The answer most likely is yes.
Fishing Nerd
You can call me a fishing nerd, because I like to track how many fish I caught each day. It’s August 15th and I just reached 514 fish for the year. Fish # 514 tonight was a 28″ Pike on my Iron Butterfly Minnow streamer fly. Not a big fish but a decent fish on a fly rod. A fair bit smaller than the really fat 32″ Pike from last trip out. I will often also track the weather conditions and which lure produced the most fish.
Fly Rod is my Favorite Rod
If I catch 1000 fish, 950 of them will likely be on a fly rod. One of my three fly rods. They each have their own purpose.
Starting from the 4 weight. I keep this on the dock with a bead head Copper John fly. The Perch love this. If I only wanted to reach the number of 1000, I could do this from the dock and catch 1000 Perch. I went out this morning and in 15 minutes I had caught 20 Perch. Perch are fun, but small. The excitement of Perch is in the numbers, not the pull on the fly rod. A good perch off the dock is a 6 incher. A monster is 8 inches. So it’s a volume = fun game. I have measured the cork on my 4 weight fly rod handle, it’s 7 inches, so this Perch below is about 6-1/2″.
My 6 weight is my Trout rod. It’s also been known to land some Pike. It’s the rod I take when fishing the streams in southern Alberta. The Oldman, the Waterton, the Crowsnest. It’s the best casting rod I have, likely because I spent the most money on equipping it with good fly line.
My 8 weight is my big fish rod, the one I most often use for Pike from the boat. It has served me well. It has hooked and landed many Pike. The stiffer backbone of this rod is great for casting heavy streamer flies in the Saskatchewan wind and for battling big fish (including my personal best 46″ Pike). Most of the time it is hooking and landing the average sized 24″ to 30″ Pike of our lake at our Cabin.
How to Get to 1000
I have a number of fishing options. By boat, I can be at the best Pike spot on the lake in 5 minutes. I will sometimes pull out a Walleye there, a rare treat. 5 minutes from home I can bike to the Trout Pond at the Saskatoon Forestry Farm or 5 minutes driving to the Trout Pond at the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation. A good outing could be 5 small Rainbow Trout. Some really good summer evenings have produced 20 fish landed. Southern Alberta for the annual trip will be a spectacular scenery adventure with 200 casts and 5000 steps per fish, except for this coming trip, it’s gonna be awesome. Then there is the dock, almost guaranteed win each and every time. There are few other spots on the lake where I can expect to catch fish. One of them I have named the Last Call. It’s spot just around the point from our cabin, good for Perch, on the way back from the rest of the lake. If it was a slow day on the water, I can go there and catch some Perch so I can say I caught fish from the boat. Ice fishing here is slow, but I do it, sometimes just to say I did it, because I could. A good day is multiple fish, often a 50:50 split of Pike and Walleye. Some days are 0:0.
As I said, I could get to 1000 fish from the dock, 1000 Perch on my 4 weight fly rod. But it’s not worth it without some variety, without a good mix of species and a good mix of locations.
I plan to a post a updates, at 700 fish, at 800 fish, at 900, and if I get to 1000.