Water Temperatures and Fishing Restrictions

Hi Everyone! I have not posted much fly fishing because many of my favourite places to fish this time of the year have very high water temperatures. There is an advisory in place and I suspect "Hoot Owl" Restrictions will follow soon. This is a post from My Wild Alberta on Facebook! Many backcountry lakes in the mountains will have acceptable water temperatures but you will have to hike "high" to find them.

Declining river flows and low water levels, and warm water temperatures can cause stress to fish. To help protect our fisheries, an angling advisory is now in place for ALL flowing and non-flowing waters across Alberta.

When an advisory is in place, it is especially important for anglers to follow angling practices that reduce impacts to fish, including:

 Fish in stocked ponds and lakes as much as possible. Here’s a map of stocked waterbodies: https://bit.ly/3qmaoUr

 Fish in the early morning when temperatures are cooler

 Using heavier tackle helps you reel in a fish quickly, which helps reduce exhaustion and improve recovery

 Keep fish wet at all times and minimize handling time. Brush up on your fish handling by watching this video: https://bit.ly/34WvT4B

 Use single point hooks, single hook lures, or flies

Always know before you go and check the My Wild Alberta Advisories, Corrections and Closures page before you fish! https://mywildalberta.ca/.../advisories.../default.aspx

Time of day angling restrictions are another tool that may be implemented to protect fisheries should specific temperature and flow criteria be met. There are no time of day angling restrictions currently in effect. For more information about time of day angling restrictions, visit https://mywildalberta.ca/.../time-of-day-angling...

 

Trophy Fly Fishing at Cree Lake

Do you want to fly fish for trophy northern pike, big lake trout and beautifully coloured arctic grayling?Cree Lake Lodge offers an excellent opportunity for you to experience these amazing fish and you will also have a chance to fly fish for walleye and lake whitefish! Cree Lake is in Northern Saskatchewan. The neat thing is you can get all the way to the lodge in a single day of travel. First you drive to Fort McMurray and then let Fort McMurray Air fly you right to their dock at Cree Lake. Karen, Doug, Leon and I joined Out Flyfishing Outfitters's hosted trip led by Steve Luethi and Josh Nugent. It was a Do It Yourself Trip. We stayed in comfortable wall tents and we brought our own food. It is a budget friendly way to enjoy some amazing fly fishing. You are assigned a boat and off you go. You definitely need a GPS to get around because the lake is gigantic.The nice thing about do it yourself fly fishing is the fact that you can set your own pace. Our group liked to fly fish early in the day and others got a later start.

Cree Lake is part of the Athabasca drainage. There are so many beautiful sand beaches, many of which would rival the Bahamas. There are eskers everywhere and there is both mixed forest and black spruce.

Well how was the fly fishing. In a word, ...outstanding! You do have to explore a bit but once you find fish, hold on tight. We caught pike to 47.5 inches, lake trout close to 20 pounds and arctic grayling that love dry flies. We caught our grayling on the Cree River. We were able to motor quite a distance down the Cree River to find riffle water teaming with grayling.

We did not mind cooking our dinners. We often kept lake trout for supper.

The biggest enemy to a fly fisher is wind. We were so lucky that wind rarely slowed us down. We did have some minor thunderstorms but for the most part we had great weather.

One valuable tool that I brought was my Garmin Fish Finder. It was particularly useful while fly fishing for lake trout! We also brought two way radios so we could communicate between our boats. We had the opportunity to fly fish 8 days. Your casting arm certainly gets a workout!

I have added lots of pictures. We will definitely be back to Cree Lake. Take a look below and you will see why!