Holy rain coming up from Calgary on Thursday. Then rain all day Friday to Jasper which turned out to heavy snow past Evansburg. Got to Jasper, cleared off
Had a nice day hanging around town, eating great food and drinking draft beer.
Head up to Maligne for opening day on Saturday. Got out on the water around 8 a.m. Far from the first one out. It was cloudy and cold. Got into a huge rainbow right away. Kept trolling around until about 10 a.m. and landed around 10 fish. Most were really good sized rainbows. Then I set up for still fishing and wondered if it would repeat from last year...it did! Everyone else kept trolling. I timed it right because the fish started moving around. You could see them in the shallows and cast to them. By now the clouds disappeared and the sun was out. Perfect! The fishing was right stupid. After landing a bunch I started to count how many casts with a fish landed. I got up to 49...49 on the same fly and 49 where nothing went wrong. Some were rainbows over 20 inches and I kept my first brookie at 19 inches. A couple of guys pulled up and asked how it was going. I told them about my count so they watched as #50 took the hook ...but...got off. So they setup near me and we had a good time shooting the breeze, making fun of each others casts and the number of double and triple headers soon lost count of. By 2 p.m. my muscles had cramped out really bad, no really, and I was at around 100 fish landed...that was enough. Headed in early with 2 nice brookies in tow.
Started raining Sunday overnight and kept on. Went to Talbot to check it out. It snowed like crazy for about 3 hours. Just watched movies in the RV
I finally launched when it went back to rain. I could not find a white
Spent about an hour tooling around the lake without seeing anything. Didn't even cast out. Came back in to warm up and hope for calmer weather. Talked to a guy at the launch and he said he found a bunch of dead whites...uh oh....
The nice weather showed again on Monday.
No wind at all and no rain. Went back to Talbot. Found some good sized pike but didn't even bring the pike rod. Traveled pretty far and didn't see a white. Came back towards the launch and ran into a school of them. woo hoo!! 2nd cast and one of them turned on it and took it. What a fight!! Lots of good runs high up and into the muddy bottom. Just awesome. Managed to land the big white and put it on the stringer. For the next bit I tried following the school around but they seemed to become elusive. I went a bit away from the launch and started seeing fish. I thought they were pike at first but they were huge whites! Soon a was surrounded and they kept coming from all directions. Hard not to hook up with this many - you could sense it coming. About 4 casts and another one on. This one was slightly smaller but fought even better. Managed to land it too and onto the stringer. Checked the watch and it was 9 a.m. Limited out
From there I just boated around to see what I could find and it was then that I found some pretty big dead pike and dead whites. It did winter kill. It will be interesting to see if it impacts the white fishing as they disperse throughout the lake.
Pics:
Elk on the side of the road taken from the boat
The first and larger fish was 24 inches and just over 5 lbs
Jasper never disappoints! What a blast.
Jasper - opening weekend report
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