Welcome to Week CLXXXVIII 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.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the amount of science which is now being applied to fishing.
When my Dad first took me fishing, a day I honestly can’t define anymore, but it did happen because it was growing up fishing with him which set my love of the activity, fishing was very much the realm of tossing spoons, and occasionally opting for some hand-carved wooden lures, weighted with ball bearings drilled inside.
Granted there were lots of trips which resulted in the highlight being bologna sandwiches and lukewarm drinks (you had a choice of coffee that had cooled a touch too much, or a soda which had warmed just a bit too much), but we caught fish more often than not.
If Dad was still alive I can only imagine what he would think of my steamer truck-sized tackle box. It would probably be something about never being able to use all the hooks, which would of course be correct and a bit ironic too in the sense Dad was a notorious lure changer. His theory was simple, there is always a lure which will catch fish, so it’s up to the fisherman to find the right lure for the day.
By the way I recently read a great description of a spoon in fishing; “a spoon is an illusion. Often the illusion is little more than subtle delivery for a tasty, aromatic morsel of something fishy, like a minnow head or a whole minnow. A little flash, a little vibration – a hint of color and something injured, something struggling (on the lift-fall).” The definition comes from a magazine which I’ll reveal just a bit farther down the column.
If there was science in Dad’s lure choices, he kept it a secret, although I suspect any deep research would have been with the spoon company, more than Dad keeping a log of what worked when.
I inherited that approach from Dad. While some fisherfolk do keep detailed logs, in particular fly fisherman seem to have a penchant for putting pen to page, recording what fly caught what fish, in what water, with notations for weather conditions and cloud cover, that sort of book work would detract from the fun of the day for me. Granted, a good log book might help catch more fish, but that is not always the key to a good trip.
Finding research is the easy part of the process. There are numerous websites which can be found via a search.
But at times it’s nice to disconnect from the web and lounge back in an easy chair with an old-fashioned magazine, which is what I did over the holidays with the newest edition of In-Fisherman.
The magazine included a number of articles focused on science in fishing, and a couple in particular caught my eyes as they related to walleye, a fish so many covet locally.
“Canadian researchers compared foraging of walleye – a fish-eating predator adapted to feeding under low-light conditions – and smallmouth bass – a fish and crayfish eater that usually occupies well-lit habitats – in different lakes with different water color and clarity. Rather than looking at what’s in the fish’s stomach, the scientists relied on stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen in the fish’s muscle to assess the diversity of forage eaten and whether the fish were feeding in the shallow, littoral zone or the open water.
“Walleye foraging changed little with water clarity – they ate the same general variety of foods and forged in the same part of the lake regardless of water clarity. This makes sense because walleyes are well adapted to feeding in low-light conditions and can adjust their time of feeding to forage in these favorable conditions. Walleye anglers should not be concerned with water clarity but may want to focus their fishing more during higher light times in more turbid water,” related a short article under Bit & Pieces.
That is a little tidbit which a fisherman can file away as important information when on the hunt for walleye.
Sticking with wallies, I was intrigued by a rather lengthy article of fishing them at Last Mountain Lake here in Saskatchewan.
It included that “walleyes are unique in having some of the largest cone cells of any predatory animal, on land or sea. Cone cells are like pixels on a large screen TV in a sports bar – the bigger the pixels, the fuzzier the picture … Meanwhile, walleyes have color vision that peaks in the orange-red and green portions of the spectrum. They see colors on both sides of each peak, but sensitivity declines. So they see wavelengths shorter than green and longer than orange-red, but not well. Overall, they see orange and red well, followed by green and yellow. They’re least sensitive to blue and violet, so much so that in most situations they probably can’t see them. This includes purple.”
Again that is a pretty useful bit of information to file away - (oh and check out the rest of the article in the Dec-Feb issue).
The research is out there (I think I just channeled Fox Mulder, not surprising as the series relaunches this January), but it is true for fishing, we as fisherfolk just need to search it out.
