Freeman River

Well, I finally made it to the Freeman River with my fly rod. But I can’t say I was successful in catching my first grayling.  However, we still had an enjoyable evening.

Colleen and I left Whitecourt at about 4:30 PM and headed towards Swan Hills so I could try a section of the Freeman River that looked gorgeous to me when I had a chance to do a wee bit of scouting back in June.  By about 5:45PM, I had my waders and vest on, the 5 wt rod and reel set up, and my beloved flask (filled with Black Bush, of course) in my pocket.

The river looked a bit different from what I remembered in June.  The water level definitely looked lower and more shallow than I what I had seen previously.  In some discussions with others, I had heard that a 52 cm grayling had been caught this past weekend, and that a fly with a bead had been used.  All third hand information.  I had no idea where the best access to the river where there was the best chance for hooking into any decent size fish was, but thought I’d try to the most accessible part of the river that I could find.

Downstream looked better than upstream.  For fun, I tried a small bead head pheasant tail nymph that I had used yellow lab underfur as a dubbing.  The colour is actually quite nice and the fly is very buggy looking.   I did have a a gentle tap to the fly after several casts, but that was it.

I walked down into some deeper water and decided to try a size 10 Silver Doctor.  On a previous visit to the area, I had been told that  this pattern is used quite often for grayling in the area.   And like the pheasant tail, I did have a tug one one cast to the fly.  But whatever was there was quite small.

Eventually, after no luck with nymphs or streamers, I did see quite a number of small fish rising to something on the surface.  Something very small.  And the fish that were rising were also very small and I don’t know for sure what they were.  I looked into my box and found a size 18 caddis and decided to give it a try.

Well, that was fun – if you count on small 3 and 4 inch fish rising to your fly as fun.  Actually, it was fun.  I am pretty sure that where I was fishing, there isn’t much other than the very small fish.  And seeing something rise to your fly is better than seeing nothing.

So the next job is to get right to the source and find out exactly  where the 52 cm greyling was caught recently, and what they were taking.  But it might be a few days before we get back up there.

So, I’m still looking for my first grayling.