Not exactly a lunker

Not exactly a lunker

By Troutnut on May 16th, 2014

I drove south to North Pole in the evening to check out a couple of clear, spring-fed sloughs and try to catch a round whitefish for burbot bait. After a couple hours drifting nymphs through deep pools, I finally got one.

In the meantime I caught a dozen or so grayling. These sloughs often have good fishing during the grayling spawning run, but that seems to have ended already. I caught several small to medium grayling, but mostly the sloughs were packed full of yearling 3-inchers, for which they are a year-round nursery. They were rising like crazy to a midge hatch... fun to watch, if not to fish.

Photos by Troutnut from Piledriver Slough in Alaska

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Three-inch grayling. Hundreds of fish were rising all around me to an intense midge emergence. Unfortunately, this was one of the biggest ones.

StateAlaska

LocationPiledriver Slough

Date TakenMay 16, 2014

Date AddedMay 17, 2014

AuthorTroutnut

CameraCanon PowerShot D10

View Full Size and Comment (2.6X larger)

StateAlaska

LocationPiledriver Slough

Date TakenMay 16, 2014

Date AddedMay 17, 2014

AuthorTroutnut

CameraCanon PowerShot D10

View larger pictures or add a comment»

Comments / replies

Entoman	May 17th, 2014, 9:48 pm
Northern CA & ID Posts: 2604	Only in Alaska can words like "I drove south to North Pole..." make sense! :) Fun photo mini-essay!
	"It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman

PaulRoberts	May 18th, 2014, 3:39 am
Colorado Posts: 1776	Only in Alaska can words like "I drove south to North Pole..." make sense! :) Are we now trying to see who can post the smallest catches? I thought I had those honors, until Matt posted that shiner. Not sure we can beat the grayling however. :)

Motrout	May 18th, 2014, 12:28 pm
Posts: 319	In that setting, I could stand around catching 3 inch grayling on dry flies all day long (and then get up excited to get back to it the next day!) That's the thing about trout/other salmonids:the bigger ones are......bigger, but the little parr-marked ones are almost always prettier.
	"I don't know what fly fishing teaches us, but I think it's something we need to know."-John Gierach http://fishingintheozarks.blogspot.com/

Jmd123	May 18th, 2014, 1:20 pm
Oscoda, MI Posts: 2611	OK, if we are going to post pics of pretty little ones, I'll have to put more up on here from the Pine River, which grows some mighty pretty little rainbows and brookies... Jonathon
	No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere...

Gus	July 10th, 2014, 7:09 pm
colorado Posts: 59	that's the tiniest fish I've every seen! Really cool pic above!
	"How do you help that son of a bitch?" "By taking him fishing" -A River Runs Through It www.jsrods.com

GldstrmSam	August 7th, 2014, 10:47 pm
Fairbanks, Alaska Posts: 212	Haha! I saw these posts and just had to jump in. This past July I was fishing off of the shore down in Homer with a buddy. We were throwing large bait-hooks rigged with herring. We were targeting pollock, rockfish, and small halibut that hang around the shallower water. Anyway, we were having a great time pulling in one pollock after another and my friend glanced at his hook and saw that he needed new bait. When he went to "reload" he got a closer look at the hook and saw that he actually had caught a halibut! Needless to say, it was only about the size of a nickel. Even so, he did better than me halibut wise that day...We still can't quite figure out how it hooked itself because it was hooked through the lip... :)
	There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm. ~Patrick F. McManus

TroutBums	October 9th, 2014, 2:16 pm
Cincinnati, OH Posts: 13	What a beautiful little greying! That is the reward with fly fishing, you catch the most beautiful fish God has made. Like Motrout, big, small and in-between , they are all a thrill to catch.
	Ted Holcomb http://TroutBumOutfitters.com Contact@TroutBumOutfitters.com

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