It was another super enjoyable trip. Despite the overall slow fishing, I still managed to get into a couple nice trout. Check out the full trip report below.

July 2023: Dunlop Lake Loop
A 3 day loop through some Algoma country back lakes

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That said, there are still plenty of rivers and lakes with more than enough water, even in dry years such as this one – and that’s where I’ve spent most of this season. They aren’t particularly close by for me, so it does mean some extra driving. Sometimes I’ll try to make the most of my trips though and stay a night (or, a week, or more…).

On the longer trips, I’m in the back country with a canoe and tent (or hammock). I’ve got a new trolling setup for the fly rod this year with the new(ish) universal Scotty rod holder, which works well for pretty much any rod type – casting, spinning or fly rod. Of course, I’m not only trolling from the canoe. I’ll also cast (mostly streamers) when I’m not travelling or trying to locate fish – but it’s nice to keep a line in the water even while travelling.

Closer to home, trout fishing has been mostly done while drifting in the pontoon, on rivers with plenty of water and where covering ground is easy and quick.

I’ve got two Scotty fly rod holders on my pontoon (the red XL-IR above), but they’re used only for transporting my rods. I bring two with me, so that I can rig them up with a different setup and easily switch between them. That’s one great thing about pontoon boats – you can load basically everything you would ever need and not have to worry about carrying it on your back or hip.

I haven’t exactly had the most success with the browns this year, especially when it comes to big browns. A combination of timing and losing fish – but that’s how fishing goes, especially when learning new water. It’s about time to start thinking about getting out for some night fishing though – and that will surely change my luck. There’s also the hope of hitting a good late Hex hatch (Hexagenia Autrocaudata).

I’ve had a couple nice browns hooked up, only to be lost on a jump or poor hookup. Still, there have been plenty of 10-14 inchers, which are never a disappointment.

One recent trip float also netted a decent Rainbow Trout that put a nice bend in the 4 weight.

And let’s not forget the numerous brookies. Suffice it to say, while no trophies were caught this season (in the front country), the trout trifecta has been a common occurrence on outings. Can’t complain about that!

For hatches, Stoneflies have been in a great abundance this year. They began showing up earlier than normal and they’re still sticking around in good numbers.

You may have seen the top of these flies (as pictured above), or you’ve seen them fluttering over the river. But there’s a good chance you haven’t seen the bottom side of a golden stone, which is what the fish see from below! If you tie your own flies, that’s a pretty important part of the fly. So, here you are…

The other hatch that has been fairly abundant on some rivers this year (aside from the usual Isonychia) is the Brown Drake. This is a good sized mayfly that can bring some solid fish to the surface. It seemed to stick around for quite a long time this year. At least twice already, a good month after fishing them earlier in the season, we saw some size 10-12 mayflies in the air before dusk and mistakenly thought they were Isonychia. It wasn’t until catching one much later that we realized they were actually Brown Drakes. We thought for sure they’d be done by now. That might explain our snubs from some decent fish those evenings.

Hard to believe it’s the end of July already. There’s only two more months of trout season left, with just a couple major hatches to look forward to. Smallmouth bass will be getting some attention as well, along with at least one more late season backcountry trip for trout.

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Some of the main trip highlights included some beautiful native Brook Trout and Lake Trout, no bugs (still too early for them!), great weather aside from some below freezing overnight lows, a couple injuries, taking a swim in some muck and some seriously challenging (and confusing) portages.

You can read the full trip report on the page linked below:

May 2023: Ranger Lake / Algoma Headwaters
A 9 day solo trip to an infrequently travelled northern Ontario canoe route

The post Algoma Headwaters Backcountry Trip appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

May 2022: Lake Lavieille / Dickson Loop
A 5 day trip to Big Crow Lake in the Algonquin backcountry

The post Early Season Backcountry Brookies appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

June 2013: Back to Big Crow Lake
A 3 day return trip to Big Crow Lake Algonquin Park

The post Algonquin: Big Crow Trip Report appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

September 2012: Big Crow
A 5 day trip to Big Crow Lake in the Algonquin backcountry

The post Big Crow: There and Back Again appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Long story short, I returned the backpack along with most of the dry sacks and purchased a SealLine Pro Pack (pictured below).

You can get a sense of the size of this pack by the full-size guitar sitting next to it.  This beast has 115L capacity, which is about 64% more than the previous backpack!  On top of that, it’s 100% waterproof, which means it can sit at the bottom of the canoe getting wet, all my gear inside stays dry without the need for additional dry sacks and I don’t end up carrying a soggy backpack around.  Finally, the profile of this bag is actually better for portages since it sits lower than a typical large hiking backpack and won’t interfere with a canoe resting on your shoulders.

It worked out that the cost of the SealLine was about the same as the cost of the cheaper Brio backpack with all the required dry sacks.  Now all I have to do is find enough stuff to fill it!

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This is something I’ve always wanted to do: portage into the Algonquin Provincial Park back country. However, I haven’t really been able to find anyone adventurous enough to do it with; and I’m certainly not about to solo a trip like this, at least not for my first few attempts.

Well, I’ve finally found a victim (I mean companion) to endure this experiment with me and we’re planning to do a 3 day trip, leaving Thursday, September 13th. I’ve done some limited camping in Algonquin’s developed campsites in the past, but I’m completely unfamiliar with its interior. Along with Google, the following book has been my main planning reference so far:

We’ll be leaving straight from work Thursday and staying the night as close to our access point as possible. Early Friday morning, we’ll head to Opeongo Outfitters (on Opeongo Lake) and begin our trip from there. The current plan is to canoe Opeongo Lake to its North Arm at the Proulx Lake portage, then follow the portage and Proulx Lake to the rest of our adventure beyond. I’ve heard that Opeongo Lake can get fairly treacherous at times, especially if the winds are high and/or blowing in an unfavourable direction. Here’s hoping we don’t run into that problem!

Our trip should be fairly straightforward, with about 32 km worth of rowing and 3 km of portaging (just 2 portages, 1.5k each). Depending on how things go, we may do a day trip a bit further and hit a few more portages. In reality, 3 days should be more than enough for this trip, but some exploring and fishing will surely be done to fill any downtime!

Since this is to be my first backcountry trip including portages, I needed to gear up a bit, so I headed over to Mountain Equipment Co-op in Burlington today. I’ve never been to this place and I’ve got to say… it’s a very dangerous place for me. There’s just too much nice stuff in here if you’re into the outdoors.

The main piece of gear I was missing is a BIG backpack. It turns out, storing a tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes, toiletries, fishing gear and other odds and ends into a single backpack is not easily achieved, especially if you don’t have the right backpack and are not used to packing extremely efficiently. It turns out, it’s pretty easy to spend upwards of $300-$400 on a good multi-day backpack or canoe pack. But since I have no clue what I actually like yet, I wasn’t prepared to spend that kind of money and I settled on this extremely well priced ($83) 70L multi-day backpack from MEC:

It’s got a lot of room, seems very well made and for the price, I don’t think it’s possible to do any better. My only concern is how it will work out when trying to carry a canoe on your shoulders, since these backpacks are fairly tall and could possibly interfere with the canoe a bit. I’m still contemplating returning this and going with a more traditional style, shorter and stouter canoe pack. In particular, MEC carries a bag called the SealLine Pro Pack RE, which has an incredible 115 L of storage room, is completely waterproof and is probably better suited to portaging. It’s double the price of the Brio, but that’s still a fairly low price when you compare it to others in its category.

Aside from that, I picked up a compass and a few waterproof dry packs, which will be used to organize my gear within the backpack and make sure it stays dry. One of these (the black one on the left in the image below) is a compression sack as well, which will store my sleeping bag. This cool little bag helps minimize volume by compressing large bulky items such as sleeping bags or clothes. Down sleeping bags are the best choice here since they compress extremely well; unfortunately all of my current (decent) sleeping bags are synthetic, so they are still a bit large even in the compression bag.

For me, Algonquin’s wild Brook Trout is one of the main draws to this area, especially when travelling off the beaten path. However, this is not the only reason for our trip and in fact, it’s not even the main reason.

Our main goal is to simply take in the Algonquin back country for the first time while getting some portaging experience to hopefully get a feel for what longer and more difficult trips may be like in the future. My partner is not actually a fisherman, although he is not opposed; and the plan is definitely to bring some fly fishing gear along and try our luck in some of the lakes and rivers we pass through that are known to contain brook trout.

I have a feeling the next few nights will be spent finalizing plans, packing and tying flies for the trip. Hopefully the weather is cooperative and I should be able to post a trip report next week sometime.

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