Pike of Manitoba Beware

by | Jun 24, 2019 | fly fishing in Canada

fly-fish-manitobaGranny and I left New Hampshire yesterday.  She headed back to Victor.  I flew to Winnipeg, Manitoba.  There I met up with friend and Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures Canada trip organizer, Shaun Lawson.  Shaun and I overnighted at the airport then at 4:30 AM this morning met up with a small group of six others and we all caught a charter flight for Gangler’s North Seal River Lodge.

 

pike-artworkGangler’s is owned by Ken Gangler who I met at the Denver Fly Fishing Show three years ago.  It was when I started decorating black fly boxes.  For fun I did one with a northern pike and had it proudly on display at the show.  If the show opened at 10 AM, Ken owned that sharp looking box by 10:01.  That was the beginning of a new friendship.

 

ganglers-lodgeSince then I’ve done more fly boxes for Ken and gotten to know him better.  Well enough that during the 2019 show season he invited me up to his lodge.  As a Yellow Dog Ambassador I must be careful here.  If I visit someone’s lodge and it’s a great fishery I want to promote it.  But because I work with Yellow Dog, the lodge can’t conflict with one they already represent.  Well, it so happened that Ken and Shaun had already been talking so a visit by Shaun and I together was ideal.

 

travel-nightmaresBut things haven’t gone so well for us today by no fault of Gangler’s.  Instead of fishing by 9 AM our charter flight was forced to land in Thompson, Manitoba to wait out the storm.  Turns out we are faced with one of the largest low pressure weather systems in memory and we’ve been grounded all day posted up at a shack on a landing strip.  Unfortunately today we are unable to fly.

 

jeff-currier-fishing-blogI’m presently writing from the Boston Pizza restaurant in the not-so-lovely town of Thompson.  All of us have rooms at the Days Inn and we’ll be up early and back to the airport at 5 AM with hopes to get in the air for Gangler’s by 6 AM.  Its iffy as the weather is horrendous here and evidently, 250 miles further north at Gangler’s its worse.

 

thompson-manitobaWe lost a full day of fishing today.  We hope like heck it doesn’t carry on too deep into tomorrow.  But when you travel all the time you’re bound to run into these things.  You just deal.  Luckily from our hotel it looks like the skies are clearing.

 

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing

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Welcome to the Blog of Jeff Currier!

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I started fly fishing at age 7 in the lakes and ponds of New England cutting my teeth on various sunfish, bass, crappie and stocked trout. I went to Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, where I graduated with a Naturalist Degree while I discovered new fishing opportunities for pike, muskellunge, walleyes and various salmonids found in Lake Superior and its tributaries.

From there I headed west to work a few years in the Yellowstone region to simply work as much as most people fish and fish as much as most people work. I did just that, only it lasted over 20 years working at the Jack Dennis Fly Shop in Jackson, WY where I departed in 2009. Now it’s time to work for "The Man", working for myself that is.

I pursue my love to paint fish, lecture on every aspect of fly fishing you can imagine and host a few trips to some of the most exotic places you can think of. My ultimate goal is to catch as many species of fish on fly possible from freshwater to saltwater, throughout the world. I presently have taken over 440 species from over 60 countries!

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