Hi all, I haven’t posted for quite a while so I guess it’s time to do so.
My lovely wife Liz and I were able to get away for an 8 night venture up into the north country for a bit of “little boat fishing”. For us this means loading the 12 footer on top the camper and the electric motor inside, to troll with flyrods for trout.
As I was just getting off of a night shift the morning we left, July 9, we headed only as far as Petite Lake, north of Hinton. We spent a couple of nights there, and on the first day had a memorable experience with a large group that appeared, set up right next to us in an otherwise completely empty campground with a huge toy hauler, unloaded 6 quads and vanished in the hour in which we went for a walk and returned. Bizarre!
Anyways back to the trip. At Petite Lake we also saw what would be virtually the last clouds or any sort of breeze we would experience for virtually the entire trip as you will see in the upcoming photos.
We didn’t catch any fish in the few outings we had on the lake but did spend the better part of our 1 full day there, driving the back roads doing a bit of creek fishing and did manage to pick up a couple of nice grayling in one of the nearby flowing waters.
As this was only a brief stopover to recover from my night shifts, we were on our way Friday morning and headed north, through Grande Cache, Grande Prairie and into the Peace Country to one of our favourite little trout lakes.
Fishing there was considerably better and we were soon into some beautiful rainbows and brookies like this one.
It is a special little place that will remain unnamed in this story. It is the type of place where one morning I was able to, as I trolled along alone in the boat while Liz enjoyed a little well deserved sleep, have an eagle fly by,
while a cow moose swam her calf across the lake right in front of me.
They reached the other shore and instead of just stepping out onshore, which they could have anywhere along the bank, the cow walked along for about 50 yards while the calf swam along right beside her. It was as if she was giving it a swimming lesson. Amazing! I trolled along following them and they finally stepped out on the shore where they stood and ate for at least another 15 minutes seemingly without a care in the world. Meanwhile I trolled along watching all of this unfold, taking pictures by the dozens of the eagle flying by, the moose and the loons swimming along watching it all happen.
Oh, and at the same time, I was busy fighting, netting and trying to photograph the nice rainbow that interrupted what I thought was already a pretty special moment.
Anyone who thinks this is a bit too much to believe, is welcome to pull the data off of the digital files and will see that the last 4 images were all taken in just a few moments time as well as about 50 more that I obviously can’t post all of.
We spent 4 nights at our little spot with virtually no one else there. I believe in the entire time there was maybe 2 or 3 hours where there was even another boat on the lake with us. We trolled along for hours continuing to catch at least 4 different age classes of rainbows and brookies.
The weather was scorching hot with the temperature reaching 35 C on the thermometer on the dash of my truck as we trolled along watching the world go by.
For 4 days and nights it was just hot weather (too hot for me), calm water and beautiful fish one after the other.
(More to come.)