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Old 11-14-2018, 01:26 PM
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Groundhogger Groundhogger is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Ontario~looking west
Posts: 1,158
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I'm not even in Alberta, but saw the thread title and poked my nose in.

For me, the species comes first..then the nicest (=place I like the most) spot to get them. Here in Ontario, you don't always get to choose, meaning if you want a specific species and don't want to drive all day to get there, you may only have 1 or 2 options. Lots of things factor into that, especially in Southern Ontario where I am. With that said, we're surrounded by great lakes (Ontario, Huron, Superior) and the runs of great lakes steelhead/salmon can be quite remarkable. Allot of my own fishing centers around that in recent years, driving up to Lake Superior (7 hours) in the fall to fish for whatever is moving into the rivers on a given day. It's not impossible (in a 3-4 days of fishing) to catch brook trout (likely small), steelhead, chinoook salmon, coho salmon and pink salmon, smallmouth bass~all within a few miles of river. Would I trade that for the ability to fish for cutthroat using dry flies? Probably.

In the south here, we have a couple of small/healthy streams beating the odds...and producing some sizable wild browns. One of them has a naturally sustained brook trout population too. 2 hours from my house I can carefully approach the Niagara River and try to winch some sizable lake trout and steelhead from the very intimidating amount of water swirling around down there. I've done this on a few occasions, mostly caught steelhead..and have seen the odd chinook/laker. I've caught lakers from the Niagara, but from a boat.

If after something exotic, I believe Ontario has the only population of Aurora Trout, limited to 2 lakes if I'm not mistaken. I think your ability to fish those is on alternate years to protect them. Remote location, so I haven't taken that one on. We have the Nipigon in the north, and if you like brook trout...it's where the largest one caught came from. In terms of distance~if I drive that many hours south instead of north~I'd be in Florida. lol
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