First pickerel on the fly (walleye for youse 'mericuns)

Well it was a long time coming . . .

Stuck here in Sudbury over the weekend with precious little to do
after the completion of the server upgrade. So yesterday, I wet a
line at the Vermillion river hoping for whatever. Two little bass and
one humungous strike that damn near pulled the rod out of my hands (a
northern no doubt). While fishing, I keep thinking about the
waterfall that's about 400 yards upstream. But lazy ass me stays at
the easy access and flogs away.

So now it's Sunday and with no forethought or planning, it's off to
the waterfall. Now, if I'd been a smart man, I would've been tying
clousers Saturday evening instead of watching the Roughies smack
around the Alouettes (I know at least one ROFFian whose heart was
gladdened by the thrashing). Equivalent in the No-Fun-League to
Buffalo whomping the Patsies.

Anyway, here I am at the waterfall, having done the bushwacking and
the rock outcrop crawling thing needed to get there, with no food, no
drink, few flies, one rod, one line, and a bit of tippet. I could've
taken the Loop Blue 7116 plus the rest of the gear, including most
importantly, my Rio BigBoy shooting heads. But nooooo, so little
faith had I in the outcome, that I've done nothing to prepare myself
for a positive one. This country is beautiful at this time of year
and I lambaste myself for leaving the camera behind. Note that I
don't regret the omission in the event of a fish.

From a distance, the waterfall appears to empty straight out past the
rocky point I had planned as using as my casting platform, but it
turns out that the current sweeps directly at the base of the point,
then turns into the main stem of the river. Crap! It means I'm
casting almost directly upstream, then allowing the fly to swing and
hope I don't snag up on the point. The Loop would be way better than
the St. Croix Jim Clouser 8 wt. as I'd have the reach to keep the fly
away from bank plus I could reach the slow water on the far side.

It's the most perfect looking pickerel water -- clear but tannin
stained, deep, rocky, cold, and well fed by the waterfall. I haven't
caught a pickerel in over 20 years and never on the fly. What to use?
On goes a striped bass clouser. (Fitting, a clouser fly for the
Clouser rod.) Flog, flog, flog -- learn the currents, find out the
hard way where the snags are, continually unknot the running line on
the Teeny 200. This is damn near hopeless and I'm really ****ing and
moaning about not having the Loop with me. The wind is a bitch,
blowing from my left (OK) or behind me (not OK) and at times my
backcast gets collapsed. Other times it's blowing almost straight at
me and I'm sidearming under it. Still, I'm getting decent distance
and the fly is getting down and fishing.

Snag, snag, snag. Deep water but I'm still hanging up. I've had to
straighten out the point on the hook, the dumbell eyes are now swept
back, like the wings on a jet, from all the rocks it's been pulled
across. With each hangup it get's more bedraggled. This is my only
white and yellow fly and I husband it jealously. ****, another snag
-- hell no -- it's moving! It's not fighting like a bass, it's not
thrashing like a pike -- good weight and lots of smallish vibrations
rather than big shakes. Could it be? After a minute or so, up it
comes and the unmistakeable head of a pickerel surfaces, about 20" and
around 2.5 pounds. Reach down and slip the hook with the forceps and
off he swims.

Felt like a kid with his first bluegill . . . .

(Peter Charles) wrote:
Well it was a long time coming . . .

... but lots of fun to read about ...

Sounds like a great trip Peter, the big water and the solitude are
great, but a nice walleye is icing on the cake.

Chas
remove fly fish to reply
http://home.comcast.net/~chas.wade/w...ome.html-.html
San Juan Pictures at:
http://home.comcast.net/~chasepike/wsb/index.html

Peter Charles wrote:

Well it was a long time coming . . .
snip

Felt like a kid with his first bluegill . . . .

Congrats. Excellent report. So what do you folks call pickerel?

JR

JR writes:

So what do you folks call pickerel?

This is what I have come to understand is a pickerel - since early childhood.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fish/inf...es/cpk/cpk.htm

And this is a walleye:
http://www.cleanafish.com/cleanawalleye.html

They do not resemble each other one bit. A pickerel does have some resemblance
to a northern pike.
Dave
http://hometown.aol.com/davplac/myhomepage/index.html

Only the nutty Canadians call Walleye -
Pickerel.
A Walleye is a giant member of the perch family.
A Pickerel is a mini member of the Pike family.

Joel Axelrad
**DFD**

On 04 Oct 2004 00:48:17 GMT, (Joel Axelrad) wrote:

Only the nutty Canadians call Walleye -
Pickerel.
A Walleye is a giant member of the perch family.
A Pickerel is a mini member of the Pike family.

Joel Axelrad
**DFD**


As I child in MN, I learned to call them Walleyed Pike. But at that
time MN was darn near to feeling like part of Canada as far as hunting
and fishing were concerned.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli

Joel Axelrad wrote:

Only the nutty Canadians call Walleye -
Pickerel.
A Walleye is a giant member of the perch family.
A Pickerel is a mini member of the Pike family.

Yes, all that's clear. The question was, if Canadians call walleye
pickerel, what do they call pickerel?

JR

JR wrote:

Yes, all that's clear. The question was, if Canadians call walleye
pickerel, what do they call pickerel?

Pickerel are a southern fish. They don't range into Canada. Therefore,
the Canuckistanis have no name for them.

(I'm pretty sure someone's going to call me on this.) :-)

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 06:28:59 +0200, JR wrote:

Joel Axelrad wrote:

Only the nutty Canadians call Walleye -
Pickerel.
A Walleye is a giant member of the perch family.
A Pickerel is a mini member of the Pike family.

Yes, all that's clear. The question was, if Canadians call walleye
pickerel, what do they call pickerel?

JR

Northern Pike?

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli

JR wrote in message ...
Joel Axelrad wrote:

Only the nutty Canadians call Walleye -
Pickerel.
A Walleye is a giant member of the perch family.
A Pickerel is a mini member of the Pike family.

Yes, all that's clear. The question was, if Canadians call walleye
pickerel, what do they call pickerel?

JR

And before I get jumped on, the etymology of pickerel is "little
pike".

Some Canadian fishing writers have made it clear that our usage of
pickerel is incorrect, but still, it is part of our fishing history.
We have numerous place names with "Pickerel" in them, in reference to
Stizostedion vitreum, not Esox variants. "Walleyed pike" was probably
the original term, with walleyed meaning bulging eyes, so "walleye"
also stems from an incorrect identification. You took the front half
of "walleyed pike" and we took the back half of the name. Who's
correct? The French-Canadian term of "doré" at least has no
misinformation in it. More and more Canadian fishing TV personalities
and writers are adopting "walleye" along with calling everything on
the end of one's line, a "bait". The usage of pickerel as meaning
walleye, has largely disappeared in Southern Ontario but here in
Northern Ontario, only the visiting Yankees call it a walleye.

And since I'm still in Northern Ontario at this moment . . . . it's a
PICKEREL!!! ))