The Return: New Ways

A long time ago, in a distant memory, at an age unknown I went camping. I was at the age where age itself doesn’t register, a detached time of our lives that is hard to remember, yet is engrained in our being. A time when you are so new and impressionable, that every decision and action outline your life. Some memories of that era still linger in your psyche, just small glimpses into a time vastly different than the present being. They are often undefined, lacking details and cloudy, as time has buried them deep in the vaults of our mind. Most of those memories survive by becoming memories, of the memory, in which we recount an event in our life which resets it again as this new addition to your storyline. The constant bringing up of memories creates a phenomenon where you actually add to your memory, known as Memory distortion. With that being all said; a long time ago, in a distant memory, at an unknown age I went camping.

We were somewhere on Lake of the Woods. I had been brought along by a friend’s family and we were involved in some fishing derby. Like I said, it’s a distant memory. I don’t remember how the camping went, how the derby was, or even why I was the new owner of a Blue number 5 Rapala Shad Rap. I do however remember this lure, for two reasons. It was the first lure with more than one hook I had ever used, since my parents enforced a strict no treble hook rule after some warranted close calls, and the lure that still today sits on a shelf in my bedroom, rusted and damaged, retired to the rafters above the tackle box. It sits as the evidence to the story, the fact and detail that I anchor my memory in.

We were up early, and wanted to try fishing from the docks before leaving the campground later that day. I was using my brand new Rapala Shad Rap, and the thrill of using it without supervision added a feeling of childish badassery; albeit in a giant yellow lifejacket with a crotch strap. After fishing the pristine floating docks on the beach, we moved to the old cribbed monstrosity, aged and weathered and sitting equal height with the lake. Instead of the empty sand, this dock sat in front of the weedline edge, creeping in from the empty shorelines beside the campgrounds. I was bringing in the shad rap, watching in awe at the action and pattern of this new prohibited lure. It turned out I wasn’t alone in the awe of this bait, as from the weeds emerged the largest fish I had ever seen in my young life. The musky inhaled my tiny crankbait and shook with the power and prowess that is only held by apex predators. The fish came up to the surface in a thrashing explosion, disrupting the calm waters in front of us. The fish was so intent on thrashing its way free that the blow up had caused the fish to land on to the sunken dock and now lay beside us two kids. Both in awe and frozen from the sheer size of the fish in front of us, the fish continued to flop, shaking the lure and landing back off the damaged dock. It was the first time I ever caught a musky and it not only mutilated the Rapala I keep on my bookshelf, but helped shape a long passion.

Just like using a crankbait for the first time, there are new ways in which fishing can be done that can totally reshape and make us rethink what it is to fish. In this second part of three in The Return, I talk about the new ways I have begun to fish since my last blog. Fly fishing, and musky fishing are on opposite ends of the fishing spectrum but, both became new ways in which I lived out my passion.

Fly Fishing

Every angler who is brought up on spin casting or trolling has a similar view on fly fishing. Fly fishing is both an overly simplistic and intensely complicated method catching fish, and appears more like an artform of dance rather than sportfishing. The weightless flies, the long wispy rod and the exaggerated casts moving beside the river like a rhythmic gymnastic display in the name of fishing. To over simplify it, Fly fishing is a method of fishing in which you get tiny weightless insect or minnow tied replica lure (fly) and use momentum built up from the rod to propel the weightless fly into your desired casting location.

I first was introduced to fly fishing while in Alberta in 2015, spending a night chasing bull trout and artic grayling which you can read all about in The Return: Firsts. Years later I was down in Southern Ontario watching the snow begin to melt and pondering how I was going to target the steelhead and brown trout cruising the Lake Ontario Tributaries. Most anglers in the area spent their time drift fishing, an intermediary to fly fishing and spin casting, but the limitations of the set up gave me pause for concern. With college graduation around the corner, I knew that my time within driving range of steelhead was closing, whereas with fly fishing my opportunities seemed far greater.

At a Bass Pro Shops fly fishing section later that week, I was browsing rods and flies while the gentleman working told me all about the fly fishing club he was apart of. The man helped me find the rod and reel for me, set my lines on my reel for me, and even taught me the basics of some patterns. l left with a burning desire for open water, already dreaming of the fish I would catch with my new fly rod.

It was now mid February and the weather was beginning to warm at an unseasonably quick pace. The snow had begun to recede to just the shadows in the yard, and I took this evening after class to practice my fly casting. Standing alone In a residential backyard, I whipped back and forth, side to side, trying to master the massively difficult method of delivery. On a forward stroke I would snag the fence or trees behind me, and with a backwards flip the fly would come right back at me, causing me to jump out of the way. I would go back into the house and watch more videos on Youtube of some Mountain stream guide dropping a tiny hook over thirty metres from him. This frustrated, more than motivated.

The warm end of February continued and before the end of the month, I was standing at open water sections of the Wilmot creek and Cobourg Creeks, robotically trying to force fly casts out into the icy runs. I had begun to master a beginners nymphing mend to fish small runs directly in front of me with some success. My stonefly nymph pattern was doing a great job of landing far enough up the river to sink into the run below me, now giving me a feeling that I was actually fly fishing. It was while doing this extremely entry version of

fly fishing, I caught a twenty-three-inch brown trout, still silver from life in Lake Ontario. I had iced up rod guides, frozen fingers, but the biggest feeling of accomplishment.

I spent most of my spring inside waders on one of those melting tributaries, stalking fish in the open runs, casting for them in their sunken pools, and landing them on the frozen muddy banks. I learned to read the water, the diet and life cycles of the

fish I caught and the insect patterned flies that confused them. That Fall during the salmon spawn, I fished the same rivers I self-taught myself in the spring, but to target giant salmon that hung in the rivers until their death. The first day I tried for salmon, I managed to get a large King Salmon to eat the tiniest of flies before the sting of the hook set sent him on 90-minute chase up and down the compact river. Unable to hold the fish I was at the mercy of the salmon, running down the banks of the river, trying to get the edge on the salmon. Finally, after corralling the enormous salmon, I was sitting with a twenty-six-pound chinook salmon, on a fly so small, that the hook had been wedged between the fish’s teeth. For the remainder of my time living in the Southern Ontario area, I was out fly fishing if I could find open water.

Living away from the Great Lakes and their tributaries became reality again when I moved back to North Western Ontario, with over four hours of driving to find a rainbow trout. This signaled the end of my early fly-fishing success, going back to the land of lakes where walleye, pike and bass reign supreme. I didn’t want to lose my newfound skill so quickly, spending time trying to catch pike and bass from the front of my boat, but the still water fly fishing left me unsatisfied. With the same veracity that I learned to fly fish in the first place, I dedicated my time to learning to fly fish the boreal forest.

The first thing I did was take to the vice. I begun to hand tie some flies meant for bass fishing, some dace patterned streamers, sculpins with rabbit hair, and dry flies resembling frogs and flying bugs. Secondly, I went searching for moving water. Still struggling with still water, I found a river system with lots of access points and begun going out after work and on weekends to try and finesse some fish on the fly. This went great. The moving water was filled with eddies, boulders and bronzebacks and with little effort I was landing smallmouth bass after smallmouth bass. I even tried a sculpin pattern on a sink tip, which put my fly in the face of some river walleyes, perfect to bring home for dinner. My reintroduction to fly fishing was going better than imagined.

Building off my successful trips to the river I began to bring the rod back onto the still water, but instead of it being front and centre, I kept the rod rigged at my side. It was now early June and I was spending the afternoon chasing shallow water smallmouth turned on to the topwater bite. I worked the shorelines, tossing an arsenal of bass baits at every nook and cranny. Eventually I came to a crevasse in between two rocks, which held a small collection of weeds in its back corner. I tossed out a large topwater bait, hoping to find the fish that called this spot home. After three casts and no fish I turned to my fly rod, the 8 weight Bass Pro Shops combo, and with the poise of an archer, I dropped my fly tight into the back corner of the crevasse, my fly landing just inches from the pocket of weeds. Before I could make a single move, I watched as from the weeds emerged the explosion of a large bass breaking the surface. I stripped hard, setting the hook in the bass and began to steer it left and right towards the boat. The bass kept ripping line from my hands, holding the edge in the early stages of the fight. The fight was wearing down, but the bass was still full of power and energy as I began to make the most challenging move in fishing. I held my rod high above the back of my head in my right hand while I lunged forward, diving the landing net into the water with my left. The rod at nine feet long, was bent overtop of me, giving the fish just enough slack to stay outside the net. With a hard push, I lurched forward plucking the bass from the water in a full out effort to stretch my already elongated grasp. The twenty-two inch, over five-pound smallmouth bass was truly a trophy of its species.

The green and bronze patterns covering the fish’s side glowed from the sunset light, the water droplets on the fish rolled down its side, refracting the light into a myriad of colours. This smallmouth was a long way removed from casting in the backyard or chasing river run steelhead, but it came with a feeling of success after years of trial and error. I had taken fly fishing from this fringe activity involving the right location to an everyday way of targeting all sorts of different species, from Black Crappie, to trout and salmons, to the feared Muskie.

Muskie Fishing

Growing up in Fort Frances, Ontario, I was very aware of muskie. The Apex predators of apex predators, this behemoth consisting of teeth, muscle and slime, the Muskie was an icon. It was such a revered fish in the area our high school mascot was and still is the Muskie. Most anglers in the area saw them as a pest of a species, something to deal with rather than target, and I was raised no different. I had my run ins with muskies over my early years, from distant memories of casting off docks on Lake of the Woods, to watching my Zara Spook completely disappear after a swirl of red fins, to catching walleye covered in fresh teeth marks as they were yanked in to the boat. When I moved to Lindsay, Ontario in the middle of the Kawartha Lakes, I became more familiar with the fish, accidently catching some from shore, and while ice fishing while living there. When I came back north, similar to fly fishing, I had a new interest in fishing that I wanted to grow on, but this time species specific. I wanted to become a muskie fisherman.

While at work, I started fishing regularly with a coworker named James. We began to fish on our days off, chasing walleye and bass. We talked openly about the desire to fish muskie and with finding someone to try it with we took our first steps. Our first times fishing for Muskies involved nothing more than the largest spinnerbaits and spoons we could find in old tackle boxes, throwing the oversized lures on the heaviest rods we owned. It was very apparent early on that our equipment was not going to be up to the test of a real fish. Over the next couple summers and falls, James and I moved from large spinning rods, to large bait casters, from oversized spoons, to double bladed bucktails and even bought a net worthy to hold such a large fish. If we had logged the number of fishless hours of trial and error, the follow ups and blown attempts, and the days wasted with no reward the numbers would be staggering.

We started to become experts at catching trophy pike, as some summers a forty-inch pike was no longer worth excitement. We usually would have a third spot on the boat, and this revolved a cast of other coworkers and friends interested in a day on the lake with some fishing, only for them to be sucked into a day of launching twelve-inch plugs from the boat. It wasn’t all bad days of fishing. Some days stand out against the grain of mediocre trips. The cabin fever type environment of the hours on the boat created life long memories and friendships, along with trophy pike and the odd undersized muskie. Other days, and a multitude of them were filled with hook removals, bad weather, missed oppurtunities and even one time, fished a back country muskie lake to learn weeks later it was outfished of muskie 20 years prior.

One thing that you find when entering muskie fishing is the staggering price of baits. This hit us two young fisherman hard. Early trips were with just one or two cheap large baits. One day while browsing at a local tackle shop, I noticed how simple the 68.99$ Double 10 bladed bucktails looked, just some hooks, beads, and tinsel really. I came up with a plan for us two novice anglers to get plenty of cheap muskie lures, with plans to sell some on the side to cover the costs of our own addiction of buying overpriced muskie lures.

We ordered 200$ in parts and in my parents sauna we built 20 Double Bladed bucktails. at basically 10$ a lure we now were rigged up with a pile of blade baits, and the money coming in from selling some helped buy the big trolling cranks and plastics. After four consecutive orders, we stopped making the baits. We had filled our tackle boxes with the baits. In our busy lives the side gig fell away, but the knowledge and the "repeat order" button on my tackle parts website still exist for a rainy day.

James and I still muskie fish whenever our different schedules line up. This past June, along with our friend Bailey, the three of us took advantage of the open nookings at some Nestor Falls Resorts. We spent two days fishing out of Canadian Haven Resort, chasing opening weekend muskie in their shallow spring dens. Within hours we were seeing fish regularly, keeping them mesmerized in a boat side figure 8, swiping at topwaters and cruising behind our species-specific tackle. We finished the first day after seeing 14 different fish, and unable to land one; similar to the first YEAR of muskie fishing for us. Day two began with this feeling of impending battle, a silent boat ride to Sabaskong bay while the sun still rose. Arriving at the first spot of the day before 6am, we began to go to work. That morning I chose a Rapala Glide Rap, Green, as something felt right about using a Rapala again on Lake of the Woods. After two casts in the shallow creek mouth, I felt my bait smash into an unseen obstruction. Was it a muskie? It felt too perfect that I just had a muskie swipe my bait, so I quickly finished my figure eight and cast out again, bringing the bait gliding through the same place. Nearing the same area my lure had deviated last cast, I was tense, tunnel visioned to just my rod and me. When the fish grabbed the bait, I set the hook with the power collected from years of preparation. I double pumped the bait hard, feeling the sharp VMC hooks grab into the fish. With no head shakes yet, the fish cut to the left, showing its full power and weight as it took me to the side of the boat. Applying force, I turned the fish, making it come back all the way around the bow of the boat to the opposite side, only to do it again. The fish had no interest in a fight as of yet, just holding its position away from the boat. After another pump of the rod and some more pressure applied from my end the fish finally showed itself. The massive fish broke the surface in a series of powered throws. The headshakes swung the large crankbait, disconnecting the back treble from the corner of the mouth, throwing it all the way around to the gill plate on the opposite side. The recently sharpened hooks immediately took grasp of the fish, and now the large muskie was foul hooked on the right side of its head. This gave the muskie back the advantage of head control, as I could no longer steer the fish to the left. The fish began to hold posture again, this time with less slack. The fish sat tight to the surface less than ten feet from the boat, but with its nose pointed out, there was no way to net the fish. After all these years of trying to catch a monster Muskie on purpose, I now watched helplessly as the fish sat ten feet away from me. We tried to apply more pressure to turn the head in, but the fish decided this was its time to cut under the boat, causing myself to run around the bow keeping the fish pinned. The fish went back to its perpetual waiting, just out of reach with its head turned out. The Front treble which had initially remained in the mouth of the fish was now dangling, and the single treble stuck in the gill plate was all that held the fish in place. Knowing it was a matter of time, we tried for a third time to turn the fish, only to see it break off and disappear below the murky water.

I sat back at 6am, exhausted frustrated and in awe at what had just happened. That fish felt like the culmination of years of practice, the trophy muskie I had been seeking for so many years. I closed my eyes and could see it perfectly, along with the feeling of helplessness as I knew I wasn’t going to land it. I opened my eyes again, picked up my rod and casted the giant bait with fresh teeth marks back out. “That’s just muskie fishing” I thought, and began the quest of ten thousand casts again.

A common thread through both my experiences learning to fish in these new ways, was the level of gatekeeping held by current participants and obstacles that I encountered. The fishing community as a whole always felt welcoming, an environment of growth and celebration, but sadly some people in the fly fishing and muskie communities displayed this attitude of altruism. When learning both methods, I would research and learn when I could, but I found that advice from other anglers seemed to be secretive, or deceptive. Advice from a fellow angler was rare, and sometimes encountered hostility when trying to ask questions for advice. I felt like other anglers invested in these methods were trying to discourage me from their passion, in an act of selfishness that brought a bad name to their fishing method. I regularly question their motives as I fish, wondering what type of person would try to hoard their skill, believing its better if only they can seek the enjoyment it brings. Thankfully it was a minority of the community, the entire idea around the one bad apple spoiling the bunch seemed to be the case once I became immersed. I however would love to see these fringe methods of fishing grow. There is nothing like hooking into a charged up river running trout on a fly line, and nothing like a muskie blowing up your bait after hours, days and years of trying. So get out there, and try something new. It could be a new species, a new tactic, even a new waterbody, its worth it to get out there and seek some adventures.