Douglas River 6S Challenge!

[Levy]

I apologize for the length of this post in advance.

I just wanted to share some pictures and a bit of story from a recent canoe/fishing trip I took to northern saskatchewan. It has been on my bucket list for a while to go on a fishing trip and catch six different species of fish, and because we wound up canoeing on the douglas river I called it the douglas river 6 species challenge.

My girlfriend and I started at Cold lake and drove just about as far north as you can drive on the western side of saskatchewan. We went through Meadow Lake park, stay at Atchison Lake the first night.

The first night we arrived there we started a fire and had a big green visitor who burnt his wings on the fire. From what I have read the Luna Moth is one of the largest in North America.


Day-2 I woke up at the crack of dawn and unloaded the canoe, hopeful to catch some brookies and or rainbow on the fly at Atchison. I tried leaches with shrimp, and caddis droppers between 5 and 20 feet and had no luck. I also tried every different type of retrieve speed I could and also had no luck. There were two to three pound brookies and rainbows rising all around and I managed to see a couple of boils behind my fly but for the second time at Atchison got skunked. Still getting used to this still water fly-fishing. Learning to fly fish in Labrador may have spoiled me.

Around lunch we packed up and headed a few kilometers down the road by some gravel pits to Broad Creek. The DFO website lists it as holding brook trout and I was eager to catch some as I have caught in streams in several other places in the province. The bank was nearly vertical when I got there. It was a solid near vertical 45-foot drop that was too steep to walk. The closest thing to a cliff I have ever seen in that area. We managed to make our way down and the creek was fast flowing clear and well oxygenated but I did not see any sign or have any bites. My suspicion is the fish are closer to the headwaters where the old bridge was washed out.


We then headed north through Buffalo Narrow and La Loch and ended spending our second night at Amber Lake. We stopped at the clear water river and caught some pike. We didn’t bother fishing the rapids for grayling. The access was partially flooded and we didn’t want to take chances.



The road north of la loch wasn’t to bad but the boat launch at Amber lake would be a problem for larger heavier vehicles. We had a small light 4x4 and even we had a hard time making it out of the camping spot. Fishing was great at Amber. We saw some monster browns; my guess is around 5 pounds and brookies that were 20+ inches (I snuck up on them at a creek mouth). I was having no luck fly fishing once again and my girlfriend was consistently catching 2 pound brookies on a spinner so I joined her and we started trolling in 20 to 50 feet of water and caught oodles of brookies and a few browns with the largest being 18.5 inches. Between 10:30 and 11:30 PM the water in the middle of the lake had a nice boiling appearance. Spinners yielded many brookies but nothing I threw at them on the fly warranted a bite.

[Levy]

Day 3 - The next day we hopped the road to Ed’s Lake. There were some friendly North Battleford folk we chatted with camping there. They shared stories of how their camps had been cleaned out by a la loche local in years past and how the RCMP investigations were less than satisfactory. Ed’s lake had a little nicer brookies and some feisty rainbows. I had a couple of snap offs and landed some small chunky bows. Before dark we hopped back to Amber and I headed out for some evening brookies. I had some luck and noticed they stopped biting in deep water around 11:45 so I head back to camp. As I was finishing packing up and cleaning and around 12:30 I noticed a few rises about 10 feet from shore. I put on a mosquito and tested my luck. I threw my fly out and two seconds later had a 12 inch brookie splashing around. I continued to work the shoreline and must have caught a couple dozen brookies and three small browns. The largest brookie I caught was 16.5 inches, and called it quits after that. It was about 2:30 in the morning and I was wiped.


Day 4 we continued north stopping at Hodge Lake to fish for Lakers. Wind was not an issue when we set out and it was only slightly smokey. We used 1 oz bottom bouncers and fished in 60 to 130 feet of water. We could barely get set up before catching a fish. We managed many nice little lakers and begun to have difficulties with the wind. We head back to shore where in a small stream flowing out of Hodge Lake I saw a school of about 40 suckers. I threw a bead headed caddis puppa at them and landed one.


Broach Lake

Headwaters of Clear Water River

Douglas River



Day-5 Our canoe portion of the trip began and we head down stream to a group of unnamed clear lakes that I could find no information on and knew only how far off the river they were and that they appeared very clear in flysask satellite photos. The River was Beautiful. I have never seen so many large Tamarack in my life. There were many sandstone outcrops and we were on the edge of Saskatchewan’s largest impact crater. The carswell crater is approximately 39 km in diameter and 115 million years in age. Athabasca sandstone is amongst some of the oldest and best preserved in the world.



Douglas River holds excellent walleye fishing and is rumored to also hold grayling however I never had much of a chance to fish the rapids for the large finned bandits. We caught many walleye in the deeper holes and took our time paddling down the river. I have never seen such golden colored walleye before.




After arriving at the creek I was planning on paddling the whole way into our desired chain of lakes we notice after paddling into the first puddle of a lake that we couldn’t paddle up the remaining 150 meters of creek to the lakes so I set up camp and worked on clearing out an old skidoo trail while my girlfriend cooked supper. After eating we decided to rest for a minute in the tent and within a minutes a black bear snuck up and started licking out the already washed pans. I didn’t feel very intimidating but I wanted to get that bear out of there before he wants more than a little left over grease. I was wearing only pants and I sure I looked like a pasty white snack to him. We decided we weren’t going to stay at that spot and portaged into the chain of lakes and set up camp on a small island that was loaded with strawberries and only had small bunnies on it. The island is the small hump in the middle of this picture.

[Levy]

Day-6
Fishing was great, the water was amazing, and we caught Perch and Pike. We tried for Lakers in a 120-foot deep basin and marked many large fish on the fish finder but were unable to catch any. I think they may have been whites because I have not had many days up north that the Lakers refuse to bite.







After a good day of fishing we headed back upstream to the vehicle. 11 km boat ride upstream was slow going in places. It was shallow and rock and difficult to go upstream in some spots but walking the canoe upstream was a viable option in most locations. I have a rubber sleeve instead of a shear pin so I wasn’t worried about being stuck downstream if I bumped a rock or two with my prop.

Day-7 We spent the night at Fontaine lake and fished a until lunch before we left for Saskatoon. We caught a lot of little fat rainbows and managed 1 splake. It was over all a great trip that I would recommend to anyone looking for a Saskatchewan adventure.




Arctic Raspberry




At the end our species count included: White sucker, Yellow Perch, Northern Pike, Walleye, Lake Trout, Brook Trout, Brown Trout, Rainbow Trout, Splake, and a we also caught Spot tailed Shiner and Fat Head minnow by hand.

[BeeGuy]

nice pics

[Rabdo]

sounds like a good time. cool pics, thanks for sharing

[pikergolf]

Thanks for sharing your experience, looks like you had a great time, the pics are fantastic!!

[Teamprotz]

Fired some casts from that bridge a few years ago , caught nothing but its sure interesting country. Very nice pics, looks like fun !

[Walleye101]

Very cool trip. Nice pictures! Thanks for sharing.

[fish gunner]

Great trip pics , thankx for sharing. Your a lucky guy to find a girl so out going. Well done on the species count.

[Wild&Free]

Great write up and awesome pictures. Thanks for sharing.

[flyguyd]

Very nice pic Looks like you had an awesome adventure

[sturgeonhound]

Thanks for sharing.....nice pics and a good story. Looks like a really nice place foe a trip.

[chriscosta]

are you serious that looks like a hell of a time thanks for that