Grayling Fishing

[don't have a clue]

I had the opportunity to fish the Freeman River this past week end for Grayling. I had never caught a Grayling before and was very excited to give it a go. I stayed at the campsite where highway 32 crosses the river. The fishing was fantastic, there were a few things that I learned that I had not read about relating to fishing for Grayling. Fist is that all the fish that I caught were in relatively slow moving water, second you have to set the hook immediately just like with Brown trout, third don’t let your leader get ahead of your fly on the drift. All fish were caught on #18 little black parachute fly I’m not sure what it was called. The fish were all around the 10” to 12” size and I landed over 50. A great weekend all around. Neil

[Scratch]

I had the opportunity to fish the Freeman River this past week end for Grayling. I had never caught a Grayling before and was very excited to give it a go. I stayed at the campsite where highway 32 crosses the river. The fishing was fantastic, there were a few things that I learned that I had not read about relating to fishing for Grayling. Fist is that all the fish that I caught were in relatively slow moving water, second you have to set the hook immediately just like with Brown trout, third don’t let your leader get ahead of your fly on the drift. All fish were caught on #18 little black parachute fly I’m not sure what it was called. The fish were all around the 10” to 12” size and I landed over 50. A great weekend all around. Neil

 

Great report - and you're right, Grayling fishing is a real treat. Good on you out there hunting them down in beautiful places!

[Garhan]

I had the opportunity to fish the Freeman River this past week end for Grayling. I had never caught a Grayling before and was very excited to give it a go. I stayed at the campsite where highway 32 crosses the river. The fishing was fantastic, there were a few things that I learned that I had not read about relating to fishing for Grayling. Fist is that all the fish that I caught were in relatively slow moving water, second you have to set the hook immediately just like with Brown trout, third don’t let your leader get ahead of your fly on the drift. All fish were caught on #18 little black parachute fly I’m not sure what it was called. The fish were all around the 10” to 12” size and I landed over 50. A great weekend all around. Neil

 

Well done.

I grew up flyfishing Grayling in the Whitecourt, Fox Creek, Swanhills region and when I was old enough to work some of my first jobs in the oil patch had me in the Virginia Hills area fishing grayling and Bull Trout as well. Back in those days we called Grayling "Iron Mouth" because they had a hard mouth to set a hook into. It may have been the quality of hooks we had back then, but none the less they had a tendency to take darker patterned flies. I.E. Black Wulffs, Royal Coachman Dries and Coachman Dries were all popular as dry flies. Wooly Worms in black and royal coachman wet flies were popular as well. We also found that from time to time grayling would take the dry fly on its way back down into the water during a typical rise.

At one time all the streams in that region housed great grayling fishing and 16-18 inch fish were common place with the occasional fish in the 20"+ range.

We should have imposed a grayling release program about the same time we did the Bull Trout, but that is hind sight.

[don't have a clue]

Thanks for the input I would have loved to have caught some of those big ones you talk about. Also almost all hookups were in the upper lip indication that they do indeed hit on the way down. neil

[DennisS]

Neil great report. Grayling are my favorite fish. I love it when they come right out of the water and come down on the fly. I missed you by a week I was there from the previous sat to wed. Didn't do too bad myself. I caught most of mine on a CFF size 14. The weather wasn't all that great in that time frame cold and wet. Just ask Rick L and Vince. They about froze on the Sunday, but they had a warm spot in the trailer and of course good hot coffee.

Did you manage to meet the 2 otters that I met. I had a great discussion with one of them, but it seems I lost because it was me that moved up to the next hole. They sure are a beautiful animal but hard to compete with when it comes to fishing.

Garhan I agree with you I wish we had done something sooner with our grayling. There is a big Grayling conference coming up next June which I hope will generate ideas to help the Grayling population here in AB. The Northern Lights edm tu hopefully will be helping spearheading some of the research coming from the conference.

 

Neil Keep up the great reports maybe get togeather for a fishing outing on the Freeman. I'm sure we can talk a couple of others to come along. I promise not to lead you into any beaver runs or any hairy 4x4ing.

 

Tight Lines Always

Dennis S

[dave robinson]

My friend Ross and I fished near there on Sunday. Our fish were a touch smaller and fewer. The blustery weather and clear skies may have had something to do with it. Like I've found before, grayling are sometimes predictable and sometimes they surprise you. We had a bit of success on gray mayflies, but it was slow to start. We both had a lot of short strikes, which precipitated a host of fly changes in size, color and style in order to provoke more consistent hookups. Different sizes didn't seem to alter things much. I had a couple of hits on a yelow RS quad but nothing consistent. I even had one take a size 12 red humpy (go figure) but they ignored a chernobyl ant. We found them mostly in medium current with a touch of ripple, sometimes on the inside of the seam and sometimes outside. The most consistent pattern was a size 18 or so dark geen furled body emerger. Sometimes thay wanted it as you said on the dead drift, fly first. At other times times they didn't care about the leader or wanted it right at the end of the drift, as it started to drag. I even had a couple take on a fast strip in preparation for another cast. I guess they just wanted us to work hard for the pleasure of looking at them up close. That's grayling for you.

[dave robinson]

My friend Ross and I fished near there on Sunday. Our fish were a touch smaller and fewer. The blustery weather and clear skies may have had something to do with it. Like I've found before, grayling are sometimes predictable and sometimes they surprise you. We had a bit of success on gray mayflies, but it was slow to start. We both had a lot of short strikes, which precipitated a host of fly changes in size, color and style in order to provoke more consistent hookups. We also found, unlike you, that you had to wait about 1 second after the hit to strike or you got nada. Different sizes didn't seem to alter things much. I had a couple of hits on a yellow RS quad but nothing consistent. I even had one take a size 12 red humpy (go figure) but they ignored a chernobyl ant. We found them mostly in medium current with a touch of ripple, sometimes on the inside of the seam and sometimes outside. The most consistent pattern was a size 18 or so dark geen furled body emerger. Sometimes thay wanted it as you said on the dead drift, fly first. At other times times they didn't care about the leader or wanted it right at the end of the drift, as it started to drag. I even had a couple take on a fast strip in preparation for another cast. I guess they just wanted us to work hard for the pleasure of looking at them up close. That's grayling for you.