Gone Fishn – Dolberg Lake
Gone Fishn – part 4
Alberta Parks related website –Dolberg Lake
Have you read the 1st post of the GONE FISHN post series? — Gone Fisn Introduction post explains why we are doing this adventure.
Part 4 — Dolberg Lake
Dolberg Lake is approximately 150 km from Fairfax Lake. We travelled north on the forestry trunk road to Edson where we refuelled gas and food.
Dolberg Lake campsite appeared to be run by the local county. Friends told us one side of the campsite had paid campsites side and the other side of the road is free. The campground painted-over signage said $12 per night. There were two toilets which were not maintained. The garbage appeared to be picked up on Mondays by county workers. No wood is provided. The campsites are not maintained season to season. By this I mean they were covered with last year’s fallen leaves. These stick to the grips in your shoes as if they were covering dog pops or melted marshmallows like sticky smelly stuff. We did not have a rake so we had to put up with this guck stick to our shoes as it tracked in and out of the camper. The sites are full of potholes and are not level.
We are allowed our gas motor on this lake subject to a 15 km ph speed limit. We can conserve battery power by using the gas motor to go against the wind and the electric motor when trolling with the wind. Our 20 hp Tohatsu 4-stroke motor does not troll slow enough even with its special troll setting it still moves at 2 km ph and we want closer 1.04 and 1.14 km ph when trolling.
Tiger Trout
Dolberg Lake is set to become a trophy trout lake and its fishing regulations allowed fishermen to keep only one fish each as a daily catch limit. Kept fish must exceed 50 cm in length. We did not witness a single trout leave the lake during our 4 days there. But we were not after rainbows after all we had our fill of large rainbows at Swan Lake (see Gone Fishn—part 1—Swan Lake post). We were here to catch our first tiger trout and a brown trout. A tiger trout is a relatively new breed of trout and is in only a few lakes. The body of this trout is covered in worm-like markings, otherwise next to no colour. Its mouth contains more teeth than the other species of trout. First morning out we did hook into one tiger trout. So that was off the list. Next was to catch a brown trout.
The boat launch has a drop-off at the end of the concrete pads which will catch and hold your trailer tires when attempting to retrieve your boat from the lake. This makes removing the boat from the water somewhat difficult. Fortunately, the gravel launch beside the cement launch proved to be a better choice for a boat launch and pick-up.
This is a stocked trout pond. Stocked trout are treated when they are in the egg stage so as to prevent their reproducing. This way the native stocks can not interbreed with the stocked trout.
It was most interesting to watch the false spawn of some 15 very large rainbow trout taking place at the boat launch. They were attempting to spawn in the gravel at the boat launch. This turned many an adult human into a youngster engaged in attempting to catch these trout as they would be near legal keeping size or better. Just as in a real spawn the fish were not eating. They were busy chasing intruders from their nesting site. This includes the fishermen’s presentations. Most of these fish caught here were tail hooked as the fish would slap the offending critter with their tails to get them to leave the nesting site. This means tail-hooked fish. This is a legally caught fish and could be kept but all were released.
Our 2econd try to reach 14 km ph on our 20 hp Tohatsu outboard motor resulted in a sudden decrease in speed with a sudden rush of speed and slow and rush then the motor died. Long story short. We had a damaged spark plug. The cost to discover and fix this was nearly $200 as my husband had overfilled the motor with oil and we did not know 4-stroke motors will not start when overfilled with oil.
Weather set in and that was our queue to pack up before the rains start and move to our next destination.
Next lake is Sturgeon Lake.
Related Videos
- FISH-ON the video of 6Kg Rainbow trout, 47 cm brown trout, 46 cm eastern brookies, and non-stop walleyes on the hook.
- Gone Fishn – Swan Lake ….. The video?
- How to make a leech trap video.
- How to Rig a Slip Bobber.
- Fish – On Dolberg Lake
Gone Fishn—Blog Posts
Published
- Introduction—the why we are Gone Fishn
- Swan Lake Recreation Area
- Pierre Grey’s Lakes Provincial Park
- Fairfax Lake Provincial Recreational Area
- Dolberg Lake
Coming Soon
- Young’s Point Provincial Park
- Swan Lake Take 2
- Pierre Grey’s Lakes Provincial Park Take 2
- Gregg Lake Provincial Park
- Buck Lake Provincial Park