August 7-12 we travelled north to Aylmer Lake for the second time after having fantastic luck there last year. On the flight north on a float plane were saw many fires burning uncontrolled in the tundra. Aylmer lake is 227 air miles northeast of Yellowknife NWT in the barren grounds. It is the seventh largest lake in the NWT. In 2000 a small caribou hunting lodge was built which operated for five years before the government shut down the caribou hunting. The present family took over the lodge in 2012 and focused on fishing. There is no other lodge and no commercial fishing or native fishery on the lake.
This year we were the only guests at the lodge for the week. The barrens are extremely dry and the lake level was down three feet from last year. We fished with 8wt. rods with sinking line for the trout and 6wt. rods for places where we could catch both trout and grayling. Big clousers , deceivers and dragon tails were used for the trout and chernobyls and hoppers worked for the grayling. We tried mousing with no success.
There were bluebird skies and calm waters for most of the week. Bugs were almost totally absent. The wildlife viewing was spectacular and daily we saw groups of caribou and muskox near the lakeshore. We had three bull caribou swim across some narrows right in front of our boat. It was harder to catch the monster lakers this year and the best fish was 24 pounds.
The grayling were very large and fun to catch. We kept only 3 medium sized trout for supper and released everything else.
The smoke arrived the last morning we were there and it became very thick as we flew towards Yellowknife. As it turned out we left Yellowknife the same day as the Red Deer folks coming back from from Great Bear Lake and we all got out in the knick of time before things got really bad.
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