Welcome to Week LIII of 'Fishing Parkland Shorelines'. Like most of us I am a novice fisherman, loving to fish, but far from an expert. In the following weeks I'll attempt to give those anglers who love to fish but just don't have access to a boat, a look at some of the options in the Yorkton area where you can fish from shore, and hopefully catch some fish.
Regular readers may recall one of my New Year's resolutions was to at least start on the road toward being a passable fly fishermen.
I have read enough fly fishing literature to know that being a good fly fisherman is not an overnight process, with some suggesting it takes a lifetime.
But you have to start somewhere.
For me the first tentative step on the road to such knowledge started with a trip to Saskatoon and a stop at Cabela's where I picked up a rod and reel combo from Cahill.
The rod is a moderate action graphite, four-piece, with double wire snake guides.
The reel has an offset gear-to-gear disc drag, with an exposed palming rim.
If that all reads like a foreign language to you, well join the club.
But I brought home the provided gear with some expectation it would be well-suited to a neophyte fly fisherman.
Of course having a fly combo didn't mean I had a good handle on how to cast one. Again reading about the act, and even seeing it in film, I was still only guessing at the real techniques.
So I sought out some sage help. This time Ray Bailey took some time one afternoon recently to give me some tips at Shaw Park in the city.
I am sure anyone who drove by would have wondered what we doing, but I also recall a magazine article that said much like a golfer hitting the practice range to get better, a fly fisherman needs to put in hours of practice too. He suggested using a hula-hoop as a target in a park as a good way to practice.
Ray looked at my Cabela's combo and liked what he saw. While not a pro-level unit, he said the 6-weight, nine-foot rod, was a good one for a beginner to cast.
While he might have thought it was a good starter rod to cast, I still struggled to get the line doing anything near what it was supposed to do.
Everything I knew from casting a spin cast reel on a rod was useless. Ray kept reminding me not to break my wrist on the back and forth motion of the cast. He said to let the rod do the work, and even suggested I might want to physically tie the end the rod to my forearm so that my wrist would stay stable as I learned.
Of course with a fly rod you want line going out behind you, then forward, and back again, deeding the process line until finally letting the line go to land on the water.
It was natural to get the rod flailing more like a buggy whip than a rod, and Ray said to limit the motion to a sort of one o'clock to 11 o-clock motion. I of course pushed that to more a three to nine and had Ray reminding me to limit the motion.
Ray was very good in saying I was doing all right as a beginner, although I am sure he laughed all the way home after the 'training' session.
As they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
So Monday being a holiday I figured it was time to try my new skills over some real water.
I decided to forego chasing trout, realizing my skills were nowhere near ready for those wily critters.
But Perch might be within my skill range.
It was my first trip of the season to Cutarm Creek south of Churchbridge, and is the norm the perch were biting. I started the day using a traditional jig with minnows, on four occasions brought in two perch at a time.
The perch were not huge, but they were hungry, several small ones swallowing the hook so deeply I was forced to keep them when normally they would have been throwbacks.
I put 23 perch in the bucket, and then turned to the Cahill combo.
The wind was too strong for anything close to a real cast, even as poorly as I cast, but I had to try.
I tied on a 'brown hackle peacock' fly from a store-bought package, and managed to send it out maybe 20-feet. The wind was blowing into shore and the wave action carried the floating line to shore rather quickly.
No bites.
Yet I knew there were perch, and hungry ones out there.
So I cheated a little. I added just a bit of minnow tail to the aforementioned fly.
I cast again, and a perch struck.
Now landing a perch on anything above dental floss is pretty much a given, but I still did it.
It was my first catch on a fly rod - ever.
To say I was excited and pleased would have been to state the obvious.
Perch fishing at Cutarm is all right in terms of catching tasty fish, but holds no excitement in terms of fishing challenge.
That one catch put the fun into the evening.
I would land a dozen perch on the fly/minnow combo, keeping two to finish my limit, while releasing the others.
The perch were all smallish, but the fly rod catches put the night on my best-ever fishing excursions list.
I can hardly wait to try for a pike next.
And, speaking of fly fishing, you might want to check out the Bug Chucker Cup coming up at a quartet of lakes around nearby Roblin, MB.
The Second Annual BCC will be held May 30, 31 and June 1, with participants fishing at four lakes over two days of actual competition.
Bill Pollock, with the BCC Committee said the inaugural event was launched after a national event was held.
"We hosted the Canadian Nationals here in 2010," he said, adding that created interest in doing something annually around fly fishing. "I think the locals realized the potential of hosting something like this."
Hosting a national event also meant local organizers gained some important insights into such an event.
"It certainly helped. It was an eye opener," said Pollock. "We saw people would come out to something like this."
Pollock said the number of local area fly fishermen is not large, but area lakes are attracting fly fisherman from as far away as far away as Ontario and the United States, so the fishery is a good one.
The BCC is held with teams of two fishermen spending time on four lakes; Twin Lakes offers up Tiger Trout (a hybrid of brook and brown trout), Persse Lake has browns and brookies.
Bench Rainbow and East or West Goose Lake having rainbows and browns.
Pollock said the lakes are part of system of trout lakes cared for by the Fish and Lake Improvement Program for the Parkland Region (FLIPPR).
FLIPPR is an organization dedicated to trout in western Manitoba.
Its vision is a straightforward one. "By working with its partners, FLIPPR strives to create a world class stillwater trout fishing destination that provides economic, tourism and recreation opportunities for Manitoba's Â鶹ÊÓƵwest Parkland region."
FLIPPR, in collaboration with its partners, facilitate economic development opportunities by creating, managing, protecting and promoting world class trout lakes throughout Manitoba's Â鶹ÊÓƵwest Parkland region.
"From 2000 onward, in conjunction with the concentrated effort by Manitoba Water Stewardship, FLIPPR was created to address concerns and assist in the identifying of new lakes and streams to further broaden the resource, to gain the greatest economic benefits, as well as enhancing the sport in the western portions of the province for all," explained the FLIPPR website.
"Only two other fisheries in North America can approach the level of ours. One is the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana and the other rather scattered fishery centers generally in the Idaho-Yellowstone region. While other excellent lakes exist throughout western America, no region hosts such a collection of waters in the concentration found in the western Parkland. For a ridiculously few dollars and some annually concentrated effort we can easily top them all?"
But back to the BCC, Pollock said in 2012 the event had a modest start with only seven teams, although entries are already higher for this year's event.
In 2012 the winning team was Cal Boscow of the Pas, MB and Randy Bossuyt of Dauphin, MB. They caught 19 fish in total and the longest six (three from each competitor) from each lake totaled 635 cm.
Second place went to Doug Elsasser and Al Staub from Togo, SK.
If all goes well I know I plan to run out to the BCC to see if I might learn a few tricks about fly fishing myself.
And now I have to take a bit of space here for an update on getting your fish licenses.
In true government style the Saskatchewan government is both admitting they rushed the move to an online only licensing option, and at the same time are still steadfast in their being right to go down that path.
Saskatchewan's angling and hunting license vendors that are transitioning to the new online automated Hunting, Trapping and Angling License (HAL) system will still be able to sell paper licenses for this year.
"We are taking a decades-old paper system and moving it online and there have been a few growing pains this spring," Environment Minister Ken Cheveldayoff said in a recent release. "In support of the stakeholders who are going through this transition with us and to make sure anglers can hit the water this spring issue free, we will make paper licenses available as a back-up, in the event of computer problems or challenges with data entry."
The back-up paper licenses will only be available for this year. In 2014, the HAL licensing system will be entirely electronic.
Only vendors who are adopting the new electronic system will be issued the paper licenses.
So let's see, the issue of those not having a computer, a printer, or a credit card, has been completed ignored.
The fact you can photocopy and pass the license around not addressed. I can add here I had a CO stop by when I was out Mother's Day. The amount of time he looked at license and the fact he never asked anything, such as having me confirm my address etc, happened. I could have been fishing on anybody's license.
Then the issue of licensing not being available at places such as regional park offices, places which can't justify the cost of the new system, yet provided a great tourist service, hasn't changed.
So the government obviously holds such concerns as of little consequence, or perhaps feels few have such issues.
But I'd wager they aren't talking to people enough, or maybe it's just not listening. The CO admitted a family member had an issue with no printer.
A recent talk to a manager at a major outlet for fishing gear in the province said their cashiers are getting an ear full, which of course should be addressed to Saskatchewan Party MLAs.
The issue here is ultimately one of convenience and in supporting tourism.
The 'we are right so it's this way at all costs' attitude by the government does not serve tourism well at all.
A case in point, I want to fish in Manitoba one day. I grab my gear, head east, buy a license at a corner gas station, opting for a conservation license option, which will slightly reducing my 'keeper limit' costs less than a resident license in Saskatchewan, and off to water I go.
The same weekend a fisherman on Roblin, MB. wants to head to Fishing Lake in Saskatchewan. He won't buy his license at many small gas stations anymore, and when he does figure out where to find one, he'll pay twice what a Saskatchewan resident does.
Now that's supporting tourism in Saskatchewan.
I don't expect government to change. That is the nature of arrogance we expect from our elected politicians whether in Ottawa or a provincial capital, regardless of their political stripe.
However, in one conversation on the changes, a gem of idea was offered, so I will pass it along.
You go to a blended system. You buy a license and get a temporary one, followed by a mail out of a more permanent one. In future years you present your existing license, pay a fee, receive a current season sticker that is applied to the license and off you go to fish. A simple system that has far more merit than the current one the government is determined to push here.
