When the Big Fish Don’t Bite

September 20, 2025 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing, Life at the Cabin

Fishing is a numbers game. The more times you put your lure in front of fish, the better your odds at catching fish. Sometimes the odds are not in your favour. That’s when you need a back up plan. I have two of them.

On the lake where we have a cabin, there are 3 species of game fish. Pike, Walleye and Perch. For most Saskatchewan anglers, Walleye are the prize. By with a fly rod in hand, I prefer the aggressiveness and headshaking power of a Pike. Now and then, when waving my fly rod at Pike waters I will hook a Walleye and that is certainly a treat. Then there is the Perch. Likely not in the first place position for most anglers. It’s a great species for fishing with kids. If you catch one Perch, you will likely be able to catch a dozen.

Now back to the Pike and Walleye, the big fish of the lake. On a good day, with some good streamer flies (the Go Go Ray, the Go Go Kershaw, the Iron Butterfly Minnow, the Go Go Perch) I can find the Pike. On bad day, changing locations a few times and rotating through the flies, I can come up with no fish in the net. This past summer has been very good Pike fishing and I would say only about 3 days did that happen. Even with the help of some fish spotters, the tally can be zero.

But coming back to the cabin with a zero is not in the playbook, so back up plans are in place. If the big fish don’t bite, go catch some small ones.

Back Up Plan No 1, The Last Call

There is a spot, in between where I will usually fish for Pike, and the cabin. I call it The Last Call. It’s the last chance to catch a fish from the boat and get off the snide. It’s just around the point from the cabin and loaded with Perch. If I’ve brought my little light weight fly rod I will use that, but usually I leave that behind. So I will opt for one of my spin cast rods, a 1/16th jig head and a small chunk of green plastic worm. The green plastic seems to be the secret sauce. I will pull up to the spot, drop anchor in about 6 feet of water and toss the jig. I usually only have about 6 feet of line out and let it sink to the top of the weeds then drag it around. That little bit of movement seems to get the perch active and in 10 minutes I’ve usually caught a handful of Perch. Enough to break the zero. Pull up anchor, around the point and back to the dock at the cabin.

Back Up Plan No 2, The Dock

The Last Call spot is pretty much a guarantee all season long. So is The Dock, only it’s a stretch to say I went out fishing and caught fish from the dock, my dock, at my cabin. That’s not really going out. But it’s still a back up plan to catch some fish for the day.

Just off the dock is a weed bad that stretches all along the cabin row. I grab my 4 weight fly rod, usually with a Bead Head Copper John fly, and cast it 20 – 30 feet straight out. I know there are perch there. There are always Perch there, and they love that simple little fly. Many of the Perch are barely able to pull the line but there are a few that will put a little bend in the light weight rod. The cork section on my fly rod is 7″ so anything that big is a good perch, at least by Fishing Off the Dock standards.

No Back Up Plan Needed

Mot days the back up plans are not needed and I am able to land a few Pike and the occasional Walleye. With the time from dock to fishing spot being less than a 5 minute song, if I strike out in the morning, I still have the afternoon, or the evening, or the back up plans to catch fish that day.

The Trout of 1000 Casts

August 25, 2025 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing, Outdoors

I’m a huge fan of outdoor scenery. Trees, bush, hills, open plains, lakes, rivers, sky, deer, coyotes, birds, and fish. On a recent fly fishing trip to some of the most scenic rivers of southern Alberta, we didn’t take many pictures of the fish. It was a fishing trip, primarily, when we started. The consolation prize was spending 4 days in some beautiful scenery and walking away with some some outstanding images of the scenery, and some brown trout.

When I play golf, I play purely for the enjoyment of the activity. I don’t play enough to be good at golf so my score is somewhat irrelevant, and I have modified my scoring system to only keep track of the strokes that go in the hole. My personal best, achieved a few times, is 9 on a nine-hole course, and 18 on a full round. I have adapted this scoring system from spending much more time fishing compared to golfing. I don’t know of anyone who counts their casts, only the fish caught. But after my most recent fly-fishing trip, I decided that an estimate of the number of casts to catch the first fish was appropriate.

1000 casts per Brown Trout. That’s as good as I can calculate. We tried to take a guess at the number of casts we made. Cast, float, mend, mend, mend, nothing, cast. We figured about 500 per day. That makes for The Trout of 1000 Casts.

This was a good fish. A fifteen inch Brown Trout. A good fish on any day. Quite a bit smaller than the twenty incher I caught just up the river and around the bend just over a year ago, but I would have been happy to break the curse with something half the size. This was well into day three of the trip, approximately 1000 casts into the adventure. We fished the Oldman River Monday evening. This same Waterton River all day Tuesday, and now on Wednesday we were well into the afternoon before this Trout finally committed to the hopper fly.

We spent the better part of the previous 36 hours watching the occasional Brown Trout bump our flies. Rising and splashing at the back of the fly, but rarely a full scale bite, rarely that tug on the line confirming a fish has taken the fly. Hoppers flies were the most popular flies to attract some interest. We tried many others, caddis, adams, drakes, wooly buggers, and dropping nymphs under our hoppers. Most of the “action” that kept us going, and hoping, was when we could see a Brown Trout turn and follow a hopper fly downstream through the riffles, only to abandon the chase without chomping on the fly.

We ran into a few other anglers on the Waterton river, they reported similar low levels of bit action. As one commented, “caught a nice little Brown around the corner and just missed a monster”. The weather was hot, highs around 30 degrees Celsius and little cloud cover. We had hoped the early morning and evening, a bit cooler, would provide us the bulk of the action. We saw limited improvements in fish activity, a few isolated rises, but no sustained feeding.

So fish on we did, and cover ground, or water, across the slippery rocks and spending hours bracing against the currents. We tracked over 13000 steps per day, about 12000 of those in waders. We kept searching for that hot spot where the fish were feeding. Trying fast water, through the riffles and rapids, to the foamy seems, to the deep pools at the end of the fast water. Other than the weather, there was no hot spot.

What we did experience was a good time to practice scenery photography skills and appreciate the outdoors experience. Living in central Saskatchewan, we don’t the same topography and the same types of water features. 1000’s and 1000’s of lakes and rivers, yes, and I will fish as many of them as I can. But southern Alberta offers the lure of several wild Trout species to be caught in the flowing waters, including my favorite, Brown Trout. I didn’t go back without landing at least one of these species, and missing a few others I should have caught (that’s just how fishing goes). At most of the stops on the rivers, I risked the possibility of dropping my phone in the flowing water and captured some images worthy of my laptop wallpaper and sharing with friends and family. I have a gallery of some of my favorites below. Hope you like the visuals as much as I do.

Waterton River

Oldman River

A Poor Man’s Pike Leader for Fly Fishing

August 17, 2025 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing

I say a “Poor Man’s” in the title. According to my wife it should be a “Cheap Man’s”. But that’s details not important to this post. This idea was actually more necessity driven than budget driven.

I had an out of town buddy come join me to go fishing at my cabin. We are both fly fishing fanatics. I spend a week at his place in southern Alberta chasing Browns and Rainbows and Brooks near the end of Summer and he spends a week at my place chasing Pike and Walleye in late Spring. This past Spring, just a couple months ago, we were determined to get him a Pike on the fly rod. He’s had a few on, never landed. (Having the opportunity to fly fish for Pike at the lake at my cabin, I have caught more than I can count.) So the evening of arrival I passed him my spare fly line Pike leader with the last 10 inches of braided steel to counter the sharp Pike teeth. We hopped in the boat and headed out the next morning, Pike leader left on the coffee table. So I took my other Pike leader off my fly rod and passed to him. That left me with my gear chucking rods to toss spoons and jigs at the fish.

Despite some dazzling Perch imitation streamer flies he got from a fly shop owner in Lethbridge, the Pike were not his friend when waving his fly rod at the water.

With the trusty Len Thompson 5 of Diamonds and the Red and White, I was having a good time hooking, netting and releasing some feisty Pike. He had a few bites, a few on the line, enough to see the head shake, confirmation it was a fish and not the aggressive weeds of the area. The days were fairly windy and that made fly casting pretty difficult, so we opted for spoons and jigs mostly with some attempts with the fly rods during calmer periods.

We did stop at a spot I refer to as the “Last Call”, a little Perch haven where it’s hard to not catch a fish, just so we could lay down the claim to have caught fish on fly rods those days.

But to get to the point, the first Pike fly leader, on the coffee table at the cabin, went in his fly vest, to be traded for the other one on his line, so I could put the other one back on my line. Didn’t happen. Windy days meant more spinning rod action, which was quite successful. Lots of Pike and a few nice Walleye.

My fly leaders? They made the drive back home with my buddy, one in his fly vest and one at the end of his fly line. The very next weekend, out on the water Saturday morning, it was calm with sunshine. A must day for tossing streamers at Pike, but no pike leaders. So I dig into the tackle box, finding a spool of 10 pound line, and a 9″ steel leader. With a quick loop end tied to about 9′ of line and the steel leader tied at the other end, I had a makeshift fly line Pike leader. A few tosses and a sharp tug, followed by the tell tale signs of a Pike head shake. The first test was a successful test. A delicate presentation of the fly/streamer is not the same necessity as when tossing hoppers to stream dwelling Brown Trout. The ability to withstand the power and teeth of a Pike or Walleye is the priority. What I learned, after continuing to test my new leader rig is that the 10 pound line is not enough, but it was what I had in my tackle box, what I have rigged up on my Walleye jigging rod. Hooking a strong fish one day, a good fish I was sure, disappeared with the snap of the line above the 9″ steel leader. I saw a glimpse of it, 15′ to 16′ out from the boat. That was gonna be a good fish. I wish I had at least seen it clearly, up close. Not having any other materials, I tied another of my new found leader rigs with 10 pound test as the leader. Back to my nature of being cheap, that was gonna have to do, even with a few opportunities over the next week to stop at a store buy something stronger. Then, during a late July week at the cabin, came the pull of another really good fish on the end of my fly line and a strong bend in the rod. Remember the Perch imitation streamers I mentioned above? Turns out these are delicious looking. I have since tied a few copies as I have now lost both of the Perch flies, professionally tied, to broken leaders.

The financial comparison is simple. A Pike/Musky leader from a fly shop is $12 to $15. Eventually they will break, but I have used the same leader for a couple years of fighting twisting, shaking, sharp-tooth Pike so the expense per fish is down to mere pennies. Most often, it is the clasp at the end that fails before the leader. Now for the Poor Man’s version. A small spool of 20 pound mono is $10. Enough to make 30+ of these leaders. A 12 pack of typical 9″ wire leader is about $8. So my Cheap Man Pike Leader is less than $1.00.

I headed out with another fishing buddy and tested these (all in the name of product testing) a couple days ago and the casting is the same. A heavy streamer at the end seems to overcome the need for any special leader performance or tapering requirements. First strike was a pretty good Pike. Netting, hook removal, quick measurement, and release of a 32″ Pike made for a good start to the day. A couple more Pike, smaller than the first, assured me this was as good as the previous version. The real test was another good Pike, I performed poorly on the retrieval and lest it weed me. So I had to hog it out, pulling a few extra pounds of weeds, and the leader held. My only revision to my set up is that I would shorten the length of the mono from 9′ to 7′ to make casting under windy conditions a little easier and avoid pulling the fly line / leader loop to loop connection through the rod end eye when netting the fish.

I would not recommend this for fly fishing when a dry fly dropping silently on calm waters is the goal (although I have had to MacGyver some heavy to lighter tippet-as-leader replacements in the middle of a Southern Alberta stream). For the tossing of heavy streamers to the aggressive ambush feeding activity of Northern Pike, it seems to be an excellent and inexpensive use of commonly available tackle.

Multi-Species on a Fly Rod

July 14, 2025 / galen / Fly Fishing

A fish on a fly rod is better than a fish on a gear chucker rod. My apologies to those who are spin cast or bait cast rod & reel aficionados. Yes, I do own several spin cast combos. They sit idle beside the boat seat except for the very windy days when the other people in the boat are at risk from an off-course back cast of a large streamer hook. Of the approximately 400 fish I have caught this year, 385 of them are on one of my three fly rods.

But the point of this article is not on the merits of fly fishing (it’s just better). Instead, it is a quick recount of one of my favorite days on the lake so far this year.

Like any regular morning, I’m up before anyone else in the cabin. Some days I sit in front of my laptop and get some work done. But this morning, the lake was glass, the sky was clear, the late June sunshine at 5:00 am was already approaching an hour of shining. These days can not be ignored. I must fish. I must fly-fish.

So into the boat, quietly pulling away from the dock to avoid waking up the rest of the cabin and mid-trolling speed for a few hundred yards before I gave it some throttle and sped my way to the spot I was planning to start at. A few minutes later, anchor down, standing on the back seat (a.k.a. the casting platform), fly rod in hand, I began to de-spool some line and begin casting, working a bit more line out with each cast. Cast three was magic, landing just shy of the weed bed, a couple pulls, and the Walleye hit. Hitting hard for a Walleye, I thought it was a pike at first, but not the violent head shake so anticipation was high, and then a couple short runs as it stripped line, I had it next to the boat, and the spiny dorsal fin was on display. Rough estimate, 23 inches. Not the biggest Walleye I have caught but too big to keep. A dip of the net, hook removal, dysfunctional attempt at an actual measurement, and I was back to fishing.

The Pike took a liking to the perch coloured streamer I was tossing their way. The fly was tied by a friend of a friend and left with me a few weeks back. It was very popular. The next 45 minutes to an hour was spent casting, landing Pike, and releasing. Too much action to stop and take measurements and pictures. The Pike were feisty, the big catch of the day likely about 30 inches. Far from any “trophy” measurements. It didn’t matter. A 5 pound Pike on a fly rod feels like twice the size as on a spin cast rod. So now I’m at 2 species of fish, same rod, in the first hour of fishing. The count is something like 1 Walleye and 5 or 6 Pike. This is on my 9 weight rod. More then enough backbone in that rod to handle any of these fish. So I decided, “why not a third species?”

I pulled up anchor and moved approximately 50 feet, to the very edge of the weed bed I had been casting to and along. With a tiny bead headed Copper John fly, it wasn’t long and I had landed a small Perch, then a second, third, fourth, and fifth. Perhaps a total of 10 casts. This lake is loaded with Perch. Normally I will use my ultra-light 4 weight fly rod off my dock and catch many Perch in between other activities at the cabin. The 9 weight in my hand was vast overkill, but I didn’t bring the 4 weight in the boat.

Now this would be a great place for some pics of the fish I caught that day. However, I was first up and out the door so I was fishing solo and that makes the logistics of catching, landing, holding and photographing fish a few degrees of difficulty higher. I had full intentions. The Walleye, first fish of the day, was going to get measured and photographed. After removing the fly, and preparing to measure, she wiggled free and over the side. Lost opportunity but not lost thrill of a nice Walleye on a fly rod.

I have had other days of 3 species on a fly rod in the same day, but never within 50 feet. One day on a Southern Alberta stream I did catch a Brown, a Brookie, and a Rainbow Trout on the same stream. Other times I have cheated, sort of, by catching the Walleye and Pike from the boat, then returning to the dock for the Perch. So I’m going to call this my best 3 species from the boat morning.

Dog Hair Flies for Pike

September 21, 2022 / galen / Fly Fishing, Life at the Cabin

Maybe I’m a purist. Maybe I’m just cheap. Maybe both.

I’ve been tying flies for 25 years. I like to use natural materials whenever possible, especially if I gather it myself. From peacock hurl picked up at the zoo, I have made a killer summer trout fly, The Super Jumbo Mosquito. From numerous waterfowl hunts I have gathered duck feathers and down and I have made a few unnamed flies that have worked on trout and perch. With a great deal of cutting and bundling, I have made caddis-like flies from goose feathers. Even a few gaudy dry flies from sandhill crane wing feathers that have convinced a few fish to take the chance and give it a bite.

I’ve been tying flies for northern pike for 10 years. For the first 8 years I used store-bought materials. Coloured fibres and Superhair and a few other items such as Chenile to dress them up a bit. I started from Clouser Minnow patterns and eventually just added length.

A few years ago I snipped some brown hairs off my son’s dog, Kershaw (yes, named after that Dodger pitcher). From that came the first Dog Hair Caddis. It landed a few trout but was even more effective on perch off the dock. Another pattern, from my son’s other dog, Doc (yes, named after Roy “Doc” Halladay), and I made a very successful “Perch Snatcher” fly, a bit like a miniature egg sucking leach.

Then came the ideas. Why not use the long dog tail hairs and build some pike streamers from dog hair? I tried last year, tying the first Kershaw Curve Ball Streamer. I took this up north to Cree River Lodge and tossed it with my 8 weight rod and managed to land a few small pike. Call that success. By small pike, I really mean small pike, hammer handles, 20″ and less. The following day using a fly from 100% synthetic materials, a pattern I named the Go Go Ray, I landed a 46″ monster pike. The same fly pattern, along with another of my own creations, the Iron Butterfly Minnow, have helped me catch pike on the fly at Wakaw Lake for a few years now.

Time to put the ideas to the test, beyond tossing a few casts in a place know as the pike fishing capital of the world (Cree River Lodge). One day when all three family dogs where at my house, I took my fly sculpting scissors and took a bit of free materials from all three dogs.

I tied and improved on the original Kershaw Curve Ball Streamer, making it longer with bigger streamer hooks for catching pike.

Then I took the Go Go Ray pattern which was working on the Wakaw pike and used hair from my daughter’s dog, Bauer (named after her favorite brand of hockey equipment). The result was the Go Go Bauer. That next weekend all three dogs caught a fish! The improved Kershaw Curve Ball Streamer landed both pike and walleye. I switched to the Go Go Bauer and landed a pike. Back at the dock that evening, the Perch Snatcher (made from Doc hair) hooked about 20 perch.

I thought the idea of catching a fish with all three dog’s hair was quite a novel idea. Why not all three dogs at once? Next day at the tying desk, I made a few more “Go Go” flies. A Go Go Kershaw, another Go Go Bauer, and a Go Go KBD (Kershaw Bauer Doc).

That evening, with the Go Go KBD at the end of my pike leader, I caught three more pike.

By the way, go check out the Cree River Lodge site Testimonials. That’s me in the second and third pictures, with my best fly-rod walleye and my all-time personal world record pike on a fly 46″ monster.

Increasing Pike Fly Hookup

October 16, 2020 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing

Back in March I published an article on Killer Flies for Pike in which I described the Go Go Ray fly pattern. I have been using this fly for a few years now and after another summer of pike fly fishing, it’s time for a few improvements to the pattern. The more I fish this fly, and another fly I created, the Iron Butterfly Minnow, the more information I can gather and put towards building a better fly.

This summer provided me a few days of stark contrast. One relatively calm day I was standing on the back of my boat casting the Iron Butterfly Minnow in the hopes of hooking a few pike.

Another boat trolled by and ask me what I was doing and if fly fishing actually caught fish. I told them fly fishing was my secret weapon, when spoons and jigs aren’t working, I pull out the fly rod. Just then, Wham!, a pike hits the fly and the rod bends. Timely proof delivered on cue. However my proof was short lived, lost the fish 10 feet from the boat. That was followed by a few more episodes of the same thing, a strike, pull, head shake, fish gone. I knew the fly pattern was good, I was getting fish to bite aggressively, but landing none. I switched to the Go Go Ray fly, one tied a few years ago that had a few battle scars.

Next hit from a pike, hooked up, netted, landed, released. Again, hooked, netted, landed. I fished for another hour, caught a few more, until the poor Go Go Ray pike fly was battered and torn apart. I retired the fly and with the sun already set, headed in for the evening.

The following weekend I was back out with one of my sons, a newly tied Go Go Ray on the fly rod. The next 5 pike strikes, back to the old pattern, a strong hit, a strong pull, a head shake, and the fish was gone. The saving grace of that evening of fishing was landing a nice walleye on the Go Go Ray.

After close inspection, I have a pretty good idea of why i have gone through streaks of losing fish and streaks of landing fish. Last summer I recall that I had a few short streaks of losing fish I felt I had well hooked. At that time, the Go Go Ray and the Iron Butterfly patterns were tied with two hooks, one facing downward, one facing upward. Still I was losing fish. So for 2020, the pike flies I tied had just one hook. Based on results, seems like a bad idea. Examining the beat up Go Go Ray fly that was my most successful fly of 2020, I noticed that although it was the two hook version which means it would have been tied in 2019. But more importantly, one of the hooks had been rotated 90 degrees, so I had a downward facing hook and a sideways facing hook. Think of a treble hook with only two hooks. My theory is that the single and double hooks were somehow laying flat in the mouth of a pike and pulling free without hooking in when the pike did the head shake.

Iron Butterfly Minnow pike fly with hooks oriented at 180 degrees.

The solution was simple for those flied with two hooks, simply grab one hook with one set up pliers and use another to rotate the other hook 90 degrees.

Iron Butterfly Minnow pike fly changing hook orientation to 90 degrees.

For flies I tied in early 2020, they flies with the highest lost fish ratio, I have taken them back to the tying vice and added a second hook, turned at 90 degrees.

Go Go Ray pike fly with second hook being added at 90 degrees.

One more trip out on the water this coming weekend will be the test.

Killer Flies for Pike

March 29, 2020 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing

I’ve been tying flies for pike fishing for about 10 years now. Some have not caught anything, others have been very successful. About 5 years ago I started tying a variation of the clouser minnow, using crystal flash. I cast that into a very pike infested bay and hooked pike after pike. The color combination that worked best was a red “bloody cheek”, white underbody and blue upper body.

In the years since I have come up with a couple of my own fly patterns that work really well for pike so I gave them names. My top two go to flies are the Go Go Ray and the Iron Butterfly Minnow. The Go Go Ray is named after a drummer in a blues band. Not because they look alike, but I did give the fly a set of “drumsticks”. The Iron Butterfly Minnow is named for the band, Iron Butterfly, of “Ina-Godda-Da-Vida” fame. Me and my fishing buddy snuck in to a bar in the mid-80’s to see them live.

Today I’m going to tell you about the newest of my flies for pike, the Double Bass Go Go Ray. This fly features lead wire wound around the length of the shaft, making it heavy enough to sink to deeper waters in the heat of summer. The ingredients include (in order of appearance):

3XH/7XL streamer hooks
black thread
lead wire
red crystal flash
black crystal antron chenile
white crystal flash
Semperfli predator fibre baitfish olive
dumbbell eyes
head cement

Even thought that’s a lot of ingredients, it’s at most a 2 out of 5 for tying difficulty. Remember this is a fly for pike fishing so if in doubt, add a few more wraps of thread and an extra of glue.

Pinch off the barb and put the hook in the vice. Wind on the thread near the head and catch in the lead wire.

Wrap the lead wire all the way back the shank to a point opposite the point and then snip it off. Overwrap the thread all the way back over the lead wire. Add enough wraps of thread to secure the tag end of the lead wire. You can add some head cement here for extra hold.

Over wrap back up the to just short of the eye and catch in the “bloody cheek” section of red crystal flash. Normally I will keep this to about an inch long. I went a little longer on this fly.

Cut about 2 inches of chenile for the “drum sticks”. I usually use olive chenile for this but only had black in my stock pile. Fold in half and lay over the hook, about a 1/4 inch behind the eye. You want these to dangle downwards. Wrap it in. Add some head cement.

Cut some white crystal flash, about 2-1/2″ long. Lay it on the top of the hook and wrap over with about 10 tight turns. Add a few drop of cement. Cut the olive Semperfli predator fibre slightly longer than the white crystal flash. Lay it on top of the white and wrap it in with another 10 wraps and add some more cement.

Wrap forward with the black thread to just behind the eye and wrap in the dumbbell eyes. Add another 5 or 6 wraps behind the hook eye and tie it off, adding some more cement atop the dumbbell eyes and the final wraps.

Fly Fish for Perch Like Trout

December 4, 2017 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing

I would rather catch a fish, any fish, on a fly rod. A big pike, head shaking, pulling line, is tons of fun on a spin cast rod and reel. Catch the same pike on a fly rod (pic below) and it feels completely different. The pull is different, the fight is different, and of course the technique of casting and hooking a fish is very different. I like to fly fish for pike from my boat, either anchoring or drifting through pike waters.

But now let’s talk about fly fishing for Perch. Most people associate fly fishing with casting dry flies on a river for trout. It’s also a great way of fishing for trout in lakes. But fly fishing is also a tremendous way to catch Perch, lots and lots of Perch. So I have decided to compare fly fishing for trout in still water (lakes and reservoirs) with fly fishing for Perch on a lake.

First of all, like any fishing, go where the fish are likely to be. Perch will hang out in weed structure and under the shadows of above water structure, such as docks and fallen trees so these are great areas to target. If you have access to a dock on a lake in the southern half of Saskatchewan, you probably have Perch around. Where there is one Perch, there are likely many.

I have realized, but trying every method I could think of, that you can catch Perch as long you put something attractive in front of them with some movement. I have had success with all of the following fishing techniques:

by wading out into the water and casting back to the weeds
casting from a dock over weed structure
casting from a boat back over weeds
from a kayak positioned to cast along the edge of the weeds or beside the shady edge of a dock
from a belly boat beyond the weeds, casting back to shore

So, just about any method that let’s you get a fly to the weeds, within a couple feet of where the fish are.

Fly’s that work:

Mickey Finn
Caddis Fly
Egg Sucking Leach
Bead Head Nymph
Muddler Minnow

When I fly fish for trout and they are actively rising to feed at the surface, I will try to cast to the rise, bringing the same fish back up to the surface for another bite. While that has worked with rainbow trout on lakes, ponds, and rivers, it’s rarely successful with Perch. But a similar technique will work, cast beyond the rise and strip line to pull the fly back over where the rise occurred. When doing this, I have often seen Perch nipping at my fly line, right at the tip where I have my fly line looped and secured with black thread. I think the Perch are mistaking the black thread for a leach or other small black worm. So when I then drag my leader followed by an egg sucking leach across the same spot, I often have a bite.

Perch are very aggressive feeders and because they hand around in schools of many fish, it’s quite common to see fish moving in small groups of anywhere from 2 to 10 fish at once, chasing a fly. There is competition among the fish in the group to take a run at the fly/food so if one misses, it’s often followed by another. So because I’m often casting beyond the rise, it’s not critical to land the fly softly (which you MUST do fishing to the rise with trout). But it is important not to let the fly line slap the water, or you will spook away the whole group of Perch at the spot of the rise.

Now for the best part, catching a Perch on a fly rod makes them feel bigger. I catch Perch off my dock (boat, kayak, belly boat), from sun up to sun down, as many as 30 in an hour. Most of them are small, less than half a pound (and smaller) but I use a 4 weight fly rod with very light tippet so when I hook the little Perch, they actually can put a little bend in the rod and a one pounder can strip line from the reel. Perch don’t really run much but they shake constantly when hooked so if you let up on the line tension, they are going to shake themselves off. So it’s not the fight, it’s the thrill of the hook set, and the release, that make Perch on the fly a lot of fun.

7 Trout Flies for Western Canada

April 19, 2017 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing

Last year I tested all the flies from an Outdoor Canada article titled 7 Easy to Tie Flies That Will Catch Fish Anywhere in Canada. I tied and tried them all, taking pictures, and writing my own experiences in a series of articles on PrairieOutdoors.com titled, 7 Flies That Catch Fish in Canada.

This year I plan to do the same, with a similar but more relevant Outdoor Canada article from this year, The 7 must-have flies for trout anglers in the West.

So this year the series of 7 Trout Flies for Western Canada will be written based my newest summer obsession, testing these 7 flies. Watch for the follow up articles of 7 Trout flies for Western Canada as I post the tying and trying results. Special bonus, I know some of these flies are also well suited for other species across the Prairie’s so expect some perch, walleye, pike and maybe some goldeye to be included in the stories.

This year’s line up of flies includes:

Adams
Catatonic Leech
Elk Hair Caddis
Hares Ear Nymph
Letort Hopper
San Juan Worm
Zebra Chironomid

In one version or another I have fished all these flies in the past. The Adams is a great dry fly that can be used almost anytime there are winged bugs of any type hatching, and it’s a pretty easy fly to tie. Just have plenty of size variations to match size to what is floating on the surface. The Catatonic Leech is like a Woolly Bugger, minus the hackle wrapping, so it’s even simpler, but just as effective. The Elk Hair Caddis is probably my #2 Go To fly in my fly box. i will tie on the Hare’s Ear Nymph anytime the trout are not rising. Often I will use this fly in tandem with another larger heavier nymph to get deeper quicker. The Letort Hopper is new to me. i have fished other hoppers and they are fantastic for a windy sunny day when natural hoppers are getting blown off the tall grass next to the bank. The San Juan Worm is responsible for the best Brown Trout of my life, on the Bow River a number of years ago. I’ve also found that it works well for a few other species. Lastly, the Zebra Chironomid is a great fly for mid-summer lake fishing. It takes a bit of trial and error to get the tying process right.

The fishing season is open in parts of Alberta and will soon be open in Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well so my fly tying efforts over the next few weeks will focus on early season species and I’m looking for a reason to get out on the water. Any reason, any excuse. See you on the water!

Welcome to Spring

March 21, 2017 / galen / Fishing, Fly Fishing, Goose Hunting, Hunting, Ice Fishing

Spring is now officially here. In reality, the arrival of Spring is highly variable across the prairie Provinces. Southern Alberta has anglers reaching for their rods and tackle boxes as seasons open up on some of the mountain streams while others will remain closed in May/June. Make sure you check your regulations for what waters are open. I have a number of flies and my fly rods at the ready to go join a buddy from Lethbridge and catch some fresh mountain trout in the foothills waters. As you move further east and north, most lakes are still covered with a health coat of ice but thin ice conditions in some southern zones are dangerous and in need of caution. I was fishing central Saskatchewan last week and buried the ice auger shaft at one point meaning the ice is still 3-1/2 feet thick. The later half of March is often the peak of the ice fishing bite. All the shacks should have been removed by now but portable huts are still usually permitted as long at they are removed when you leave the ice for the day.

Spring also brings the Snow Goose flock control exercises. March 15th is the season opening date in both Alberta and Saskatchewan, although you may not see any huntable flocks of snow geese until mid-April. Early season flocks of snow geese can be hunted in Alberta often as early as the beginning of April. Snow geese will rise and fall in latitude with the availability of large open water and food supply. Because flock sizes are typically in the 10’s of thousands, both of these need to be in large quantity or the birds will simply hold where the food and water is available. It’s not uncommon for birds to move north, even all the way to central Saskatchewan, then retreat to North Dakota if there is a significant early to mid April snow fall. Canada geese have been making their presence known in Central Saskatchewan for several weeks already, but in small flocks of 10 or less so open water can be sheet water in a field or a slough edge and food sources only need to support a few beaks, not thousands. of course, only snow geese (including Ross’s Geese) are legal to hunt in the Spring.

Bear seasons don’t open up until mid April so no need to get out the rifles and bows, unless you want to shoot some target practice.

Because of the highly variable conditions, Spring hunting and Spring fishing can be dangerous times of the year. So get out there, be careful, and enjoy the Prairie Outdoors.

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