Karen and I decided to return to the Parkland Region of Manitoba again this year. Just the two of us this time. Dave is at Fortress and Amelia is busy in the front country guiding and handling all the logistics. Well, Friday at 6 p.m. we hit the road. We loaded our new Jetta station wagon for the big run across the prairie. Tiki and Pinball road shot gun while Karen and I traded off on the driving. We were like colts, quite excited. We hit Saskatoon at 11:30 p.m., went to Tim's, added $30 bucks in diesel and set our sights on Twin Lakes, just outside of Roblin. We stopped for a 3 hour nap just outside of Yorkton. After our snooze, we were getting our Conservation Licences at the Co-op in Roblin. They are $20 bucks this year. It's a 10 hour drive to the lake.
The pram rode on the roof of the Jetta easily. It took $62 bucks to get to Twin Lakes. Diesel is cheap right now.
We were on the water by 9 a.m. Nobody but us. A quick scan of the lake and we could see risers right next to shore. We figured a damsel migration was in the works. We quickly had small green crystal leeches on and were casting to shore. My second cast hit the water, sunk two seconds and a large tiger hit. The fight was on. That was the start of a great day. We fished with chronomids, leeches, and backswimmers. One tiger was caught on a backswimmer on the surface. Sight fishing is fun and quite challenging. There was a small window to catch tigers on the surface. Its worth switching over!
The Tigers hit the chronomids hard. Karen had to switch to 8 pound fluorocarbon line. It did the trick after two break offs. The tiger trout are so aggressive. They fight incredibly hard. They don't come in without a struggle.
We didn't have any company at the lake until 4 p.m. Lucky us. By then we had already had 30 hook ups.
Twin Lakes has two distinct lakes that are connected by a small channel. Neither lake is large and there is plenty of marl, holes and wood for the tigers to hang out in. The typical hatches are there. We used our pram but a float tube or pontoon boat will do nicely. There is no camping at Twin Lakes. You have to go back to Roblin and camp at Goose Lake. The fishing at Goose Lake is apparently very good too!
The fishing was a bit slower than our previous visit but the rewards were very high. These are neat fish. There are two more tiger trout lakes that started up last year. They will be excellent by fall. Check the FLIPPR web site for more information.
We also hit Patterson Lake. Patterson is the show case lake of FLIPPR next to Twin Lakes. More about Patterson on the next post!
Tiger trout are a cross between a brook trout and a brown trout. They have neat vermiculations and their colors certainly show off the best of brookies and browns. Apparently their fall colors are quite sensational. The tigers in Twin Lakes are big and fiesty. We have seen tigers as large as 27 inches this year and fat.
A typical Twin Lakes tiger.
Karen is holding the tiger of the trip. It was a big male that was the last fish of the trip. The struggle was fantastic. Karen was shaking once the big boy was netted. It was caught on a size 12 ice cream cone chronomid (black and red).
Nice colors on this mid sized tiger.
Karen always seems to catch the big boys. Two years in a row! What is with that?
Tigers are a neat fish!
1 comments:
Incredible fish. The Russell area is on my list of places to fish in Canada. The Jetta wagon looks like a great vehicle. Our TDI sedan is going strong with almost 350k on it. Nice post.
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