A Fly Fishing Season Start Unlike Other Places
Well most places have their seasons start early like ours does the target species is usually trout. Now our trout season, at least in streams, doesn’t start until the middle of April. But it might as well be April Fool’s Day because most of our trout are stocked fish in lakes and this far north, are still ice covered The middle of April most of our rivers are unfishable. If we’re lucky it’s thawed but they’re just running high and brown but typically they’re still very very low with lots of water locked in the in the hills and valleys around the handful of trout rivers we do have.
So our start of the season tends to be the Fairford River in Fairford Manitoba
Because of the drop, from the control structure, it is water that is open all year round but it’s pretty hard to stand in when it’s minus anything. Sometimes we get up there earlier in the year, if we have a mild spell that gets it close to above or below freezing. So spring break is our official start to our fly fishing season and we are just waiting for the ice come to come off of lakes from that point forward.
Back in the old days
We used to find giant schools of Tulabi, better known as Lake Cisco, in recent years those numbers have dropped way down but our experience of fishing this water has enabled us to find other target species that happened to be there feeding on the tulabi, like pike and walleye. But on really warm years, as the climate is circular, we’ve been able to get carp as well! This year was mostly just the Lake Cisco but I did catch like my biggest one ever close to 14 inches. We were there for 4 hours ’cause we still don’t have the good light and it’s still bloody cold but it was a good time.
We got lucky with a high of +4° C that day The fish were caught on a Bucktail streamer with holographic black collar. Only three fish caught but they were good ones. and by good I mean these fish actually put a bend in a 10′ 8 weight.
After that much fishing that much cold, it was time for a high calorie high protein meal before the trip home.
