Early Season: Brookies & Backcountry

As is typical for me, opening week and most of May was spent pursuing Ontario’s jewel of the north: Brook Trout. This is the time of year when the water is the cold and high – a perfect combination for fishing brook trout. While there’s certainly a group of likeminded anglers out there with the same idea, the vast majority of them are either fishing the tail end of spring steelhead, or off to their favorite Brown Trout rivers.

I fished mostly smaller streams for brookies this year (not including Algonquin). In fact, I may not have made a single trip to the Credit for brookies all season, which I think is a first for me. Regardless what I’m chasing, I always go out of my way to escape the crowds – and I managed to do just that.

These first few small stream outings produced some unusually colorful little brookies for early season, which was a real treat. I especially enjoy the very different coloration from different streams and habitats – brookies, more than any other trout, seem to really adapt their colors to the water they’re living in. Fishing with a 2 or 3 weight, they’re always a joy to catch.

Aside from whetting my appetite with the aforementioned local brook trout outings, the majority of my time leading up to trout opener – and the several weeks after it – were actually taken up from an absurd amount of planning and preparation (and finally, travel) for my first solo Algonquin backcountry trip. This was also focused on Brook Trout, but it included close to 100 km of travel via canoe + portages over a period of 6 days.

I’ve already posted a full separate report on that trip, so check it out here if you’re in the mood for another long read. Below is one of the brookies from that trip.

Early to Mid Season: The Usual

After my mid-May Algonquin trip, I found myself back home just in time for some prime hatches – such as the Green Drakes and Grey Foxes. It’s been a tradition to hit the river almost every day during the green drake hatch. They tend to come and go in cycles – mostly whether and water dependent – so each new season is always a surprise (or potential let down).

The drakes are always intermixed with foxes as well, often quite heavily – so it’s wise to carry a selection of both files. There’s been several occasions where I was overly focused on fishing the larger green drakes (among a fairly thick hatch of them), only to be snubbed by some extremely selective trout. Often, upon switching to a Grey Fox, I’d end up hooking into a trout almost immediately.

The hatch was no bust this year – at least from a bug numbers perspective. They were in good numbers, especially throughout the more upper stretches of the Credit River.

As great as the fishing could be during this hatch, there is typically a very small window when the spinners (Coffin Flies – which are white and black as opposed to the yellow/green color of the duns) are falling – and this is when you want to be on the water.

I managed but a single larger brown during the drake hatches – with the rest of my fish being either smaller browns, or rainbows.

Most of my fish were caught on a new green drake spinner that I experimented with this year (using some materials that have sat almost entirely unused for years). My normal go-to is a foam body fly that floats like a cork – this one is pretty much the exact opposite. It seemed to do the trick, but getting it to float well is something of an accomplishment.

Back to those rainbows though… I’m not sure what’s going on with the Credit, but the number of rainbows is absolutely skyrocketing. I probably caught 2 rainbows for every brown or brookie this year. As my buddy rightly pointed out, there’s no way they’re naturally reproducing here (at least not in any numbers) – because neither of us have ever hooked a smaller / yearling rainbow. They all seem to be around the same size, so they’re likely escaping a fish farm, or being dumped there. The first rainbow below was actually caught on two consecutive nights – on the same fly.

Mid Season: Lots of Travel and Dry Flies

The end of the green drakes and foxes takes us into mid June – which is Isonychia and Stonefly season on many southern Ontario rivers. The Grand doesn’t really fall into the same bucket, being the tailwater that it is – it’s hatches are fairly different (when in doubt, it’s caddis time on the Grand).

With regards to the Isonychia, I came up with a fly pattern a few years ago that I often use to fish the Isonychia hatches (though, I fish it in other scenarios as well). I’m not even sure if it’s a natural/imitation or attractor at this point, as it sort of morphed into something in between. But one thing’s for sure – it’s been a real trophy getter for me. I’ve taken more large browns on this one dry fly than I have any other. My buddies have been asking for the recipe and perhaps I’ll post it up on my blog this year. I don’t consider it much of a secret, because you know how fly patterns go – 80% of their success comes down to your confidence in fishing them!

With some acceptable water levels still gracing most of our rivers, I began to diversify where I was fishing. It meant lots of long drives – often driving for hours for the same or less amount of time fishing. This paid off though, as these weeks in June saw some of my best resident brown trout fishing of the season. I wouldn’t call it spectacular, but persistence paid off with some memorable dry fly takes (most with the above mentioned fly).

This is around the time of year that I start night fishing with big mouse or streamers – something I’ve had a lot of success with in years past. This year was a different story though. I found myself hanging around later to cast dry flies and only managed a few real short night fishing stints.

I moved a few fish during these sessions, but failed to bring any large browns to the net this year – at least, from what I can recall. The closest I got was on the AuSable river in Michigan (more on that later).

That said, I did hook up with something quite interesting one evening during the end of June. I was stripping a Gurgler upstream through some faster water. It was pitch dark on this particular night, with no moon to speak of. At once point, my fly began to feel a bit heavy – at first I thought it was simply the faster water pulling the fly under, but eventually I could feel the weight during my casts. Assuming that I had simply hooked some weeds, I swung the fly close to take peek, and it definitely looked like there was a clump of weeds hanging off the fly. When I went to grab it, my hand jumped back as I realized what was really at the end of my leader.

If you fish southern Ontario rivers at or past dark, you’re well aware of just how many bats we have in the area. They come out in numbers, circling the river, munching on bugs. There has been many times when they’ve flown so close to my head that I’ve had to duck.

In this particular case however, I somehow managed to hook one! Not sure if it thought my fly was food while it was gliding through the air, or if it was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The barbless hook slipped right out and didn’t seem to have done too much damage, but unfortunately I think I drowned the thing. I was most likely dragging it underwater up through the current for at least a few retrieves. Hard to believe I was able to continue casting with this much extra weight at the end of my line… gotta love night fishing!

Early Summer: AuSable River Trip

The main theme for this summer was drought. What started as excellent water levels, quickly diminished down to some of the lowest levels I’ve ever seen in our rivers. As a result, for most of July, I simply took a break from fishing entirely.

At the end of July however, my wife and I took a week long trip to northern Michigan – Grayling specifically – where I’d spend a good amount of timing fishing the holy waters of the AuSable river. I’ve spent a significant amount of time on this river in years past, but hadn’t fished it for quite a while due to COVID restrictions.

I didn’t expect the fishing on the AuSable to be great at this time of year either. The water levels were also much lower than normal and there were no major hatches to speak of (aside from Tricos). Between the water level, tiny bugs and the fact that the holy waters section of the AuSable is extremely technical, hooking into a few small browns would be a real accomplishment.

In addition to the major Trico hatches each morning, there were occasionally some equally small BWO and the odd sporadic white miller hatch in the evening. Of course, small hatches aside, there was still the promise of hooking into a trophy brown after dark. This river is pretty much the birthplace of night fishing for big browns, after all.

The following are most of the flies I tied and fished on this trip (missing is the Tricos, which I already had a plentiful supply of). All caught trout, albeit not large trout – except the gurglers, which produced about a half dozen blow-ups by huge browns at night. Only one of those resulted in a hook-up, which unfortunately ended shortly thereafter when the crafty brown wrapped itself around a log at the bottom of the pool.

The Patriot Skunk was reserved for float days. I brought my Outcast Fish Cat pontoon along on this trip and used it on two separate occasions. It was my first time floating the AuSable and the fine folks at Gates AuSable fly shop gave me some ideas for some floats. Also worth mentioning is the new Douglas Sky G 6 weight I purchased from Gates, which can be seen in the second picture above. This was to replace the Orvis 6 weight that I broke on my Algonquin trip early in the season. I spent a good 30+ minutes casting about 8 different rods at the shop – and it was very obvious that the Sky G was the rod for me. It had the lightest swing weight (feel wise), yet I easily cast the tightest and furthest loops with it.

Anyway, the pontoon floats were an unbelievable amount of fun. I’ve had the boat for years, but had only used it on lakes and ponds up until now. It’s infinitely more enjoyable on moving water though – so much so, that this new way to cover water would continue back home in southern Ontario (more on that in the next section).

Late Summer: Floating to find Water

Back home after my trip, I was faced with the dilemma of dealing with the water levels that were continuing to drop on our home waters. Thankfully, water temperatures remained fairly good on most of the rivers, it was just finding water that was the difficult part.

Equipped with my new found joy of drifting in the pontoon, my buddy Steve and I (yes, the two Steves) decided to start putting our pontoons to use to gain access to some deeper and less fished water.

We got into some very deep and nice water on some of these floats. It took some time to learn the new water, but we found fish – even a few really nice fish. However, while both of us had visible strikes from some huge browns on a few different occasions, neither of us managed to bring the larger browns to the net. Steve lost a really nice brown after a good fight and I botched a couple big takes (or was snubbed at the last second).

We floated many nights during the hex hatch and it was really just that magical time of day (an hour or 30 minutes before dark) when the fishing really picked up. We worked on timing our floats to put is in the better spots at that time, but it means having to float down to the take out in the dark – which wasn’t too bad once we learned the water.

The duns (especially the males) are very dark and I often used the below simple tie to fish them, especially in faster moving water. I have some other patterns that are prettier and more believable when needed, but often this will get the job done, since trout can become fairly unselective when they’re actively feeding on this big bugs.

On one evening when the hexes were active, I had a huge brown blow up on my fly. It jumped clear out of the water and smacked itself down right on top of the fly – but missed or denied me at the last moment. It was a smaller rainbow (again) that took my hex a few casts later in the same pool.

Outside of trout, I once again failed to spend any significant time fishing smallmouth bass this year. It’s totally ironic that, growing up in an area teeming with bass and devoid of trout, I have to drive quite the distance to fishable bass water. I did experiment with a solo bass float on one occasion though – dropping my pontoon off at one access point, then driving to the next access point and biking back up to my boat. It was a bit of a workout in the blistering heat that accompanies summer bass, but it was totally doable.

Unfortunately, I hooked into a total of a single small bass that day – but saw some excellent new water.

Late Season: Back to the Backcountry

With hatches winding down and choices to make on how to spend the end of my trout season, I decided to spend it once again paddling for a week in the back country.

I had once again spent countless hours researching and scouring maps (and considering water levels), trying to make a decision on a late September backcountry brookie trip. I was also in the market for a new canoe and after considering some solo canoes as well as some smaller tandem prospector style canoes – I landed on a new Nova Craft Prospector 15 in Blue Steel. This canoe is not only plenty light for long portages (45 lbs), but much more versatile and stable for fishing than most of the solo boats. Though most of my trips would be solo, it gave me the option of bring along another person.

With new canoe in hand, I pieced together a 7 day trip that would avoid low water and hopefully get me into some brookies for the end of the season. I’ll be posting a separate update on that (to be linked here later) in the coming days.

I think that just about does it for this year’s trout season. Definitely an eventful one, with 13 days spent solo in the backcountry, 7 days in upper Michigan and lots of exploring new water and float trips. All that didn’t really equate to my most successful season of fishing – that is, if you count success by the number and size of trout caught – which I don’t.

There’s still some opportunity for fall Bass and Steelhead – let’s see if I take manage to take advantage of it. In the meantime, I’m already starting to dream up some trips for next year and hoping for a more water in 2023.

The post 2022 Trout Season Recap appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Unlike the rivers, this season has started off pretty slow for me (due the the winding down part mentioned above). In the time I have found to get out, I’ve stuck close to home – repeating my tradition of avoiding the more overcrowded rivers in favor of small stream brookies.

Fishing small streamers for brookies on a frigid opening day.

Opening day was cold and mostly unproductive, at least for the first couple of hours. We didn’t get out until late afternoon and opted to fish some familiar brookie water, which showed some signs of other anglers having fished it before us. It was cold enough to warrant gloves and toques and we were rewarded with only a couple small brookies.

First brookie of the year. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.

With little to show for our efforts, we got back in the truck and headed to another spot that we frequent less (and seems to receive less fishing pressure as well). The stream here was in excellent condition due to the higher than normal spring water levels and the brookies were more cooperative. We hooked into a few good fish before the day was over… Ryan in particular landed a couple nice brookies in some of the better holes, all of which were quite fond of a tiny black bugger.

A nice small stream Brookie Ryan hooked on opening day.

Fast forward a couple weeks and the weather has taken a turn for the better, with just enough rain and temperatures high enough to kick-start some bug activity. I made a last minute decision to hit up another brookie stream for a couple hours after work, for no other reason than to wind down from a busy day. It turned out to be a wise decision, as I was met with near ideal conditions: perfect water levels and clarity, a flurry of Hendrickson spinners and a lot of hungry brook trout!

Lots of Hendrickson activity had the brookies eager to eat.

I fished the same water a week earlier and had left fairly disappointed – having caught only a single wild brookie and an ugly stocked trout that seemed to have somehow survived the winter. It’s water that typically fished well regardless of conditions and I wondered if the health of the stream had deteriorated.

My worries were put to rest on this day however, with nearly two dozen wild brookies caught in the span of an hour and a half. I fished a beaten up Hendrickson from last year, with a yellow egg sac to match the naturals. It was good enough to fool them, as I quickly hooked into my nicest brookie of the season so far.

An excellent small stream brookie, unusually chunky and colorful for this time of year.

In addition to the bigger brookies, I was happy to have also caught a number of tiny overzealous brookies. Along with the many I caught, I missed countless others that thrashed carelessly at my fly – which was far too large for them to take on. Seeing these fish in such numbers is a great sign that the stream is still in very good health.

One of many small brookies learning valuable life lessons via catch and release.

As the evening progressed and the sunlight dwindled, I switched out my now beaten up and difficult to see Hendrickson for a bushier Red Humpy. I tend to have a lot of luck with this fly, especially during Hendrickson or Isonychia hatches. It has brought up some large brook and brown trout for me, when other flies were less productive. To be honest, it probably has a lot more to do with confidence than it does the fly.

A pretty brook trout (aren’t they all?) taken on a Red Humpy later in the evening.

One more good sized brookie that went bonkers for a Red Humpy.

It’s nice to see bug season in full swing now. With the long weekend approaching (and some free time to spare), I’ll likely get out a couple times for Brookies in the coming days. I’ll also finally be spending some much-needed time chasing Brown Trout as well.

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

Interestingly, my two youngest kids have suddenly become fascinated with fly tying. This isn’t surprising I guess, since they are at that age (junior kindergarten and grade 1) where crafts occupy a large part of their time at home and school. They’re constantly asking to tie flies with me, so I’ve started letting them participate. I always make sure I de-barb my hooks at the vice when tying flies, but de-barbing isn’t quite enough when a 4 and 5 year old are carrying them around the house. So, I completely remove the hook bend, making them safe decorations but pretty awful fish catchers!

My son tells me his favourite fly is the “Wuggy Bugger”. He helped me tie this one and he liked it so much that he’s been taking it to bed with him. It’s not a real Wolly Bugger of course, as it has no hook or hackle, so I hereby declare this new pattern the Wuggy Bugger, as named by my 4 year old son.

My 4 year old son, snug in bed with his “Wuggy Bugger”

The post Blog Updates appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

A few examples from this year’s end of season:

• I lost my pair of $200 polarized sunglasses and broke my landing yet – neither has been replaced yet
• I have yet to unpack my backpack / fishing pack
• My fly tying gear is scattered everywhere
• I still need to clean my fishing gear for storage

Basically, I sort of crash after all that buildup of excitement and anticipation ends and I suddenly lose the motivation to even think about it. So yeah, I’d say it feels a lot like a hangover.

Thankfully, it’s not permanent and the fact that I’m even posting this means that I’m recovering. I need to accept the fact that there’s still fishing after trout. It mostly comes in the form of Bass and Steelhead. In fact, I took my son out fly fishing for Bass a couple weekends ago and although we didn’t catch much, it was a refreshing change.

Bass definitely change their feeding habits in the fall and I’m not overly familiar with it. One effective and fun way to fish for them during the summer is with top water flies, but this is no longer true in the fall. Also, since most bass fishing is done in water that can’t be waded, it means I need to find a better way of getting at fish in deeper water. In the summer, I would use my float tube but I’m not too keen to jump in it with the colder waters of fall. What I really need, is a pontoon boat.

Steelhead are a different story and still something that I avoid like the plague. It’s not that I dislike them: I certainly have nothing against catching 10+ lb Rainbow Trout that can and do frequently take you into your backing. It’s just that I dislike the environments that must be endured to fish for them most of the time in Southern Ontario. Perhaps it makes me sound like an antisocial snob, but I don’t particularly enjoy sharing water with many other fishermen, especially the type that often lurk by the hundreds on small stretches of water during a good Steelhead run.

Surprisingly (or not), the number of productive resident trout rivers in Southern Ontario is relatively small in comparison to the number of productive steelhead rivers. However, though you might often find yourself enjoying a nice stretch of resident trout water by yourself, you’d be hard pressed to encounter such conditions when out on one of the many steelhead rivers. It’s a real dilemma for someone who is accustomed to the much more solitary resident trout fishing of this area. I also understand that this is not exactly the norm everywhere and when I complain about the conditions here, I’m only referring to Steelhead fishing Southern Ontario (though I’m sure the problem is not unique to this area).

On the plus side, our area boasts an extremely large number of Great Lakes rivers and tributaries that see large runs of Steelhead. I’m sure there are ways to experience more solitary Steelhead fishing in the area, which I have simply not discovered. One obvious way is to stay away from the more popular rivers: in other words, don’t try to fish the Credit River at Erindale Park. Another is to get out on a drift boat, but to be realistic, this means hiring a guide. While I’m all for putting money into the hands of fly fishing outfitters, at several hundred dollars per day, it’s simply not realistic to rely on drift boat guiding as a way to enjoy the sport. My only other idea is to fish when the weather sucks – but of course that means less enjoyment for me.

The long and short of it all is that I really do need to find a way to enjoy fishing into the fall and winter, after my trout hangover ends. My current stance on this is that I need to splurge and do a couple Steelhead guided trips, to hopefully get a better inside scoop on locations, timing and ideas on how to target Steelhead without massive crowds. At this point, I’m very much a novice when it comes to understanding this fish so anything I can learn will surely be useful.

The post Trout Hangover appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

This is my favourite time of year to fish. The scenery is at its peak with the fall colours and fish are becoming more aggressive as they beef up for the coming spawning and winter seasons.

I love fishing small, quiet water like this during the fall

Like so many others, I went on somewhat of a fly fishing binge the last several days of the season. I used up my last vacation day on Friday and spent most of 3 full days on the water. I suppose I can’t really blame others for having the same idea as me, but it always shocks me to see just how many fisherman decide to dust off their gear for these final days of the season. Why not just visit the river once or twice during the rest of the season and get the same amount of (much more peaceful) fishing in? I rarely see another fisherman in most of the water I fish, yet that same water is full on closing weekend.

For the most part, I spent my last few days fishing small rivers and streams, often spending as much time hiking into locations as I did fishing. Sure, it would be nice to toss big flies at some of the best holes in hopes of enticing the largest fish in the river, but I value scenery and peace and quiet more than the size of fish. So, while the majority of fly fishermen spent their time battling it out on more popular beats, or fished shoulder-to-shoulder for the largest of Southern Ontario’s salmon and trout, I headed far upstream to stalk the smallest of our native trout: Brook Trout.

I don’t target brookies very often, partly because of their smaller size and partly because they’re more susceptible to angling pressure than other fish. However, early spring and fall are great times to fish them and what they lack in size they more than make up for in beauty and feistiness.

One of the many colourful Brook Trout caught last weekend

Brookies are often willing to eat just about anything they can (or can’t) fit in their mouth!

My friend Ryan and I spent Thursday and Friday almost exclusively fishing for brookies. I took him to a couple locations, one of which very rarely sees any fishing pressure. It was the first time he’d really spent time targeting brook trout and we both had an absolute blast. The first hour saw us land easily 10+ fish, many out of a single nice run. I left the majority of the run to Ryan and he took several 8″+ brookies, small browns and rainbows out of it. As he was setting up I cast a humpy into the tail end of the run and kicked things off with this nice looking fish:

First Brook Trout of closing weekend

Friday morning and early afternoon were less productive than Thursday as we fished some more difficult water – several miles of it I might add. I’d never walked this entire stretch of river before, though I knew of a few holes on it that were usually productive. They lived up to their expectations and most of our fish were caught from them. We waded downstream and without knowing much of the water, we stumbled across (and spooked) a few unexpected nice holes. I have a feeling they would fish very well in the future, if approached carefully.

Later Friday afternoon, when Ryan had to head home, I decided to drive back to the location we fished on Thursday. The weather was absolutely perfect, there were some nice hatches of Blue Winged Olives and Isonychia and the fishing was even better than the day before. Despite the hatching insects, the money fly was a size 12 Stimulator. One particular small pool yielded well over a dozen brook trout in 30 minutes! I’ve never pulled so many fish out of a single hole… it was surreal!

A small pool here (hard to see in this picture) produced well over a dozen fish

Here are a few of the nice looking fish that came to my net Friday evening:

The remainder of the weekend was filled with brown trout fishing. Saturday evening was the only time I spent on a more popular stretch of water and although I know the fishing can be good there, I regretted it afterwards. I shared the river with several other anglers and fished pools that had been largely overfished that day and more recently had an absolutely massive streamer ripped through them by a fisherman ahead of me.

Sunday I drove to a more remote stretch of river, where very long hikes and difficult to navigate terrain ensured I would be the only angler on the river for the day. It’s not really big fish water, for the most part. Narrow, fast moving water, a few scattered pools and lots of riffles. I made my decision to fish this water minutes before leaving the house and my fly inventory was somewhat lacking for this type of fishing. What I really wanted to do was swing soft hackles, so I quickly browsed some fly patterns to find something quick and easy to tie. I settled on a bead head soft hackle pheasant tail. I tied 2 of them, hoped they would last the better part of the day and left for the river.

Two hours later, after finding a parking spot and completing a long hike, I sat down on a rock in the middle of the river and tied a new leader from scratch (more on this later). I put on one of my two pheasant tail soft hackles and began carefully working productive looking water. Either my choice of fly was good, or the fish were just not picky. Whatever the reason, fishing was excellent. I caught a few browns from the first small run.

Pockets of water like the one in the upper-middle area of this photo produced lots of fish

As expected, the fish weren’t big, but it was very rewarding and often technical fishing.

Lots of small browns like this in riffles and pockets behind rocks

I worked my way downstream for a few hours until I eventually lost my only two soft hackles. By this time, it was about 6:45 and the sun was beginning to set. I was moving into an area with some slower moving water and I knew of a couple deeper pools up ahead, so I decided to tie on a streamer to try my chances at landing my last big fish of the year.

I swung and stripped my streamer through the occasional fishy looking water. Not paying much attention (I was looking forward a a certain pool down river), a 16-18″ brown with a big yellow belly leaped out at my streamer as I raised it at the end of a drift. Due to a poor hookset, he was only on for a couple seconds before escaping back to structure he came from.

A bit discouraged, I continued heading towards the final pool of the night. When I arrived, it seemed to have changed since I’d last been there. Structure had shifted, it looked smaller and there was some debris that looked as though it was carefully placed to snag flies. Still, it looked fishy enough, if not somewhat tricky to pull a big fish out of. I stripped my streamer through the pool many times without any sign of fish. After several casts, I got hung up on some underwater structure. Not wanting to wade in and spook the pool, I broke it off. After re-tying my tippet, I stood around for a bit wondering if I should tie on another fly or call it quits. It was almost dark now and I had a very long hike back.

As I was staring at my fly box, I heard a MASSIVE splash. I looked up and saw a big wake of water at the back of the pool. Startled, I wondered if that could possibly be a fish. The splash was so big, I didn’t think it could possibly be a brown. I knew beavers frequent this area, so perhaps that was the cause? I’ve fished after dark many times in the past and I’ve heard my share of large browns smashing the surface, but they have never sounded remotely as big as this. My next thought was clear: Gurgler, size 2! Let’s do this, one last shot at a trophy fish for 2013!

I cut off my smaller tippet, tied my size 2 Gurgler to some 2X and began stripping and popping it through the pool. After dozens of casts and no sign of the big fish, I again stopped to think. Suddenly, another huge splash and this time I saw it! It was now dark and although I couldn’t get a good look at it, I could easily tell this was a BIG brown.

With the reduced visibility at this time of night, I decided to cut off all my tippet and only use a few feet of leader, tying my Gurgler directly to the thick mono on the mid section of my leader. I continued casting and stripping, but after many more attempts the fish was still refusing. I assumed that I must have spooked it by now, since a size 2 fly on such a short, thick leader isn’t exactly a delicate presentation. The brown gave one more big splash, letting me know it still wasn’t done feeding. Half a dozen casts later, it slammed my Gurgler!

Now’s where this starts sounding like your typical fish story. The sad part is, a fish story and a broken leader is all I have to show for what was the most chaotic and mind blowing battle I’ve ever had with a fish. There was no knot in the leader where it broke (though it may appear so). The line is curled at the break purely from the tension it took to pull and snap mono this thick.

Broken .014″ mono, snapped by the biggest brown I’ve ever hooked into

Suffice it to say, this was easily the largest brown I’ve ever experienced, by a pretty big margin. I’ve caught several 20″+ fish in the past (~3-4lb), but none have compared to the weight and power of this fish. My best guess is that this fish was well over 6lb, possibly over 7lb. Other than the odd brookie and very small resident rainbow, there are basically no other fish species in this part of the river, so it most certainly was a brown.

Wild head shakes and thrashing ensued as it tried to shake the hook free. For a few minutes he ran to an undercut bank and was nearly unmovable. I tried to disorient him by applying pressure in different directions, but pulling too hard felt almost as though my 4wt Hardy Zenith was going to snap. It moved back and forth along the bank, staying as deep as possible. I was afraid it was going to run into some nearby structure that would surely put a quick end to the fight.

I turned my headlamp on full brightness and walked a bit closer, prompting the fish to bolt to the other side of the pool where it proceed to wrap itself around an underwater log. My heart was racing: I wanted to land this fish so bad and I was afraid I may have lost it. I quickly waded over to the log and tried to free the line. I reached underwater and grabbed the line and all the sudden he darted out from under the log back to the undercut bank: he was still on!

At this point, a good 10 minutes (or so it felt) into fighting the fish, there was still no sign of fatigue. It was pulling harder than before and moving closer to some underwater structure. Again, afraid it would run into this structure, I applied enough pressure to keep him in the pool. And then… snap!

My leader came flying back at me, a foot shorter, with a section of the mono snapped clean. I couldn’t believe it… my heart sank. I felt like an idiot for applying so much pressure, but it seemed like I had little choice. I’d just lost the fish of a lifetime and to make matters worse, my size 2 Gurgler was broke off in this trophy brown’s mouth, with a foot of mono attached to it. Thankfully I was using a barbless hook, but it doesn’t make me rest much easier. I can only hope it will work itself free and that the fish will go back to regular feeding (and perhaps give me a second chance next year).

I was both an extremely exhilarating and disappointing finish to the 2013 season. I stood still in the river for a good 15 minutes pondering what had just happened. All I had to look forward to was a 45 minute hike back to my car in the pitch dark and 7 months of trout-less days. It was certainly a memorable end to the trout season.

In addition to losing that fish, I also managed to lose my $200 pair of Smith Polarchromic sunglasses. My buddy lost his $100 landing net and tore a large hole in the neoprene socks of his breathable waders. Good times.

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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.

The post A Slow Start appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Fishing Spider encountered on the Credit River.

Unfortunately the picture quality is not too great as the camera I was carrying at the time was pretty bad.  It’s hard to get a sense of the size of this thing, but it was resting on a huge boulder in the middle of the river and was probably about the size of a child’s hand.  Apparently it’s called a Fishing Spider (genus Dolomedes).

The post Speaking of Spiders… appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Things were a lot slower than I expected in the afternoon.  I was casting poppers for a good hour and a half without much luck.  The water was actually quite warm, probably even a bit out of the comfort zone for bass, so this was likely the issue.

I gave up on the poppers and went subsurface with an angora bugger and things started to pick up a bit.  Landed a pike, a couple largemouth bass and a few small overzealous baby bass.  Nothing spectacular, but better than nothing.

As evening approached and the temps cooled a bit and the sun started to set, I ditched the bugger and went back to poppers… again, no luck.  As a last-ditch effort, I thought I’d try tying on a smaller terrestrial fly and twitching it on the surface.  A few minutes in, I made a cast close to shore; I’m guessing in about a foot of water.  One twitch and I saw something subtly gulp my fly down.  I thought it was either another tiny bass or a bluegill – sure looked like it from the delicate take.  Then it ran straight at my tube… fast.  I was stripping line as fast as I could to keep tension on and I knew then that I was into a better fish.  This nice largemouth was the result:

Nice largemouth bass taken on a little terrestrial before dark.

To be honest, I’ve fished this water a few times before and never been overly impressed with it.  Had I not caught this just before heading in, I likely wouldn’t have been too excited to come back.  I know they’re in there now though, so I’ll definitely be back to find more of these in the near future!

The post Floating for Bass appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

1. Steelhead and salmon fishing in any river within an hour drive in any direction of my house is generally a shoulder to shoulder meatfest.  Not my idea of fun, at all.
2. Warm water fishing with a fly rod has often seemed impractical, or inaccessible, due to the difficulty getting into a river or lake without some sort of boat (most are not wadeable and/or have zero room for back casting).

Well, I’m happy to say that I’m a reformed warm water fly fishing enthusiast. This happened gradually over the past couple of years. The main triggers included a new float tube which made a bunch of new water accessible, as well as discovering a couple nice wadeable stretches of rivers I didn’t previously know existed.  Of course, the hot weather this summer helped push me over the edge a bit too.

First Carp on a Fly Rod

The net result was lots of fun warm water fishing this year.  In fact, I caught three species for the very first time on a fly rod this year: smallmouth bass, pike and carp.  Previous years had me dabbling with largemouth bass and panfish.

One of many smallmouth bass taken on the fly this summer.

Next year I’m planning to add a pontoon boat to my ever-growing inventory, so hopefully that will make things even more interesting!

The post When It’s Too Hot For Trout appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

I was moving rather quickly, casting dries behind rocks and under overhanging trees when, on a cast to a spot I didn’t really expect to hold fish, my fly disappeared. On my first pull, I thought it was a snag, but the fish soon moved out into the middle of the river. This was not deep water, maybe 1-2 feet, but somehow this fish was managing to stay on the bottom, pulling me upstream. It was getting dark, so I couldn’t see what was on the end of my line. I was nervous, because my 3wt rod and 6x tippet weren’t a good match for this fish.

A couple minutes later, with the fish making a run upstream, the tension on my rod suddenly let go and the fly came hurling back towards me. Only… there was more than a fly on the end of my line.  There was a small, lifeless trout on it. I must have hooked this little guy after which something larger decided to make him dinner, I was shocked!

This is water that, to the best of my knowledge, has only brown trout, with perhaps the odd brookie. I’ve never caught or seen seen anything else here. So that begs the question, what exactly did I catch? If this was indeed a brown, it was a mighty large one, easily the largest I have ever hooked. Was it possible something larger was in the river?  I’ve heard rumours of Atlantic Salmon adults being planted in this section of river, but I had never known it to be true. Unfortunately, I’ll never have the answer and all I have to show for it is a picture of this little trout and another big fish story.

Heart pounding, feeling both excited and disappointed, I continued upstream to spend a few minutes in some better water before calling it a night. A few casts and my efforts paid off with this nice brown. Memorable night on the water, to say the least!

The post River Monster? appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.