Lake trout on a fly

 ...or the tale of two trout. One, my first lake trout on a fly and two, my first master angler lake trout, a 35 1/2" beauty posing in the image to the right. A huge thrill and the biggest lake trout of my life...to date.



Of course with every story of success are blended many that fail to meet expectations, some even emitting the acrid stink of skunk. Tuesday's trip started with me catching only one tiger trout out of Twin Lakes and that one was painfully small. I fished the lake from 9:30 to 1:00 and by then I had had enough. I packed up my gear and headed off to the head of the trail to Black Beaver Lake to meet up with buddy Cal. After a short walk into the lake we launched our float tubes and began casting to the shorelines; but all our presentations were to no avail. Cal announced he had several tugs but I suspect he was only day-dreaming of better days. The walk out was more sober than the trek in but as hard-core fishermen we had experienced this many times before. After libations and a good night's sleep we were off to Gull Lake to see if we could rouse any whitefish but after a couple of hours of inaction we were grateful for the attentions of a few perch. Perhaps "grateful" is too strong a word. Next up was Twin Lake again and the fishing there was sporadic until nightfall, when a number of nice tigers fell to Cal's top-water offering. Again, that magic 20" eluded us both. We had planned to head up to Clearwater Lake that day but the late hour, and lack of any real success on Twin Lake, coerced us back to the cabin to prepare for another onslaught on the tiger population the next day. The liberal libations with the soothing heat of a hot tub prepped us for a good sleep and an optimistic outlook for the next day.



Cal fished top-water while I fished  wet and results were less than stellar. Early on Cal opted to try for
brookies in Persse Lake while I stayed in the hunt for tigers. By 1:30 I had managed 17 tigers, biggest 19.5" and 4 over 18" but none that eclipsed the 20" mark.






Next it was off to Clearwater Lake and the real goal of the trip; a lake trout on the fly. The next
 morning found us in float tubes casting or trolling in the shallow waters off the boy scout camp. And
this time we weren't disappointed. Although the fishing was somewhat slow, the action was exciting and we caught about a dozen; the largest of which was a chunky 28 inches long.

The trout were all caught on 3" streamers that were aggressively attacked. Cal took a video of one of my trout with his GoPro, both above and sub surface. https://youtu.be/dcb--89I9Qo







 

The winds shifted to the north and Clearwater lake became too rough to fish for lake trout so we moved onto Barbe Lake with the hope of catching a nice brook trout or large rainbow. Our success was varied and although we caught a number of rainbows from 20 to 22.5 inches, our largest brook trout came in at 17". None-the-less it was a beautiful fish and the only one in full fall regalia. The dozen or so smaller brookies we caught were still in their somewhat drab summer colours.

Most of the rainbows we caught went into a full aerial fight with several jumping up to 5 times. And all of the larger ones had at least one sizzling run left when they spied the net.

We rounded off the adventure with a side-trip to a local stream that has a brook trout population but were unable to tempt any to take our flies. All in all, a wonderful trip; the kind that leave a lasting impression and provide ample fodder for future day dreams.