Northern Ontario fly-in adventure: 6 days, 3 kayaks and 400-plus fish

#7  The fly-fishing opportunities were excellent

My favourite way to catch fish is on the fly, but fly-fishing from a kayak creates several extra layers of difficulty, so I don’t do it as much as I’d like. However the fish were so plentiful at Bulldozer that it was the ideal time to bust out the long rods. (My big hint was fly-casting off the dock on our first evening, when I nabbed 12 fish in 15 casts.) So, on a couple of days, I headed out with just a pair of fly rods, which worked extremely well for both walleye and pike, both casting and trolling. So well, in fact, that at one point, Don asked for a couple of flies, and used a small bullet weight to fish them on his spinning rod… until they got bit off.

I used both an 8-weight outfit with an intermediate-sinking line, and a 9-weight, with a full-sinking line, switching back and forth depending on the depth. The sinking lines were absolutely essential for getting flies down, since we found a majority of the fish in 6 to 12 feet of water. My top flies were the articulated Seaducer, an all-tinsel monstrosity known as the Supercharger and the EP Offshore fly. And the two-footers (above) were a ton o’ fun on a fly rod.  (If you’re new to this kind of action, check out my tips on fly-fishing for pike, fly-fishing for walleye and trolling with a fly rod.)