Fishing a big river

[Jpaul74]

Greetings all,

I am relatively new to fly fishing, and to this point, most of my fishing has been done on ponds and lakes for stocked trout. I recently came across a very short video of someone catching walleye out of the Peace River on their fly rod, and now I have become obsessed with doing the same. Problem is, I have zero experience fly fishing moving water, let alone a river as large as the Peace River. I would be looking to hook into goldeye and walleye, or even an odd pike should it happen. Any tips on what i should be looking for in terms of structure or water structure for assistance? I should add that I'll be fishing from shore as well.

Thanks in advance.

[Flieguy]

for goldeye, walleye, and pike, you're going to want to find deeper holes with some current break, like a wing dam or things like that.

Once you find a goldeye, you'll probably find a ton more in that spot. Look for rises and cast big hoppers to them, goldeye love large bushy dries as well as leeches and whatnot. Just drift the dry down in the current where the rises are, you will probably have to flip your line upstream of the fly to keep it from dragging the fly unnaturally down in the current, this is called a "mend", youtube it.

for walleye, you'll probably want a sink tip but it's not totally necessary. Cast dark coloured clouser minnows and bounce them back along the bottom almost like a jig.

the trick to catching pike is to use huge flies, I like bucktails because they don't absorb as much water so they're easier to cast.


good luck!

[Myles]

What Flieguy said.

[Runewolf1973]

Honesty, I've caught more goldeye by intentionally dragging the fly...especially hoppers. Give the hopper a few twitches to make it look like a real one trying to kick itself out of the water. Quite often the goldeye will strike your fly just as you start rapidly retrieving it at the end of your drift preparing for the next cast.

[Runewolf1973]

Just tonight I was out catching goldeye. I waded out a bit and just casted a giant hopper directly downstream of where I was standing. Drag and twitch the thing back upstream towards you. I caught about 10 in an hour. When the bats fly...that's the time to fish.