Practice Day - Moonshine Lake. Greeted With Snow On The Ground

If only.

If only I could have kept fish on that I hooked.

If only I had made a few different decisions.

If only the rotation I was in was a wee bit different.

If only I had more experience fly fishing the sorts of conditions that we all faced.

Shortly after the event had completed, I had a conversation with Randy Taylor, President of Fly Fishing Canada, in which he said to me, "You must have zoomed up the standings compared to last year, Ian."

But in fact, I hadn't. I didn't come in last place like I did last year, but "zooming up the standings" as much as I expected I would do, just didn't happen. Even with the stillwater practice I did over the summer, it wasn't enough to prepare for the conditions of fishing Moonshine and Silver lakes in Northern Alberta in this year's Canadian Fly Fishing Competition.

And it wasn't for lack of opportunity either. Or lack of being able to hook fish. For some reason, and I'm still trying to figure that out - most of the fish I hooked I just couldn't bring to the net. And oddly the flies that worked personally for me as far as hooking fish were not the same as the ones that brought my teammates success.

Ivo Balinov With Football Shaped Rainbow, Spring Lake Photo By Arron Varga

I also had a great draw in that I shared a boat over the five sessions with some very good anglers. My first session on Moonshine Lake if I may say so was quite distracting for me - for it included the attractive and successful angler in Sunny VanderKloof. Enviously, the eventual gold medal winner Norman Rupprecht had two sessions with Sunny as a boat mate - but he managed to get around the distraction of fishing with a very fine woman fly angler sharing his boat.

But - I did net a fish that first session and did my best to try to help Sunny bring one to the net as well so she wouldn't blank on the session. Unfortunately Sunny did blank. Both of us had several hits and tugs to our flies but nothing solidly hooked until about half an hour left in the session when a rainbow trout took a black leech pattern that I often have success with.

My second session came with great hopes in myself. In practice sessions, I had hooked a good number of fish, including some very large rainbows on some flies that I was quite confident in on Spring Lake.

Was it cold? Anglers warming up beside the fire on Moonshine

This combined with the fact that I was fishing with Terrence Courtoreille, last year's individual gold medal winner, had me very confident I was going to do well in that session. Terrence proved to be a very enjoyable boat mate and we both agreed ahead of time to dispense with the standard coin tosses and official sharing half time "captainhood" of the boat, and instead focus on helping both of us catch fish. In the end, Terrence brought to net one fish and had several tugs along the drifts we had chosen; I had zero fish brought to net but also had several tugs too. But in the end, I think both Terrance and I can say that the company was good. In retrospect, Terrance and I probably should have not wasted as much time as we did on drifts that, as much as they were productive for us during practice sessions, weren't producing on the competition day.

First morning - a flurry of activity getting ready

The third session for me, and the beginning of the second day of the competition was on Kakut Pond. This small pond was chosen to be included in the competition due to it's relative close proximity for travel time issues to Moonshine and Spring Lakes. Basically, it was a small body of water at the end of a much larger lake that held little fish, but the small pond itself had been stocked with rainbow trout. The competitors at this venue had one hour on a beat on either the north or south side of the pond, then after the hour, switched to a beat on the opposite side. All fishing at Kakut Pond was done from shore. Some of the beats, like the first one I had drawn were a bit on the nasty side to fly fish with tall bullrushes at the shoreline.

On my first hour, I had a favourable wind direction for casting, but had no luck for the first fifteen minutes using flies I thought might work. After fifteen minutes, I switched to an "Egg Sucking Leech" pattern that some teammates had some success with during the previous day and suddenly, fish were hitting! I landed one nice rainbow that came in about 37 cm in length, but in the meantime was watching Sunny Vanderkloof across the pond bring to net, five nice fish - she was fishing the same beat that I would be on for the last hour of my time on Kakut Pond.

Sunny Vanderkloof taking the oars on Spring Lake

I felt a number of further tugs of fish in the first hour using the Egg Sucking Leech, and had another very nice rainbow on - but after it did an acrobatic tail dance across the water, lost it. Soon, time was up and it was time for me to go fish the beat that Sunny had just caught five fish on.

Confidently, I walked over to the other side. With a bit of a breeze blowing against me, I decided to rig up the more stiff TCO 10 foot rod - thinking it would provide a bit more power than the softer Grey's Mflex rod I had been using with the wind against me - but that was a bad mistake. Even with it's softer action, the Greys rod was superior to the stiffer TCO at punching through the breeze. I wasted some time in changing lines and going back to the Greys rod, tried the same pattern that had brought me some luck on the other side of the pond - but nothing.

Experimented with some other flies while watching Norman Rupprecht bring in a few fish in the beat next to me - but that was all I was going to show for - one fish on Kakut Pond. The lovely tail dancing rainbow, even though a joy to feel on the end of my line simply wouldn't count as far as the competition was concerned after it managed to shake the hook. For me, this would be my experience for the final two sessions: Fish shaking the hooks..

I had tried to find out from Sunny what she had been using to hook and net the fish that she had, but in being true to good form of competitive fishing, she simply laughed at my attempts to try to glean any worthwhile information from her.

Anglers getting ready to enter the boats on Spring Lake

Which reminds me - I owe Sunny ten bucks. Unexpectedly to the competing anglers, there was a hot lunch available in a lodge at Kakut Pond, and Sunny spotted me my wonderful spaghetti and meatball lunch as I had no cash. (Private note to Sunny: I'll reimburse you one way or the other. Perhaps with copious amounts of Black Bush at Mont Tremblant).

After Kakut Pond, it was a bus ride to Moonshine Lake again where my boat partner was Bernard Lacasse of Team Les Chiens D'Eau. Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Bernard, and even though there were communication problems (he speaks French, I speak English), we had a great time grinning at each other, and doing what we could to talk and communicate. Indeed, even though the event was competitive oriented, I had a great time with all of the members of Les Chiens D'Eau and it was really nice for me to see all them. In 2006, I had two beats with Claude Bedard and even though Claude bested me in both, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and fishing with him. So it was great to see the rest of the gang including Tom, Stephane, and Mark.

A tired Bernard Lacasse Tired but still smiling teammates - Graham Murfitt and myself. Still smiling? Must have been all that Black Bush!

On that afternoon with Bernard, we had both managed via rowing together to get put ourselves in what we thought would be a great start to a drift on Moonshine. But we both had problems trying to figure out the winds that were blowing at 50 km/h. While we watched folks like Randy Taylor catch fish, we continued to register not even a hit - until Bernard netted a nice fish. And that's the way that session would end: Bernard, one fish. Me - had tugs and strikes and a couple of solid hook ups but netted nothing.

I figured I'd be able to redeem myself on the last and final session on Spring Lake with the boat partner of local and very good organizer of the entire event, Jim Epp. Indeed, Jim and I had some great strategy worked out together and my own previous practice sessions on the lake with Graham Murfitt gave me greater confidence - in that the choice of starting a drift was what I had thought was best compared to what I had fished previously with Terrence.

So Jim and I rowed out with one other boat near us, and we waited for the horn to sound to begin the session. As we sat waiting, we watched fish rising, obviously hungry and probably willing to take flies we were going to offer. Jim and I continued to chat about life, love, whiskey, philosophy, women, loves, and other generally important subjects - until about twenty minutes after nine, trying to figure out why the horn to start fishing had not been sounded yet.

Turned out there was no horn, but instead, simply a vocal yell from the controller on shore to start fishing 20 minutes earlier. We were far too far away to hear any vocal yells. By that time, the fish activity was much less than what it was, and there was a wee bit of a psychological discouragement to look across the lake and see anglers in the other boats fishing while we had been sitting there waiting.

Five minutes after we started fishing, Jim netted a nice rainbow. And that what was that for him. For the next couple of hours, we drifted over trout holding areas that Jim knew of - but nothing. We watched boats concentrating on other parts of the lake and wondered what if any success they were having, but both of us mutually decided to keep drifting over what we thought were best bets for both of us to catch more.

At one point, I hooked a fish, in the gin clear water but at first, it felt like I had hooked bottom. I reacted as if I had hooked bottom... discovered it was actually one of the "football" shaped rainbows of Spring Lake, held him on for about ten seconds, but looking down into the water, both Jim and I saw the rainbow trout turn and lose the hook.

Yep - another blank on a session where I had actually hooked fish but couldn't keep them on.

Having said all that, I must say that those several hours with Jim Epp in the boat were very enjoyable. It was the last session - and to be fair to Jim, it was likely a session in many ways he just wanted to get done being the major organizer of the entire thing and having had so many issues to deal with in order to ensure how smooth it ran. Indeed, I'd like to have another opportunity to fish with Jim in a non-competitive situation, where we can simply lazily row around, or attach an electric motor, talk, grin at each other, and start fishing when we want and stop fishing when we want, and maybe bbq one up or two.

THE VENUES:

Moonshine Lake was the first lake I practiced on while in Grand Prairie, and also the first lake I fished during the competition. My first thought when I looked at the lake was, "What the heck are all those green things?" I'd never seen an algae breakup quite like that before - the entire lake contained these small tiny worm shaped bits of green algae. Teammate Graham Murfitt reported that he had an opportunity to speak with a biologist about Moonshine who told him that the lake had this layer of algae bits about 7 inches deep but would clear up as the water temperatures cooled.

What was really amazing to me was that even with this thick blanket of algae, and the trout swimming beneath it, they could see through it all the way to the surface and sometimes take a hatching insect from the surface..

Ernie Kalwa With Nice Spring Lake Brookie

The drive to Moonshine took about an hour and a half from Grande Prairie, and is located west of Spirit River. According to Rob LaValley, writing in "A Fly Fishers Guide To The Waters Of The South Peace,", Moonshine "was created by damming a creek drainage to develop a body of water now approximately 80 acres in size."

It's stocked annually with Rainbow Trout and at one time, Brown Trout but apparently during the year of 2006, conditions of Moonshine caused a kill off of the Browns. The Rainbows however have continued to thrive and do fine.

Spring Lake is located about an hour's drive of Grande Prairie and is a beautiful water with the shoreline scenery and it's gin clear water. In some parts, it is 70 foot deep. Along some of the drop offs just off the shore, you can see the bottom clearly at 20 feet deep. This lake contains both Rainbow Trout and Brook Trout - both were caught during the practice and competition days.

I caught and hooked a number of Rainbows fishing along the drop-offs near the Beaver lodges on the west shore of the bank.

Kakut Pond was an interesting venue to say the least. It seems to be a self-contained pond at the bottom of Kakut Lake. Apparently the larger lake holds pike and perch, but the pond is stocked with Rainbows annually. We were told that during the competition, we were allowed to step into the pond in order to net any fish - but to be very careful! One or two extra steps and the water depth suddenly can drop to dangerous levels.

Although Neil Thomas writes in "A Fly Fishers Guide To The Waters Of The South Peace," "the entire pond is accessible for shore fishing..," there are in many places large bushes of bullrushes along the shoreline which can interfere with casting into the pond. For the competition, the north and south sides of the pond were divided into non-standard length beats and each angler was assigned a beat for one hour on one side of the pond, and then another hour on another beat on the opposite side. Fly patterns that seemed to work for our teammates on Kakut included Blood Sucking Leech and the Viva.

The Final Results

Team - Gold Medalists - Team Stillwater Solutions

Tod Oishi, Phil Rowley, Kathy Ruddick, Brian Chan, Norman Rupprecht

Team - Silver Medalists - Team Equipe Airflo

Randy Taylor, John Beaven, John Huff, Darryl Thom, Mark Anderson

Team - Bronze Medalists - Team Double Hauls

Brian Duffy, Byron Shepherd, Matt Major, Tyler Mason, Sorin Comsa

Individual Medalists:

Bronze - Randy Taylor, Gold - Norman Rupprecht, Silver - Brian Chan

Honourary Medals

This year, three individuals were also given honourary medals in recognition of their own personal achievements in either assisting with the event or participation. The Honourary Gold was given to Jim Epp for his outstanding efforts in chairing the local organizing committee in Grande Prairie. Jim and his team did a supurb job and were well deserving of the compliments and recognition for their outstanding efforts in ensuring an event that seemed to come off without a hitch.

The Honourary Silver was presented to Brandy Sheedy who did a terrific job in tabulating the participating anglers' scores after each day of fishing. This is not an easy job when dealing with 65 anglers fishing a variety of locations and scoring not based simply on number or size of fish, but on individual "placings" during each session.

The Honourary Bronze was presented to Tanner Henderson - who at 12 years old was the youngest competitor and provided much inspiration to some of the "old guys" that were in his company. Tanner competed on "Team Henderson," a local team made of three generations of the Henderson family. According to folks who know him, Tanner would rather go fly fishing than ride dirt bikes!

Tanner Henderson With His Bronze Medal

Jim Epp Speaking At The Awards Banquet

Related Links:

Special Thanks To Some
2008 Canadian Fly Fishing Championship Date Announced
Canadian Fly Fishing Championships - The Results Are In (2006)
Fly Fishing Canada Website

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