Welcome to Week CLXXXIX 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.
It was only last year, well a week, or so actually, where I mentioned it was a good time of year to ‘go and learn things’ as a certain Dwayne Pride often says on NCIS New Orleans. Yes I not only fish, but watch television too, frankly too much most weeks.
Anyway it seems, at least from reports among local fishing friends posting on Facebook, itself a great resource to track fishing success, things are pretty darned slow in terms of catching anything through the ice right now.
Thankfully the better half — she of the big channel catfish she reminds me of often, and well she should since big fish are rare so a bit of bragging is warranted — found a couple of online articles that are worth a mention.
The first article is at www.marlinmag.com and it delves into the idea that classic lures still catch fish.
This might sound like an obvious thing, but let’s face it we fisherfolk love new gear about as much as we love catching a fish.
I’m pretty sure you could paint a spoon white, add a few pink spots, and it would … wait a minute that sounded a bit too familiar. I’m pretty sure I have that particular colour pattern in the big tackle box. I note the big tackle box because that tends to be the home of all the lures that caught my attention in a store, but rarely seem to catch anything at the lake.
The lures which are more generally successful are in a smaller carry bag.
And this should not surprise anyone who fishes a great deal, but the carry bag has a lot of old time lures in it.
Regular readers will be aware I like Len Thompson lures, and I was pretty excited last spring when the company released a number of new patterns.
But truth be told the stand by hammered perch and red and white patterns caught more fish for me over the year than the new patterns did.
And can anyone fish with a few lead heads? Blacks still mimic leeches well enough.
A yellow is close enough to a walleye fry to bigger fish.
The green I suspect was supposed to be a leopard frog, and while those gorgeous amphibians are rarer these days, the colour still works often. Give me one at Canora Dam most days and I’ll catch a fish or two.
Now I would not suggest fisherfolk not indulge in some of the new lure tech that is out there, that is after all a big part of the hobby. It’s why we start to drool anytime we see a sign in a store that says ‘fishing gear’.
But as the article on the Marlin site old school can still be effective.
Unless of course the article at www.activeanglingnz.com is closer to the way things are.
The article, again pointed out by the better half was entitled ‘Do fish learn to avoid flies & lures?’
Now that is the million dollar question isn’t it?
There are days I would certainly concur on that hypothesis. It seems that fish have figured out exactly what a lure is, and have sworn off even nudging one on its way by.
Then you go back to that same spot a few days, maybe even a few hours later, and the fish appear famished to the point they’d attack a safety pin with a chunk of cotton batting attached.
I am sure heavily fished areas, especially in small waters, are subject to fish become more leery of a lure. That might well be the case, as an example, at the water treatment plant trout pond, (it really needs a name), here in the city. A small water body, and a finite number of fish, you have to expect they become wiser if they are caught and released a few times.
The same may well be true at a spot such as Lake of the Prairies, where size slot limits means fish can be caught and released on more than one occasion.
By contrast, at Canora Dam most fish, at least the walleye, unless small, go home to a frying pan, and are not afforded the luxury of learning from the mistake of taking to a lure.
