Tombstone Park and Jeff’s first Grayling!

Since it was a holiday today (Discovery Day) and we both had the day off work, and all the Discovery Days events were over, we went on an exploration/fishing trip. We drove up the Dempster Highway to north of Tombstone Territorial Park.

The fall colours are starting. As nice as these photos are, they don’t come close to capturing the breathtaking scenery. Every direction you look is remarkable!

We even saw a bit of snow still left in a few of the crevasses on the north side of the slopes.

 The slopes are starting to get some reds and browns in the vegetation. We’ll go back in a week or so to see the progression. I’ve seen brilliant red and orange photos from this area, so I hope we can catch those colours!

Jeff stopped in a couple places to fly fish for Arctic Grayling.

We put Monty’s bear bell on his collar so he’d make enough noise to keep any and all grizzlies away.

We could see the bottom in this river and didn’t see any fish. Jeff wished he brought his neoprene waders instead, he said the water was super cold!

Later on we took a little road that left the Dempster and found this beautiful landing on a river.

Jeff got his lure snagged up and lost it, but recovered someone else’s. It took him about 10 seconds with the found lure to catch his first Arctic Grayling!

Of course the water was so clear, he could drop the hook right in front of the fish’s mouth.

We kept it and took it home to cook up. Really tasty! We heard they were full of little bones, but Jeff did a great job cleaning it and made a thin little breading for it for frying. I’d eat that again!

It rained for about 30 seconds on the drive back to Dawson. While our family and friends are sweating away another hot summer’s day we enjoyed our +15C fall weather 🙂

We didn’t see any big mammals today, but saw 3 bald eagles, some squirrels, and some grouse like birds (don’t know all the birds here yet!) Hunting season has started, so between the hunters and all the end of the season tourists, the Tombstone area was fairly busy!