It was another hot, dry day on the mountain has I helped friend Duane Whyte pack our 14 foot aluminum boat for a day fishing. I was staying at Duane’s cottage in the Duck Mountains as part of a two day excursion. Day One had seen us visit Laurie Lake, some 30 kilometres away in the southwestern part of the park. Laurie is one of the larger lakes in the Ducks with beautiful emerald green water. I have fished Laurie a couple times previous with good success.
Not so much this day as we tried a variety of techniques only to catch seven nice sized pike that were roaming shallows bays and reed lines. All were caught on shallow running crankbaits fished tight to shore. Catching pike in stocked trout lakes is not necessarily a good thing as these aggressive predator’s feast on newly stocked fish. Laurie has trophy brown trout and splake as well as a healthy population of lake trout. It has a reputation as a tough lake to fish, and on this day it proved up to it’s reputation.
Trout lakes in the Ducks
So as we loaded the boat for day two we had changed locations to Two Mile Lake, just down the road from Wellman. Reports from friends of Duane’s on Two Mile had been positive so away we went. We had no problem launching the boat at the south end of the lake at the well maintained nice boat launch and dock. This lake is electric motor only, so Duane made sure we had enough battery power to last the day. As we headed out Duane mentioned that the deep section of Two Mile was at the north end of the lake, while the south basin was quite shallow.
On this day, that turned out to be a good thing as the warmest water was in this end along with most of the rainbow trout. We stopped counting fish after about our tenth each because the action was too fast and furious. Before heading out Duane had tied on a olive nymph, while I had the same except with a bead head. Duane added a little weight on the line so his fly with get down subsurface. As we long line trolled one fish after another would slam our flies. While we started out with small size rainbows as we hit the middle of the lake the size started to improve until I hooked into a larger fish. This 21 inch rainbow ran me all over the place, jumping diving and twisting.
Swan Valley Enhancement Group
Aggressive fisheries management work by the Swan Valley Enhancement group has allowed many of the lakes in this provincial park to survive and even thrive. While Manitoba Fisheries has regional biologist, Ian Kitch looking after that part of the province, a broad job description spreads his time over a huge area, almost all the western side of Manitoba. While this is the new norm in government cutbacks, the Swan Valley group for years has taken the bull by the horns in making sure they help do the fisheries management work to maintain the world class fishery in their part of the world. This includes multiple projects from lake assessment, to restocking and everything in between including angler education. This is a model that must be adapted province wide through the formation of a new Crown Agency like the Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia.
It hasn’t been easy for Swan Valley as there are always challenges but research and knowledge are the key to great decisions on maintaining fish stocks. SVSVE has two part time fisheries technicians that do a wonderful job of the variety of information that is required to maintain and improve the fisheries in this part of the world. Holly Urban, Melissa Badger and Brock Koutecky make sure to supply that information by long hours of lake assessments.