Backyard Trout

Spring is returning to the prairies.  The snow is all but melted, the grass is beginning to turn green, and most importantly the ice is beginning to come off our area lakes here in Calgary.  Over the last month I have walked down to my favorite community lake a few times a week to check on the ice.  Ice still covers portions of the lake, but open water is likely only a week away.

Winter is going

Calgary has several communities with man made lakes that offer recreation activities like fishing, boating and swimming to residents and their guests.  Lakes like Auburn Bay and Bonavista are already ice free, and many others should be opening up shortly.  You will typically find healthy populations of Rainbow Trout that eagerly attack even the most sloppy of presentation.  If you do have access to one of these lakes, they are tremendous places to kill a few hours.

I began fly fishing in 2013.  To say my learning curve was steep is a dramatic understatement.  Luckily for me I had a community lake at my disposal that helped expedite my learning process.  Multiple times a week I would wander down to the lake and throw some flies around for a few hours.  Not only was I able to practice casting, I was also able to better understand how a trout behaves in a lake.

Many of our community lakes were not designed with fishermen in mind.  The lakes typically have very uniform underwater geography.  Here are a few traits that most of our community lakes seem to have in common:

• rocky areas near the shore
• a consistent drop off that moves away from the shore
• a flat deep shoal that runs to the other end of the lake
• relatively featureless bottom with light weeds

Uniform depth changes nearly across the board

Trout in a lake are relatively predictable.  The fish will stay close to transition zones where there is an obvious change of depth.  They will scour the bottom for any food sources they can find, and will move up and down the water column when they identify a food source.  When bug life is active on the surface the fish will often rise dramatically to feed; I have seen trout slam mayflies off the surface in less than a foot of water.

I have the luxury of fishing off a dock.  Fishing from the dock is a very visual experience.  I have a bird's eye view of the fish and can often quickly find the drop off where the trout are patrolling.  By identifying their path, you can ensure that your fly ends up on trout highway.  My favorite presentation is a leech pattern at a depth of seven feet under a strike indicator.  A few subtle twitches of the indicator is usually enough to trigger a strike from a passing trout.

Community lake fishing is a great time to experiment.  I love to go down and try new retrievals, new patterns or new casting techniques.  The stocked fish in these community lakes are significantly less picky than their river cousins and make for a terrific confidence booster.  What these fish lack in intelligence they more than make up for in spunk.  These fish fight like crazy and usually offer a terrific aerial display.

The quantity and quality of these fish is pleasantly surprising.  The harvest of the fish at my favorite lake is very low, and I suspect that osprey and loons take home more fish than the residents.  Despite the low take home, the lake still gets adequately stocked every year.  You would think this aggressive approach to stocking would restrict the size of the fish, but surprisingly that has not been the case.  I can routinely go down to the dock and pull out a dozen fish in an hour with many of them being in the 20" range.  

Nothing beats getting out of the city and finding a quiet lake with a healthy trout population.  With the busy lives that all of us have, it can often be difficult to find the time to get a line in the water.  The quality of fishing at some community lakes can equal bodies of water you may have to drive a few hours to get to.  Whether you are teaching a friend how to fly fish or just trying to kill some time in the evening, your local community lake is a great place to drop a line.