If there is one thing stream fishing does, it has made me pare down all my gear to the absolute essentials. There’s something about trekking many kilometres through the bush along stream banks and such that screams for the need to be efficient and light. After a summer of chasing Arctic grayling throughout the Alberta boreal I learned that the heaviest weight to carry is the water I’ll drink, and the lightest weight is the tackle I’ll use. One rod is all that’s ever needed, and all of the lures, flies, and whatnots can fit inside a tiny tackle box that fits neatly inside my wader pouch.
This is in complete contrast to my other fishing efforts, where lots of tackle and multiple rods reign supreme. On those trips I bring gear because I can, but when I think of it, I usually only use a small portion of it. In a way, stream fishing is teaching me not to be such a packrat and come to think of it, it’s simplified my fishing and made me more efficient. While I may never pare down my pike gear to a tiny little box, perhaps if I reduce the tackle I bring by half, I could save myself half the tangles and perhaps catch twice the fish. For trout in lakes, I bet I could really bring the number of flies, plugs, spoons and flatfish way down and still do exceedingly well.
What I can say is going light makes for easier packing, and reduced tackle choices means more time fishing and less time switching hooks, which in the end typically results in more fish caught for all of us.
