Welcome to Week CXLVII 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.
Fishing has been written about as an activity which centres one’s life.
Others see it as some sort of metaphor for the struggles of existence, the fish and the fishermen, set against the background of nature as it should be.
Some just fish.
In my case, I can’t really say just how I see it.
There are days, because I have taken on this weekly article, and it has garnered such a following, where fishing some days falls a bit closer to work than I would like it.
It’s not that the act of tossing a hook, and the wonderful tug of a hungry fish taking the lure has grown old, but there is the need to get out and fish every week possible, and there are times a round of disc golf, or a game of Arimaa with a bud, would be just as welcome.
As much as I am a fisherman, it is just part of my life, a life that with fishing as a backdrop, I realize continues to change and evolve.
I suppose that evolution surprises me a little.
After all old adages have survived to become cliche in large part because they have a thread of truth to them. In my case I am 54 and 11/12ths years old (yes I am trying to hold off 55 as long as possible). At such an age you might think the adage about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks would be at work in my world.
That is not the case, at least not in many things.
I’ll grant you in some cases I seem to be taking my life full circle though.
Last week I mentioned in this space listening to ‘The Vinyl Cafe’ on CBC as my son and I headed to an ice fishing derby at Lake of the Prairies. I had lamented how my son was not even aware of the Canadian radio gem.
Truth be told I too had let listening to ‘The Vinyl Cafe’ lapse. I had not listened in ages. So after writing of it for this space, I paused at the keyboard and questioned why, especially in light of the Internet where everything seems to be available at our fingertips whenever we want it.
So I popped up Google, entered a search, found a catalogue resource of past ‘Vinyl Cafes’ going back a year on the CBC Radio site ( http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio ). Viola, I am back listening, with a rich vein of great shows to mine.
I think the thing I like most about ‘The Vinyl Cafe’ is how wonderfully Canadian it is. From the stories, to the music, to the humour, it is distinctly about being from Canada. Too often I think we end up looking at ourselves as little more than the poor cousins of the United States. I suppose that is understandable considering that so many of our stores are American-owned, and television which so much seems to shape our lives originates stateside.
It tends to leave us without an identity of our own. We look at the National Football League as better than the Canadian Football League, like that should matter. The CFL is our league, and that should be enough.
I suppose that holds with fishing too. It is easy to look at a trout stream in Montana as better, or fishing in Belize, but in the end, a fish is very much a fish. In this area we are going to release most, relishing in the moment, in nature, in friends there to share it.
Sure there are bigger fish than at Canora Dam, Whitesand, or Stoney Lake, but those places are home, and should be appreciated for that.
And, if you want a greater challenge, just go with lighter tackle and line. I know that is a plan this summer for me. I want to rig up a six-pound line outfit. I might not use it where I have to fight lures off snags all the time, but at Stoney, or Indian Point at Crooked Lake it will make the smaller pike a touch feistier to deal with, and make my skill with the rod a bit more important to the process.
But back to the idea of change, even the amount of fishing I do has evolved. When I was a youngster we got away a couple of times ahead of spring seeding, maybe once during summer if Dad could wedge it in among six-weeks on the road showing stock at summer fairs, and then a time or two after the harvest, or on a rainy Saturday during it. It was far from the amount of fishing to say we were avid, but it set the hook in terms of my enjoyment of it.
Then a few years ago I suggested this space to Editor Neil Thom, and he said yes. I had a feeling people would be interested in fishing, and the response I get from people on the street suggests I was right. And so I took up the rod in a major way, which I suppose is a turn of the wheel to earlier times in my life.
But in that I have evolved too.
I now flail with a fly rod in ways friend Patrick Thomson I am sure still remembers and breaks out into laughter. I was past 50 before I really tried a fly rod, and caught a fish.
The feeble attempts at fly fishing have had me feebly tying flies too. Again I am lacking in the skill of it, but I can wind a bit of thread, and it is fun, at least when doing it with others (the joy of tying on quiet by myself still escapes me). Another evolution past occurring post-50.
I have also made a few lures, using beer bottle caps, wine corks and old spoons; new endeavours evolving out of my growing efforts to fish.
Helping in such efforts was again the Internet, and the wonderful resource which is YouTube.com
Interestingly, I was on YouTube just a couple of weeks ago to look at a single video, that being a tutorial on how to make a fishing lure from a paint brush handle (https://www.youtube.com/
The video is excellent, and one day it is on my list to try.
But rarely do I escape YouTube having watched only one video, and usually it takes me in wildly different directions. In this case I ended up back watching a badminton game, something I have found an interest in of late, because once upon a time, in a land of rape and honey, I was a pretty good doubles player. I love the extended rallies, and skill of the world’s best players such as China’s Lin Dan, Denmark’s Jan O. Jorgensen, and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei.
This day from lures, to badminton, the YouTube tour had me landing on a video of the 2014 hurling final from Ireland. I knew roughly what the sport was, but a couple of hours of game time later, this old dog had a new trick. I’m actually thinking of subscribing to watch league games online. Yes hurling has nothing to do with fishing, and yet without fishing, I would not have looked up a video on paintbrush handle lures, which would not have taken me to a new interest in an old Irish sport.
In other cases it’s the old turn of the wheel.
This column, and a return to more days on the shoreline rod in hand, helped reignite the long lost flame of interest in stamp collecting. It was my Dad’s collection that had me intrigued as a boy, but that interest waned as I aged. Yet, somewhere inside the ember remained, and it was all too natural to return to it, again after I turned 50.
For those of us who find fishing a passion, that interest will change as we go, and along the way we will snag into other things, some we will keep as new interests, others we will throw back, ultimately coming down to every day offering each of us new possibilities which may be why some days I still feel 39, and some days about 83-and-a-half. watch?v=XeDDCk6zZYw). The video is excellent, and one day it is on my list to try.
But rarely do I escape YouTube having watched only one video, and usually it takes me in wildly different directions. In this case I ended up back watching a badminton game, something I have found an interest in of late, because once upon a time, in a land of rape and honey, I was a pretty good doubles player. I love the extended rallies, and skill of the world’s best players such as China’s Lin Dan, Denmark’s Jan O. Jorgensen, and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei.
This day from lures, to badminton, the YouTube tour had me landing on a video of the 2014 hurling final from Ireland. I knew roughly what the sport was, but a couple of hours of game time later, this old dog had a new trick. I’m actually thinking of subscribing to watch league games online. Yes hurling has nothing to do with fishing, and yet without fishing, I would not have looked up a video on paintbrush handle lures, which would not have taken me to a new interest in an old Irish sport.
In other cases it’s the old turn of the wheel.
This column, and a return to more days on the shoreline rod in hand, helped reignite the long lost flame of interest in stamp collecting. It was my Dad’s collection that had me intrigued as a boy, but that interest waned as I aged. Yet, somewhere inside the ember remained, and it was all too natural to return to it, again after I turned 50.
For those of us who find fishing a passion, that interest will change as we go, and along the way we will snag into other things, some we will keep as new interests, others we will throw back, ultimately coming down to every day offering each of us new possibilities which may be why some days I still feel 39, and some days about 83-and-a-half.
