Packrafting and Fly Fishing Solo on the McLeod River - May 2023
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- čas přidán 18. 11. 2023
- This video is of a solo 4-day packrafting and fly fishing trip I did in mid-May of 2023. I was fishing for bull trout and managed to catch a few nice ones! (make sure to watch it in its highest definition)
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Excellent video. Really enjoyed it.
Thanks! Another fun trip!
Great video , thanks for posting sir
Thanks for watching! 😊
Enjoyed.
haha you always catch a big fish when you forget the net! murphy's law!! very nice!
Isn’t that the truth. 😊😊
Great trip!!
Thanks!
I'm from Whitecourt so I'm pretty sure I know the section of river. Great videos, really enjoying them! You need a kickboat bud, much more stable and efficient and can pack a load plus fishing gear. At about the 9:10 mark you go over a couple rock ledges. You need to chuck your fly right in the drop, bulls like to sit right in tight as well as between the drops. You'd be surprised how fast of water they will sit in if they can find a little hole to be out of the main current.
I own lots of float tubes (4) and a pontoon boat. I use a pack raft because it weighs five pounds and packs down to the size of a large roll of paper towel. It allows me to paddle any river that I can hike in and out of. It allows me to leave a quad anywhere and then float to near where my quad is, pack all my stuff into a backpack, and hike to my quad. Then drive my quad back to my truck. A packraft only needs about 4 inches of water to float. All my gear not needed for fishing (i.e. food and camping gear) is stored inside my packraft (i.e. where the air goes). It is, by far, the best way to do multi-day trips down rivers with difficult access. Pontoon or float tubes, which i own, would be useless, as they are way too heavy and/or bulky to pack anywhere with all your gear, and you can't store weeks work of camping gear in or on them. The downside to packrafts is that they are quite expensive - around 2 grand for a decent one, but you can pay twice that much if you want.
To each their own. There’s a difference between a kick boat and a pontoon boat. Think water master. Yes they would be heavier than your raft but much lighter than a pontoon boat. And I would argue my kickboat would haul anything your boat would and more. And doesn’t draft any more water than the raft. The big advantage I see from your video is control on the water. You can control your speed better, negotiate sweepers safer than you did when you practically had to roll out of your boat into the water to stop. And they are much drier than what I witnessed in your trips. You can fish from it, when shallow enough you just drop your feet and stand up, boat is around your legs. Mine weighs about 45 lbs, you simply lift it up onto your shoulders and walk out. Or use a sling and drag it behind if you can’t carry it. They slide quite easily along the ground and are tough as nails. I have even towed it behind my quad with the gear on it. I have done several trips on the Berland. Single day and multi day. Hi way 40 bridge to km 168 bridge(on the ANC haul road) for instance. When I get to my quad I just deflate and roll it up and it fits on the front rack easily. My gear on the back. Enjoy and thanks for the videos!
I think we are thinking about different things. Absolutely there are different effective way to float down rivers when u are doing day trips and u have relatively easy access - where u can drag ur boat and shuttle ur gear (like the section of the McLeod I did on this video). Where packrafts are really the only option is when access in and/or out is difficult. Think getting out of the Brazeau or Athabasca where u have 500m to 1.5 km hikes up extremely steep often bushy terrain. Watch my Brazeau River video and you will get a better idea what I’m saying.
When u don’t have bridge to bridge access or relatively short and flat access, packrafts are the only realistic options. It opens up thousands of kms of remote rivers. The other option that is becoming more popular is bike packrafting where you bring ur bike on the raft and then move back to a vehicle or pick up point on ur bike (with all ur gear). Do a little googling into packraftimg and cyou can see some of the things people are doing now. It’s a new sport, only becoming relatively common in the last 10 years. I hope no one takes it up - more empty rivers for me 😊😊
I’ve have great luck lately with white and silver barely legals on that river
Yep - those are in my box. Another Kelly Gallop fly 😊
@@flyfish-bowhunt-alberta I prefer is personal version
Great video what section of the mcleod?
Obviously I’m not going to tell everyone that, but go on Google earth and look at the river and discover where you might want to go for yourself 😊. That’s what I did. 😊
I am shocked you never caught any Bows or Brookies. in that section. That is all I used to catch there. Nice that the Bullies are making a comeback. I first fished there in about 77
I've never caught a brook trout there. I've caught the odd rainbow. Keep in mind that I'm not targeting those species. I'm casting big articulated streamers up to 6 inches long - I'm targeting bull trout. Most of the rainbows in this section of the river are small (less than 12 inches). And when nymphing, the most common fish to catch are whitefish, followed by grayling and rainbows. You've been able to kill brook trout in river (and surrounding rivers) for years, as they're non-native, so that could be one reason they aren't that common anymore. You can kill whitefish too, but not very many people do.
What weight rod do you use to toss those big flies?@@flyfish-bowhunt-alberta
Hey did some searching but don’t see a video on the Brazeau. What’s it called?
czcams.com/video/WvJl1H3EyOg/video.html
Nice trip, nice fish! Did you find your leak? How shallow can you float your pack raft?
Yea. I found it. But it’s never easy to find them. You need about 5-6” to float if ur boat is loaded - a couple inches less if it’s not. 😊
Looks like a great trip! We just did a 5 day trip on a wild and scenic river in Oregon. This looks like a great trip.. How many miles did you end up covering in 4 days?
Thanks! Nice u can still get out on the river. Unfortunately it winter here now😊. I covered about 40km (24 miles). But as u know, the time it takes mainly depends on how much time u spend fishing vs paddling. And I was only targeting bull trout (chucking big flies). I could have nymphed for whitefish and rainbows but didn’t. 😊 it would have taken up too much time.
@@flyfish-bowhunt-alberta thats always the dilema … 5 miles a day is a nice pace. We had to do some 10mile days due to campsites and you end up passing so much good water.
lol. I know the feeling of passing up great looking water in the interest of time 😊
Ok found it! Thanks! If you don’t mind sharing, is that upstream of the FTR or down?
It's both
Was talking about the Brazeau trip….
lol. I’m not sure what the question is anymore. The Brazeau trip(s) started above the truck road and ended below it. Both the put-in and takeout were hikes. No road access.
Trunk road
What section of the McLeod river is this?
Sorry, hopefully you can appreciate that I can't tell you that. But it is the McLeod river (which I didn't have to name) and you have to work for the access 😀😀