Muir aerators are out

Dam! I forgot my camera at home today and didn't realize it 'til I was half way to the lake. I'm sorry to say I have no pics for this post and especially no photo of Emerson falling off the dock into the lake (he's so lucky no cameras were out). What a glorious day though. It got up to 23 Celsius which is 73F for my American friends. That's really nice for this time of year way up north here in Alberta. Our regular temps are around 9 degrees Celsius (48F) for this time of year. Anyway, I headed out to the lake but unfortunately not to fish. No, It's that time of year we take the aerators off of Muir Lake. If you're not sure what aerators are, they are like fountain sprayers that shoot water into the air to capture oxygen and it then gets cycled through the lake so the fish don't die during the winter. There are other forms of aerators as well but we use this kind. For more info click here. About 10 or 11 of us showed up all under the umbrella of the Fisheries Enhancement Society of Alberta (FESA). Included under that umbrella are four local Edmonton clubs: Trout Unlimited Canada (Edmonton Chapter), the Edmonton Trout Club, the Northern Lights Fly Tyers & Fishers and the Edmonton Old Timers Fishing Club. We have two aerators on Muir Lake and it took approximately an hour for each aerator. After that we enjoyed some BBQ'ed smokies and BS'ed for a while. There are some exciting things in the works for FESA and TU for this summer but I'll save those for another day. Anyway, Muir does have some open water but it's not open to fishing until May 1st. I didn't see any trout rising while I was there but I did see tons of water boatman, a couple of backswimmers and one damselfly nymph as well as a few adult midges. Michael Dell and I also saw two diving beetles, one was huge which he picked it up to show some of the guys. I thought it would bite me so I didn't even bother. Now that we've been out to Muir though, I'm getting really itchy to wet a line. Might have to make that Bow trip soon.