Happy Thanksgiving

 Hi Everyone!

I am very thankful to be a Canadian. This weekend we are celebrating Thanksgiving! Last night a cold front rolled in and dropped our beautiful autumn weather temperatures to the freezing level. Burr! Rainfall turned to snow and just like that my lawn is white with snow. The snow definitely will not stay but it feels like fly tying season is right around the corner!

I am very thankful for my family although we have had a tough last year because of losing several family members. I raise my coffee and say good morning to my dad, who passed away a little more than a year ago on a daily basis! I miss him. Karen talks to her mom who passed away recently as well!

This morning, I am tying some Balanced Silver Minnows for the walleye on the Red Deer River. 

I am looking forward to seeing all of our close family to celebrate Thanksgiving! I hope you have the chance to cross paths with your family too!

Stay warm. 

Bob and Karen

Unlocking the Puzzle in the Fall

Every day is different! The water temperature, wind, what is available to the trout and how deep are the trout feeding are all things to consider. Some days it is tough to figure it all out!

Today was quite windy. A south east wind that became quite strong. The water temperature is below 50F and it is fall.

All we had to do is catch a trout and take a throat sample. Today the trout were dining mainly on hyalella shrimp (fresh water shrimp), immature damsels, darner dragonfly nymphs and daphnia! Take a look at the throat samples.

Karen and I started off with blobs and a Tokaryk Special, ...no takes. I changed to flashbacks which I cast and retrieved while Karen switched to Bubba Gump Shrimp and a Glen's Leech! Karen started hooking up on the Glen's Leech although we saw nothing in the throat samples to suggest that was a good decision! I had no hook ups stripping Flashback Pheasant Tails, hmmm!

Well Karen had settled on putting a Glen's Leech 3-4 feet below a strike indicator. She got a lot of takes. Well I switched as well and it was game on!

Trout love to dine on shrimp in shallow water. We set up so our leeches were just 2 feet down, real close to shore. We caught several doing just that! I thought that casting and retrieving shrimp imitations would get action. Not today for me.

As you can see, if nothing is happening; experiment. Karen constantly changed depths until she settled on 3-4 feet down below her strike indicator. Glen's Leech is a fall staple. For some reason the trout will dial in on this simple pattern.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

 

Herder's Ranch

All of my grandsons (we have 5) love to fly fish! Well yesterday Karen and I decided to take Edwin and Oliver to Herder's Ranch (just south of Sylvan Lake) to fly fish for their 13th birthday! The boys thought we were joking when we said it is a trophy 2 acre pond. Both boys quickly realized that we were not kidding! They had an amazing day! We fished from 9 am to 5 pm. The boys were "unplugged" and outside all day. They just loved the fly fishing. They certainly got a lot of casting practice and they learned to deal with big trout. There was a minimum of carnage and lots of laughter! Above you can see Colby Herder with Oliver!  Oliver caught a gigantic brown trout! That was an amazing moment! We also caught brookies! We used blobs and white balanced flies. The big trout loved the white balanced flies and the mid sized trout were all over the blobs!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!