Personal Best Crappie

Got this "binder-sized" crappie on a tiny chartreuse and white jig fished with an indicator on my 5 weight flyrod. Bluegill and crappie are a blast on the fly. So too are their beautifully coloured cousins, the pumpkinseeds. These panfish give a good account of themselves on a light rod. (3 weight is even better) I'm hoping my next post will include lots of panfish caught on my upcoming trip to the Rideau River north of Kingston, Ontario.

Hybrid Yaks/Standing

As a 64 year old man I am blessed with good balance and have always been interested in standing capability in a self propelled fishing vessel. Recently I had a chance to fish from a Native Ultimate 12 on the Grand River near Paris and Bradford. It's probably a good thing that I didn't come away impressed by being able to stand in this yak. (more money invested in the fleet). I can stand almost as well in my own Tarpon but even with good balance, standing in a kayak is an accident waiting to happen. I have no qualms about standing in my 16 foot canoe but even these hybrid canoe yaks need stabilizers to provide confidence while standing to fish. All that aside, this Native Ultimate has an incredibly comfortable seat that all yak manufacturers should seek to emulate.

Pentax Optio 90

I recently purchased a new waterproof camera and all the recent pics uploaded are coming from it.



I still haven't had the courage to "dunk" it yet for some underwater release shots but I have checked out its fine "macro" capabilities. Here are some fly shots from my early experimentation.











Here's just the head from the same streamer.

The Other Flyfishing Vessel

With my love of kayak and float tube fishing sometimes my pontoon gets neglected. I bought a new set of oars and rigged a piece of plywood to act as a standing platform. It is pretty cool to be able to stand and flyfish. Here's a large trout I caught recently while standup fishing. Although stand up fishing is good, I still have to sit down to land the fish. Also I like to kick troll at times so standing in fins is somewhat problematic.



Big Rainbow

Old Mojo

I have been using my 11 year old Outcast Fat Cat lately instead of the new Fat Cat that is to be its sucessor. "Old Blue" still has its mojo. Here are some of the trout I have been catching in the month of June. Should have taken this tube on my recent Kwagama Lake trip. This speckled trout caught from one of the ponds at my trout club was bigger than anything I caught on the wilderness trip. The great thing about this fish is that it is a wild trout as the ponds have been stocked with nothing but rainbows for a couple of decades.


SPEAKING OF RAINBOWS

Moose Encounter/God's Grace

By the Grace of our loving Lord, my friend,Bob, and I arrived home safely after our trip to Kwagama. Between Sault St. Marie and Sudbury, after dark we came within inches of hitting a huge cow moose. It was after dark and I was driving the Forester around 105/110 kph. We were enjoying Bill Cosby on my mp3 player. All of a sudden we had the closest encounter with the big moose. The big cow was crossing oblivious to the presence of my vehicle. To imagine the scenario think of a horse coming to your driver window to take an apple from your hand. If my window had been open I could have touched her. She was that close.

My reaction was to rotate the steering wheel an inch or two in the direction away from her and she raised her head with this “holy shit” look on her face and the top of my vehicle went under her head and we passed without contact. A normal violent knee jerk reaction would have had me cranking the wheel frantically and probably flipping the car off the road or into the animal. I know it was the Lord’s presence that made me turn the wheel just ever so slightly to keep us away from tragedy. Praise God! We’re safe at home and exhausted. Would you believe there is no gas on the Trans Canada Highway between the Sault and Parry Sound? If not for the Esso station at Parry Sound we would have had to pull over to sleep in the car until something opened up in the morning.

It is truly miraculous that I made such a minimal steerage correction. That creature just appeared out of nowhere and I wouldn’t have had time to even react on my own strength. It is amazing that I could see the shocked look on the face of the cow and even more amazing that she was able to lift her head and allow me through unscathed. Bob and I could hardly talk we were so taken by the experience and the reality that God was there with us at that moment.

I got to thinking of everything we had done to bring us to the point in time where that moose was going to be there on that stretch of road at precisely that time. If the train had been on time (Was an hour and a half late!) we would have been well on down the road. The stops for coffee and dinner all conspired to put us fatefully on that stretch of road at exactly the same time as one of God’s magnificent creatures was sauntering across the road. Good thing God is in control and fate is not a factor.

Oh, I had to use the spinning rod at times. Ultra-lite of course!

Trout On The Fly

Kwagama Wilderness Speckles

Kwagama Lake is surrounded by Canadian Shield mountains typical of the Lake Superior area.

This lake is reported, by the ministry, to have only speckled trout and it has them in abundance. However, our Humminbird finders kept marking fish at depths which are not frequented by speckled trout. My friend just picked up a portable downrigger to attempt to fish those depths to see what is laying on the bottom in as much as 100 feet. We suspect that there is a lake trout population as well. He'll have to wait until next year to find out as we don't have the financial resources to visit these kinds of places at will.

That's Bob sitting in the ATV trailer waiting for me to take the picture. Some lodge guests choose to fly in at 5 times the price of our Algoma Central Railway train ride. The "Windsor Wormers" on the other ATV chose the economy route as well. The lodge owner and his son meet the train with two 4X4 trucks and then load all the gear onto the ATVs and trailers. After that everything is loaded on a party style pontoon boat for the trip down the lake to the lodge. Those Windsor boys were deadly with a spinner and worm or a worm on a floating jig. The Ministry encourages harvest on this lake and we had a couple of big feeds of fresh caught speckled trout. The wormers from Windsor could have kept all of the guests fed every day the way they were catching fish. Although I'm still a dedicated flyfisherman and ultra-lite spinning enthusiast if I had to compete against these guys I'd be using worms. Good old "garden hackle"!


The boys from Windsor set for the "ride" in. Maybe it was a combination of the worms and the Bass Pro camo that was the secret to their success. Bob looks out of place in his regular jacket. The boys make regular cross border hops from Windsor to the Detroit Bass Pro Shop.

Kwagama Lake Lodge

Got to the wilderness just in time to rendevous with the black flies. We were actually there for two days before they arrived. Am I ever glad I brought the head net. They seemed to like me better than anyone else.

Didn't land any personal best brookies. But fishing was good and we caught our share. Apparently the "wormers" were apportioned a greater share as they caught fish with their worm-tipped spinners at will. In comparison us fly flingers had to work harder for our fish. My flies did take some of the better fish but I definitely have increased respect for the "power of the worm"