Pike Time

With the weather and the waters cooling plus the days getting shorter and the boatman / backswimmer action slowing down around these parts, that usually means pike time for me. The pike will be moving into the shallows so now is the time I start looking at trips out to Wabamun for some monster water wolves. Things have changed at Wabamun however with the closing of the power plant.  There won't be any more warm water coming into the lake but how this will effect the fishing has yet to be seen.  Wading the mouth of the outlet will be a lot colder on the feet for sure but I'm curious if the pike will congregate to this area in the numbers we're used to seeing.  You would think that they would make their way to the channel just out of habit but if the food sources aren't there like in the past they may get wise and move on.  Of course this area can't be any worse than any other shallow area of Wabamun so I would assume success can be found.  The question is just how successful will one be?  Are the cold days of the past with pike after pike on the end of your line over or will their instinct bring them into the area with the numbers we've gotten used to?  Only time and the willingness to investigate can answer that I guess.  We'll see how it goes over the next few weeks.

On Saturday I took a client out for a stillwater clinic to Muir Lake.  Although he did catch one nice 18 incher under an indicator on a sparkle leech, we didn't see any trout even bump the boatman or backswimmers he was fishing.  The surface action was almost non-existent and the bite never did really pick up near sunset like it usually does.  I'm almost certain the trout were tight to the bank, but thought it was more important to continue my clients casting into more open water than to have him constantly hooking up on weeds.  Unfortunately I can't upload any pics to my pc as my daughter seems to have misplaced the CDROM that came with my new camera.  Hope I find it soon.