I also hooked and landed a 21 inch brown. I ran into Don Andersen and he was having success with orange pumpkinheads! It was 17C today and we did have moderate wind gusts in the afternoon! Luckily, Mitchell Lake is a great place to get out of the wind.

Looks like an excellent weekend to get out! Have fun. You know where I am heading, the hockey rink!

Daphnia and Zoo Plankton?

 

Forage, ...Ice Minnows!

As water temperatures drop, trout will definitely start putting on the feedbag! If there are minnows in a lake, trout will definitely feed on them. I once saw a fly fisherman on Twin Lakes in Manitoba fly fishing with essentially silver chenille wrapped on a hook and he was catching tiger trout quite regularly. We have several pot hole lakes with forage in Central Alberta. Some of the pin fry can be tiny but they can definitely get as large as a 5 cm. I carry lots of ice minnows from size 14 all the way up to size 8. They are easy to tie. You can tie them with Head Turner beads and then use a clinch knot to have them hang horizontally in the water or you can set up an ice minnow tied balanced. I like the balanced ice minnows the best! All you need is some black marabou and some silver chenille. I like to add silver 5 mm brill with the silver chenille to add some extra glow to the minnows.

There are lots of effective minnow patterns out there. I like the simplicity of an Ice Minnow!

Ice Minnows

Thread: UTC 140, red

Bead: tungsten 1/8 or 7/64ths

Chassis: Jig hook (sizes 8-14), pin and tungsten bead

Tail: Black Marabou

Body: silver chenille, small and silver brill, 5 mm

Ruby Eyed Ice Minnow

 

Fly Fish the "Edges!"

Do you remember how windy is was in the spring? Well it seems that we are having a repeat performance. Wind can be your friend and it can also be a real challenge to fly fish with. We have been out the last few days and the trout are definitely putting the feedbag on before that icy skin covers our pot hole lakes.

Today, Karen and I headed east a couple of hours to a reservoir. We had never been to this reservoir before but we wanted to give it a go! We brought our pram and we hoped to fly fish out of it! When we arrived, the boat launch area was closed because of construction. We could have hand bombed the pram to the water but we decided to wader up and walk the shore. Karen started out with a Glen's Leech and I tied on a Tokaryk  Special 2.0. I hooked a large tiger trout that shook off just as I was steering it to the net. Darn. The wind was amping up too! The water on the reservoir was starting to get angry!

Karen tied on a Tokaryk Special and she connected with a few very nice rainbows. I hooked a few tiger trout and then several rainbows. The other fisherman at the reservoir wanted to know what we were fly fishing with. One fisherman asked us for a couple. We gave him two and he was in business. He soon hooked a large rainbow that I am pretty sure it became dinner at his house.

The wind continued to blow harder and harder. We worked our way along the shoreline and caught lots of rainbows, several tiger trout and near the end of the day; Karen landed a decent brown trout!

Karen and I looked for promising water to probe. We found weed lines with a drop off right behind them We worked those drop offs with our Tokaryk Specials just 3 to 5 feet down below a strike indicator! We constantly had to backhand cast because of the wind direction. We were used to doing that. We luckily didn't need to bomb out long casts. Most of the other guys were trying to cast far out into the reservoir. The trout were cruising right at their feet.

I saw the same thing yesterday at Boulder Lake. The rainbows were right on the edges merely 6 or 7 feet from shore.

As water temperatures drop, the window for getting out is quickly closing! Bundle up and get out there! I don't want to think about the winter shack nasties yet!