July 28, 2008 - Cantlie Lake Fishing Adventure
It’s not often in fishing that you push yourself physically to the point of muscle spasms’, dehydration, and pure fatigue. Yesterday this was the case as I joined in on a last minute adventure to Cantlie Lake. I have been wanting to go to this lake for years, having heard about the abundance of stocked Arctic Charr. Most sane people tackle this trip with an ATV or another piston-powered contraption. I joined up with my good friend Micheal to attempt this herculean feat via mountain bike. The trail is 16km one-way (yup, thats 32 km both) around, up and down a mountain. The trails vary from some rooted, single-track to a blown out sandy ATV track with muddy bogs in between. This was about as hard core as I get these days. It was incredibly painful but totally rewarding.
We took a few hours to bike down and used one of the old canoes (left there year-round) and paddled around. We trolled the shoals and found that most of the fish were cruising along the transition points with some structure. We caught a few fish in the one to three pound range by trolling a variety of lake trout lures (red devils, five of diamonds, trophies). They took the hook in a soft leisurely manner like they were cruising and passively feeding rather than an aggressive strike. This is a beautiful clear lake, looks very deep in certain sections. Please be prepared when you fish here and bring life-jackets and waterproof matches/dry gear as the wind can kick up and its big enough to get nasty. An unexpected dump in this lake can lead to hypothermia or worse if you are not prepared. Another bonus to this lake is the geocache located here. For those who don’t know it’s like a treasure hunt with a GPS. You go to the geocaching website, register and grab the coordinates. The GPS gets you in the vicinity and then you have to hunt. There are at least a 100 geocaches around us in Whitehorse and close to a million world-wide. Great way to get kids out hiking, boating, etc.. Some are smack downtown, other are in hard to reach areas like Cantlie.
Next thing we know, I’ll be seeing you at the local mountain bike events. I sense some real potential here, Dennis.
Geof Harries on July 29, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I have all the time in the world for you guys. That is one tough sport. I did enjoy it and want to get on my bike again, but I’ll leave these events to guys with less than 10% body fat.
2 comments so far