Just returned a couple of hours ago from 6 days visiting family in The Pas, where I managed to get out fishing for walleye 3 times. The last time - yesterday afternoon about 3:00 I hit it lucky, and pulled up a 29 1/2" walleye from the Saskatchewan River, about 10 miles east of The Pas. I figured at first I had a big burbot, because the only walleye we were catching were around 14-16", but when her big head came up through the hole, Wow! What a thrill. My brother's neighbor had a disposable camera and snapped a shot of me holding the fish, and when he develops the film.......(probably June)..... I'll scan it and post the picture of that beautiful fish. Of course, it was released to spawn again.
First day out (last Saturday) my brother and I limited out in 90 mins, and had a feast that evening. That day there were 10 other adults on the ice, with a group of 4H kids who had never been ice fishing before. That group had a total of 48 fish. On Sunday I was the only lucky one, catching 1 little one, and everyone except for one of the wives was skunked. Yesterday my brother and I caught only 3 eaters, and the other 6 guys were skunked. We never could figure out when the bite was on, it was so variable from day to day.
The ice is about 3 feet thick, but releases from dams in Saskatchewan have been raising the water level over the last 2 days, and overflow is causing slush to form on the river's edges.
There is a herd of deer (about 30) in the neighbor's backyard, just over from my brother's farm that has been sheltering in the bush for the last month, but is slowly being whittled down by a couple of big wolves. Last Monday Ken and I saw 2 of the wolves standing by the round bales about 300 m from his yard. Man, are they HUGE! We thought they were deer to begin with, but saw them move slowly off, and then could tell what they were. The next morning about 8:00 we watched one as it lay on top of a big bale, and just scanned the area, probably looking for breakfast. So far the wolves have taken at least 6 of the deer over the last month, the latest this morning, a young, one year old that was reduced to backbone and lower legs. We spotted the kill by the flock of ravens present. Well, like Curly (who owns the farm the deer are on) says, the deer are put there to feed the wolves, they don't belong to us, and we shouldn't be upset if the wolves are only doing what is totally natural and necessary.
So my annual Spring trip to The Pas this year was not only successful, but interesting as well.
