67Elmo
06-25-2014, 06:34 PM
The odd time I get a sense folks think our fishing is lousy and going downhill fast due to this and that.....Let me reminisce....
This last weekend I was at a buddy's cottage at Baptiste Lake by Athabasca. We were on a buddy "golf mini-holiday" and played Athabasca and Barrhead for the golfers among us...
I did bring my spinning rod and a few jigs (6 lb test mono, 1/8 ounce chartreuse jigs, plastic tails and minnows added to jig). I walked to the end of my buddy's dock which was about 30 yards long, and extended to the end of the pencil reeds. I casted into about 8 ft. of water and jigged back into the 4 ft. deep water at the end of the dock in the evening about an hour before sunset. Results?
The very first cast a nice fat 22 inch pike. The second cast another fat pike, about 20 inches. The third cast a nice 21 inch walleye. Then things got stone cold. Nothing until the 7th cast. Then another 19 inch walleye on the 7th cast...I'd say I only fished for about one hour, and must have landed another 8 or so walleye, all 18-21 inches long. All off the dock. Baptist is catch and release unless you have 3 tags for a size slot for walleye (draws). You may be able to keep pike over a certain size (I never checked), but all were released.
Now let me morph back to a kid in Manitoba in the 70s.....I fished hard and as often as I could. I think I knew what I was doing generally, and these results were common. Off the shore it was unusual to catch a fish after an entire day's fishing off the shore at the "popular spots" east of Winnipeg. I remember spending almost an entire week fishing Caddy Lake in eastern Manitoba. I caught 5 walleye all week. One per day. Plus a very few pike per day. And this was in a 12 ft. tinny with a 9.9 hp Johnson motor hitting all the "hot spots" since my Dad had a place on the lake.
Here in Alberta my experience is I catch an entire week's worth of walleye from those early days in Manitoba in about 30 minutes! For example yesterday I fished Lac Ste. Anne west of Edmonton, and despite the strong NE wind, a bad wind for fishing, probably landed close to a dozen walleye between 9 and 10 PM. They were all 18 - 21 inches. So enjoy what we have here...be grateful...life is too short...enjoy.
This last weekend I was at a buddy's cottage at Baptiste Lake by Athabasca. We were on a buddy "golf mini-holiday" and played Athabasca and Barrhead for the golfers among us...
I did bring my spinning rod and a few jigs (6 lb test mono, 1/8 ounce chartreuse jigs, plastic tails and minnows added to jig). I walked to the end of my buddy's dock which was about 30 yards long, and extended to the end of the pencil reeds. I casted into about 8 ft. of water and jigged back into the 4 ft. deep water at the end of the dock in the evening about an hour before sunset. Results?
The very first cast a nice fat 22 inch pike. The second cast another fat pike, about 20 inches. The third cast a nice 21 inch walleye. Then things got stone cold. Nothing until the 7th cast. Then another 19 inch walleye on the 7th cast...I'd say I only fished for about one hour, and must have landed another 8 or so walleye, all 18-21 inches long. All off the dock. Baptist is catch and release unless you have 3 tags for a size slot for walleye (draws). You may be able to keep pike over a certain size (I never checked), but all were released.
Now let me morph back to a kid in Manitoba in the 70s.....I fished hard and as often as I could. I think I knew what I was doing generally, and these results were common. Off the shore it was unusual to catch a fish after an entire day's fishing off the shore at the "popular spots" east of Winnipeg. I remember spending almost an entire week fishing Caddy Lake in eastern Manitoba. I caught 5 walleye all week. One per day. Plus a very few pike per day. And this was in a 12 ft. tinny with a 9.9 hp Johnson motor hitting all the "hot spots" since my Dad had a place on the lake.
Here in Alberta my experience is I catch an entire week's worth of walleye from those early days in Manitoba in about 30 minutes! For example yesterday I fished Lac Ste. Anne west of Edmonton, and despite the strong NE wind, a bad wind for fishing, probably landed close to a dozen walleye between 9 and 10 PM. They were all 18 - 21 inches. So enjoy what we have here...be grateful...life is too short...enjoy.