With a break from all the rain and cooler temps of late, I figured the river should be back in tip-top condition. So, last Thursday I set out at sunrise with an arsenal of Tricos, expecting to be tossing tiny dry flies to eager fish. When I arrived, the river flows were as expected, but the water was inexplicably murky – as if a huge rainfall had just gone through. Apparently, the heavy rains in weeks past have caused somewhat of a backup of sediment and algae in Belwood Lake, which is still being released from Shand Dam. The river was definitely more slippery than I’ve ever seen it, so blaming it on algae seems logical. Still, I didn’t travel 45 minutes at 6 am to turn around and drive back home.

Other than the water colour, everything seemed normal. Deer on the river, Cranes and the resident Osprey about and a bit of insect activity, hinting at the likely hatches in the coming hours.

It’s becoming a common occurrence to be greeted by a Deer in the morning

For the first half of the morning, I was too stubborn to tie on a nymph or streamer and instead fished wet and dry flies. Tricos were hatching in pretty good numbers but very few fish were rising, most likely due to the poor visibility. Obviously, not a good time to be fishing a dry fly. When I finally gave in and decided to tie a nymph on, things got interesting. Not because of the sudden excellent fishing – it was still difficult. Rather, due to the resident Osprey who is always looking for an easy meal.

Resident Osprey (picture snapped on a previous trip a few weeks ago)

A couple casts with a bead-head nymph and I was into my first fish of the morning: a respectable ~14″ brown. As I fought to bring the fish to the net quickly, it did a couple somersaults and splashed on the surface. All of a sudden, a huge splash directly on top of the fish startled me. A second later, the Osprey emerged from the water with my fish in its claws, hook still set in the fish’s mouth! I had no idea what to do… for a couple moments, I was literally fighting an Osprey trying to fly away with my fish. My hook eventually popped out and the thieving bird flew off with my catch. This was right up there with the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me on the water.

This seemed to set the mood for the rest of the day. Out of only three fish that were hooked (all on either a nymph or streamer), none made it to my net. The first lost to the Osprey, the second lost due to a poor hook set and the last fish spit the hook at my feet while I was fumbling with my landing net.

Two days later, I returned with a friend for revenge, hoping that the visibility had improved. Unfortunately, it did not improve and we were stuck swinging streamers in the very murky water once more.

Stripping streamers in the murky water

Ryan (above) has been obsessed with catching a certain large brown that has managed to evade him a few times now. The fish didn’t show up on this morning, though I did see a very large brown roll no less than 2 feet in front of me. It was another slow day on the water, with even less fish on than two days prior. I did however manage to bring one fish to net without bird intervention, so that’s something to be thankful of.

This fish took a Muddler Minnow on the swing

September is just around the corner and that should mean much improved fishing conditions on the Grand. In the meantime, I may try my luck at some night fishing there and stick to other rivers for morning and daytime fishing.

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Opening weekend can get pretty busy on the popular rivers, so as usual I spent it close to home on a small local stream. It just so happened that my son had a grade 2 project to finish over the weekend for their class’ NOBODY doll, which he was given for the week. If you haven’t heard of this thing, it’s basically a (very expensive) plain denim doll called NOBODY which is used as a learning tool. The idea is that each child is given the doll for a week and they are tasked with teaching it something, basically showing it how to be a good person and become somebody. My son had chose fishing as his topic (specifically, fishing conservation and regulations). In addition to his report, he needed some photos, so I took them both along to the stream and I explained the need for fishing seasons, special regulations, fishing licenses and a bunch of other topics. Here’s a shot of NOBODY taking a break after a learning session:

NOBODY, learning to fly fish

We did a little fishing, managed to hook into a few small browns and spotted couple big steelhead. The trout fishing isn’t spectacular on this stream, but it’s close to home, very picturesque in spots and virtually devoid other anglers.

I took the entire week off work, hoping to both do some fishing and also finish up some work around the house. As it turned out, the work part took more time than expected, leaving less time for fishing.

I did manage a trip to the Grand with a neighbour of mine who recently took up fly fishing. We arrived at the river around 5:15 pm: weather about as perfect as you could hope for. The chance of an excellent evening of fishing seemed quite good, though we fully expected to be fishing streamers and nymphs since the river is still cold at this time of year with little to nothing happening on the surface. As luck would have it, the Grand was both colder and lower than normal.

The water level on the Grand is generally dependent on Shand Dam at Belwood Lake, rather than on natural factors like most other rivers. We fished the upper river for about an hour and half without any action at all… no hits and no sign of fish. We decided to drive down to a lower stretch of the river where the water was usually a bit warmer and we were met with the same results. Between the two of us and countless fly patterns, we fished for 3.5 hours without as much as a hit – very strange indeed, especially for the Grand which is teeming with browns. We talked to few locals who all suffered the same fate. In fact, one of them had fished the Grand on three separate days that week without a single fish. Basically, the fish were completely shut down. My only guess is that the low temps and low (relatively clear) water levels were making the fish extremely spooky and unwilling to take a fly. What I do know is that this was the toughest fishing conditions I’ve probably ever seen on the Grand.

Apparently, some other rivers in the area (which we’d considered, but settled on the normally higher percentage Grand), had seen much better fishing conditions with warmer water and some hendricksons already starting to come off. Oh well, that’s the joy and uncertainty of early season fishing here. Still, an outing with no fish is better than no outing at all.

Until next time.

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