Alberta League - ACFFL Event 3

Event 3 was nothing short of a mentally exhausting day. The fishing was extraordinary in numbers and tested everyone’s ability to be efficient with everything.

   For this competition the format fished was Loch Style. Loch Style fishing is basically competing by boat in constant motion. 2 competitors to a boat scoring each other’s fish. And a drogue or drift sock is used out the side of the boat to cause the boat to drift horizontal. One competitor fishes the bow section of the boat and the other will fish the stern. The fish would be measured to the very cm. Each fish would count as 100 points and each centimeter 20 points. The angler with the most points at the end of the session would win. Lowest amount of placing points after 2 sessions would win the event entirely.

This particular day was forecasted to be quite hot with a light breeze. The community lakes are incredibly small so finding fish is almost never an issue. There was Rainbows, Browns and Brookies in the lake as well as a few less desired species. I couldn’t actually describe what the structure subsurface looked like it seemed muddy and no snags or weeds at all (still early in the season though). It was apparent the shores were loaded up with docks and large rocks which could have been something the fish keyed in on if conditions change or a hatch occurs.

 

The last time the league competed here the event was won with stocky bashing techniques on shrunk patterns tied on jig hooks. Something notorious with small fish is their effortless ability to get off the hook with very squirrely headshakes. So if you find you’re getting lots of short strikes but can’t hook up DOWNSIZE. If that still doesn’t work maintain the same size fly but tie it on a Jig style of hook and now the hook will ride up over the pattern. Thus hooking the fish in the roof of the mouth making it much harder to shake the hook.

Private Residential Lake

Calgary

May 6th 2023

My strategy was as follows: Knowing the fish were small and plentiful I went FULL STOCKY BASHING MODE. My rod of choice was the 9’6 Sage R8 Core #7 and the line I was using was the Rio Cleansweep with a sink rate of 1.5ips/4ips/2ips.

 

The benefit of going to a sweep/parabolic line is the emphasis of the hang. The hang is a trick used by lake anglers to entice a bite at the very end of the cast. When you use a modern sink line a lot of the time doesn’t matter what brand you use there will be a hang marker of some sort. It’s a small piece of off colored line that signifies when you’re nearing your leader (10-15ft depends on the brand) and that marker is your queue to start the hang. When doing the hang all you’re doing is stopping your flies dead in the water for a few seconds while staying tight to the point fly.

This trick can absolutely decimate fish that are notorious for following but rejecting the fly last second due to seeing the boat or seeing that the fly is about to exit the water.  Sink lines typically have a uniform sink rate though ex. DI3, DI5, DI7 which typically indicate 3, 5 and 7 Inch per second sink rates. Sweep or Parabolic lines have a heavier belly section than the tip. This will drive all your flies down at an angle and “sweep” them upwards halfway through the retrieve giving the opportunity for a more emphasized hang. Any notes I have that indicate the hang will be a factor. I immediately favor my sweep lines over my uniform sink lines.

I fished a 16 ft. leader with 3 flies even spread. 8lb Red Label Seagaur was my fluorocarbon of choice due to its stiffness, it’s easier to turnover a long leader with small flies. Due to the minimal snags in the lake I wasn’t concerned about my flouro having abrasion resistance.

 

I started the day with two size 14 Vampire Leeches tied with a tungsten 3.5mm chartreuse bead as my point fly and middle dropper. My top dropper was a Tiger blob. My first boat partner I drew was Jason Stephan’s. A great friend and angler. I had drawn Jason back at event 1 and we had a blast then. I was looking forward to fishing with him again. With all the boats set and anglers prepared session one was ready to start.

Session 1:

As we shot out onto the lake, rowing to a corner we didn’t think many people would go to. Jason and I strategized about how we were going to approach the session. As we were chatting he accidently hooks up with a fish before the session even starts and just having his flies dangle in the water. We laugh about it he quickly landed the fish and released it. Cats out of the bag now though… even though it was an accident that he had caught a fish prior to the session start, I saw that instance as a fish taking a static fly dead in the water… time to hang on every cast.

 

The horn goes and I make my first cast. All three flies tight to a shallow dock. Three super-fast aggressive strips then immediately stopped the flies dead in the water. Boom hooked up and landed the fish in seconds. Less than 30 seconds into the first session I score my first fish.

Already aware this competition was going to be a lot different than the struggle I had on the Bow river two weeks ago. This was going to be an efficiency battle as opposed to an intuition battle.

 

We worked the corner for the first half hour and between myself and Jason we easily landed 12-15 fish at this point. Looking around the lake to take footnotes on where the other boats were sitting and everyone seemed rather content with where they were.

 

When boats in a loch style session don’t move from an area. Chances are they are into fish and thus the reason they aren’t moving. Typically when you see migrating boats especially in that first 45 minutes it tells me they aren’t confident they started on a good spot. Once the boat migration starts, the trick is not letting them know you’re on a corner with lots of fish because the areas going to get crowded very quick. Not that this was an issue this session though. Having a very large area to ourselves Jason and I simply decided to relentlessly work the “A” water that was that immediate 15 ft. off virtually any shoreline. Hang on every cast.

I can tell a story about all the little guys I got but to summarize the browns specifically were hugging the docks and loved the blob. Brookies were off the transition as the lake deepened. And the rainbows were super tight to the banks over the rocks and next to the boulders hugging the shoreline. Having infinite of each structure type it seemed I poked a fish on every cast. I’m willing to bet I made less than 20 casts that didn’t touch a fish in the 3 hour session. Another rule applied for this specific competition was only allowing 10 fish between 25-30cm to qualify. And the remainder of counting fish had to be over 30cm. 25cm was the minimum to count. I had landed 33 fish in the first three hour session while only losing about 5 I figure. Due to my overage of fish between that 25-30cm range, I had 7 fish disqualified after session 1 landing me 26 scoring fish total.

 We didn’t have a total for session one due to the freak amount of numbers caught Jason Doucette didn’t have time to tally the scores at halftime. With rough number crunching though I was confident I had won the session with 26 counting fish.

Session 2:

Session 2 was a totally different ballgame for myself. I had drawn a new competitor by the name of Peter Bacsfalusi. A super kind gentleman that has an extensive history with fishing. Very new to lake fishing and Loch Styling as a whole but eager and an absolute pleasure to fish with. I won’t lie. I felt cocky going in to some degree because of how much confidence I had in my rig and method. My game plan was change nothing and exploit lesser touched water. Well as luck would have it the fishing slowed and I was struck with an abundance of absurd luck. The first cast of the session I hooked up with a nice fish. One that actually fought with a little gusto and made the 7 weight bend. Excited I took it seriously and played the fish for an extra amount of time to ensure I didn’t lose it. A nice fat old slimy sucker… Doesn’t count. Wasted my first 10 minutes fighting him. Laughed it off and released the greasy bugger.

 

My next cast. With luck I hook up again! Another scrapper. The fish went nuts and started side tracking a bit on the fight. I started getting a dirty hunch and to no surprise my hunch was correct. Ass hooked fish. Another fish that’s not going to count… Lovely.

 

By some stroke of insanely unfortunate luck and something I have never seen in 10 years of competing. MY NEXT 3 FISH I LAND ALSO SNAGGED. I lost it… over 40 minutes in and I didn’t have a single scoring fish on the card despite doing nothing but fight fish the entire session so far. It was a strange situation for me for sure. I’m sure anyone watching me fish thought I had half dozen scored already. I started thinking about factors that might have caused this to happen. Considered the distance between my flies. Considered maybe it was the jig hooks causing that. Nope… Fish that turn on the hang and miss their mouth… Witnessed yet another fish grab my fly fin first 3 ft from the boat and determined this wasn’t something I had a lot of control over. Peter certainly thought it was a little funny.

 

The fishing outside of my first 40 minute hiccup had slowed but it was the same technique in the morning that seemed to work great in the afternoon as well. Instead of touching a fish on nearly every cast. It was more like every 5-6 casts you would get a little tug. This in turn equated to 10 scoring fish landed for myself in the second session. It could have been more but I genuinely felt like I didn’t waste any time outside of the fish I fought not knowing they were a sucker and snagged fish. 

What scared me was getting to the shoreline and hearing others didn’t have the same stroke of bad luck and had consistently just beat me by a few. Where I had 10 there were 5 anglers over me with 11, 12 and 13 fish scored. With that even though I had landed a ton in the morning that was going to cost me big time. Especially if specifically Martha, Dean or Jason had an exceptional first session. Which at the time I was completely blind to their scores.

 

I got beat! The second session mistakes cost me and taking 6th in the second session gave me 6 additional placing points that drove my score way down despite doing really well on the catching front.

Martha going back to back top 3 finishes gave her 5 placings at the end and she took the whole event because of it. If you have never met Martha she is easily one of the most spectacular female anglers we have here in Canada. Passion above what many possess and it’s incredibly infectious. She just got the bronze at the Ladies Fly Fishing Nationals in Quebec. I have no shame not getting first at this event due to my own errors. And I certainly feel good that I caught as many as I did going against arguably some of the best Stillwater anglers in the province. Really looking forward to the next one !

 

All In all my biggest takeaways from this competition are as follows.

Jig hooks = Better hookups on smaller squirrelly fish.

Sweep Lines = Best lines for emphasizing the hang.

Efficiency battles are entirely about time management and using every minute wisely and NEVER taking the foot off the gas pedal until the horn has blown.

If it feels like a snagged fish… It probably is. 

 

Thank you!

 

Please If you have any questions or comments I can be reached at [email protected] .

Anyone interested in becoming a part of the culture and joining us at our competitions please contact Jason Doucette at [email protected]

 

Josh “Jelly” Gelinas