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There is nothing quite like pike on the fly, especially in fall. Battle lake in central Alberta is often overshadowed by the much bigger and nearby Pigeon Lake. Do not overlook this small pike lake for it's high quantity of medium sized pike and reported trophy whitefish.

Pike are always my targeted fish whenever I am not fishing for trout so I will always start with the Yellow Bunny Leech, on this day it was all I needed. Casting into almost any weed bed and retrieving quickly almost always produced a pike. In three hours of fishing I caught over 15 pike ranging in size from 16" up to 23" and they hit like freight trains. I am used to pike feeling like a snag when they take the fly, but these hit hard and ran hard. More than once I had to use the fighting butt on my 8wt to pull them away from the weeds.

Almost everyone who fishes has fished for pike at some point in their lives, most haven't caught one on the fly. Get yourself an 8-10wt rod, some bunny leeches, wire leader and go give pike fly fishing a try. Once you get your first fish, you will be hooked too.

For the warm months of July and August, we here at Trickflies.ca usually put away the float tubes and chase trout in streams. The reason for this is that during the warmer periods the trout here tend to go deep and become really selective or seem to not feed at all. Also most of the locations we float tube fly fish are stocked ponds and haven't been stocked since mid-April. This year with the scare of Whirling Disease the province of Alberta has decided to cut back all the stocking programs for this season which only further hurts the mid-season fishing. I had a few hours to kill last night and decided to give Cardiff Park Pond a mid-season fish.

 Cardiff Park Pond is located about 20 minutes North of Edmonton, just minutes east of Morinville (which also has two stocked ponds). This usually beautiful pond used to be a coal mine, but after a partial collapse of one of the shafts it was decided that the mine would be flooded and stocked with rainbow trout. With its close vicinity to Edmonton, Cardiff Park Pond sees a fair bit of shore fishing pressure and one is challenged to find a spot to fish from shore on any weekend. Although usually stocked twice with over 15000 rainbow trout each time, this year stocking was cut back to 10000 total thus far.  

 I started the evening off trolling a Doc Spratley Green size 10 and within the first 5 minutes caught a little 8 inch rainbow. I continued to troll the Doc Spratley Green for about 30 minutes without another bite and decided to change flies. The next hour or so was spent trying 5 or 6 different flies with little luck when I tied on a Beadhead Woolly Bugger Olive size 10 and caught another little 8" rainbow. From there I tried a Pheasant Tail size 14 and had a few good hits but couldn't hook up with another fish.

Cardiff Park Pond is usually an 8 fish an hour pond in the evening but the combination of low fish stocking and high pressure (seriously people, pick up your garbage) means that the fish count was low. Fun was still had and with so few summer evenings left, I'll take any chance to get out fly fishing I can.

My trip began as a search to find and fish Embarrass River which joins the Mcleod River about 20km southwest of Edson. On the way there I passed over another stream with some decent looking holding water called Sundance Creek. Still determined to fish Embarrass I kept going to I met the Mcleod and hiked in about 100 yards to the joining of these two rivers. From there I began my hike up the Embarrass in search of trout and grayling. After about 500 yards it became apparent to me that the river was either really low or I was fishing the wrong section of stream as the river was shallow and there were few decent fishing spots. I decided to walk back and try the Mcleod.

Upon reaching the Mcleod I ran into a few locals that told me they were having success at a stream called Lambert Creek about 10 minutes further southwest. After fishing the Mcleod and catching a small 6 inch Rocky Mountain Whitefish on a size 16 Beadhead Prince Nymph, I decided to go try Lambert. I had only spent about 30 minutes at Lambert which was not only quite shallow but also difficult to fish with lots of stream side vegetation. With little luck at Lambert I decided to go try Sundance.

Sundance Creek was well worth my time, not only did I catch my first Arctic Grayling, but caught over a dozen. I was catching them on anything, Stimulators, Elk Hair Caddis, Adams, Royal Coachman and Mosquitoes. If you have never had the opportunity to catch Arctic Grayling I highly recommend going for these hard fighting fish. Remember though just like Bull Trout, there is a zero limit on Arctic Grayling in Alberta.

Here at Tricklfies.ca, Prairie Creek is one of our favorite streams. This gem of a brown trout creek runs just south of Rocky Mountain House, AB and features some great dry fly fishing. Some people say that this creek can be hit or miss but it has been nothing but success for us.

We always bring an assortment of dry flies as well as some nymphs. When fishing Prairie Creek make sure to bring some of our Stimulators, Elk Hair and Goddard Caddis, Blue Winged Olives and Dave's Hoppers in various sizes and colors. Although we like to use a dry/dropper set up on most steams, at Prairie Creek rarely does the dropper produce a fish, however the dry fly fishing is very exciting.

We will usually start with a small or medium sized Stimulator and work the swing by casting to the far banks and controlling how much line is held back by our line hand. The brown trout scare easily and rarely rise more than once, so make sure to start at the downstream sections of the pools and work your way upstream.

Brown trout spook easily and can be finicky eaters but no other trout is as satisfying to catch. To catch a large brown one must present the right fly at the right spot with the right drift/swing. No other trout presents more of a challenge than brown trout and no stream in central Alberta is a better place to start.

The nice brown trout in the picture was caught using Trickflies.ca Stimuator Orange size 12.