On our local rivers, we were finally blessed with an abundance of water this spring. Those levels seem to be dropping fairly rapidly, but I have to imagine that there were lots of opportunities to entice some big old browns with big streamers or nymphs in those high waters.

As for myself, brookies are always at the top of my mind in spring, so I explored some small streams for them on opener. The water was cold and the fishing was slow, but a few small fish were caught nonetheless.

I did also manage to get out for steelhead with a couple buddies for the first time in many seasons. We fished a section of river close to home, on a particularly cold and rainy day. All I had to show for it was a small 10″ rainbow trout. I’ll blame it on the high water and wide river with difficult to reach pools (equipped only with my 9′ 6wt) – but, when it comes to steelhead, I’ll always find an excuse. My buddy, who happened to be float fishing, managed a pretty nice steelhead as well as an 18″ brown. Though they didn’t come to my net, it was nice to leave having seen and netted a least a few fish.

With the weather getting warmer and the month of June fast approaching, we’re almost upon some of the biggest and best hatches of the year! It’s time to top off the fly boxes with patterns that should have been tied during the winter months.

The post 2023 Trout Season Opener appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Abnormally clear, low water on the Grand River.

Unlike me, I kicked off the season with a steelhead trip to the Beaver river.  We brought along local guide Nick Groves to show us the ropes on this unfamiliar river and share some of his steelhead knowledge and tactics.  Nick, being a Winston pro staffer, also brought along a couple Boron III switch rods for us to use.  I’m completely new to the world of two handed rods and these were a lot of fun to fish.  When I think of two handed rods, I immediately think of swinging streamers or wet flies.  However, Nick is a nymph fisherman through and through and as such, that’s what we stuck to for most of the day.  It was interesting to experience how much easier (once you get the hang of it) it is to cast these rods compared to 10′ single handers.  On top of that, mending line and controlling a drift at much longer distances becomes a lot easier with the added length.

Ryan drifting nymphs, searching for steelhead on the Beaver River opening weekend.

After waking pre-5 am, driving for nearly two hours and stopping for an early Timmies breakfast, we were on the river shortly after 7 am.  I was thankful for bringing along my gloves as it was cold (both air and water).  We covered a lot of water on a few different sections throughout the day, but the combination of colder than normal temps and general lack of fish made things difficult.  I was the only one to hook into a fish, but proceeded to lose it from both lack of readiness and also from fumbling around with my (heavier than I’m used to) 11′ rod.  We met a couple guys that did get into a fish or two, but most people seemed to be sharing our limited success.  This wasn’t a disappointment by any means however, as we had very realistic expectations going into this.  We had a good time, explored a lot of really nice looking water throughout the day and I personally felt that I left with an increased confidence level for my future steelhead excursions.

A couple days after our Beaver River trip, I decided to head to the lower Credit to put my new found confidence to the test.  I wasn’t able to fish the morning and opted instead to go the more difficult route of fishing the low waters throughout the sunny afternoon.  When I arrived, there were a couple cars parked at the access point – and within an hour or so, they had all left.  You know the fishing is slow when there’s nobody fishing the lower Credit for steelhead during opening week!

A wide section of the unusually quiet lower Credit River on a sunny afternoon.

Slow or not, I know that decent numbers of steelhead had come up into this section of river days before and there had to be the odd fish kicking around. I geared up with a rig similar to what we’d used on the Beaver and patiently drifted what little productive looking water still existed in these low flows.  My patience paid off as I hooked into my first Credit River steelhead an hour or two in.  She took a Hare’s Ear nymph in a deep run and considering I was fishing an 8 weight rod, gave it a pretty serious workout!

A hard earned Steelhead from the Credit River during opening week.

I spent a few more hours on the river but failed to get into any more steelhead. I did however hook an unexpected 18-20″ brown trout while working my way back upstream.  It took a pheasant tail nymph and also put up a very good fight.  As is typical when I’m fishing by myself and dealing with big fish, it managed to wriggle itself free before I could snap a picture (yeah… sounds like a fish story, I know).

In what’s slightly more my style, I also spent a large part of the week scouting smaller streams for native brookies.  I typically choose to target these fish early in the season, while the water is still cold and high enough for them.  Unfortunately, the high enough part didn’t really hold true this year as water levels were also very low in these small streams.  This made finding fish more difficult than normal and also made stealth much more important on these small streams.  Still, I had a good amount of success swinging bead head soft hackles and skating dry flies on the surface.  The net result was a lot of quiet water and plenty of colourful Brook Trout.

My 3 weight experienced lots of small colourful Brook Trout like this throughout the week.

Despite a decent amount of bug activity this past week, there were little to no fish rising.  On the brook trout waters I fished, there were a lot of small black stoneflies. When sub-surface patterns weren’t doing the trick, I tried a couple basic imitations, but dead drifting dries (unsurprisingly) didn’t seem to entice any strikes. Once I tried skating dries across the surface though, it really drove the brookies crazy and I got into a lot more fish!

Lots of small black stoneflies were seen on many of the brookie streams.

Finally, my opener wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Grand River. After walking my kids to school and making a few stops along the way (including Rob Heal and gang’s new fly shop, Grand River Outfitting), I didn’t get on the river until after noon again. With flows approaching 4 cms, which is quit a bit lower than the Grand’s average summertime lows, lack of water once again made things difficult. I certainly have myself to blame for bypassing the morning fish again, which was apparently pretty decent.  There were some pretty thick Hendrickson hatches in the middle river – the water was literally lined with them – but I didn’t see even a single fish rise to take advantage of it. One of the bugs I caught during this hatch looked an awful lot like a Grey Fox… but I was not aware they hatched this early in the season. Perhaps I’m mistaken in my bug identification though.

What seems to be a very unexpectedly early Grey Fox Dun during a fairly heavy hatch on the middle Grand River last week.

I fished the mid and upper sections and very nearly got skunked before getting a decent drift through a very difficult to cast to (and control) piece of bank-side water with my secret nymph.  A big brown eagerly snatched it up and after a difficult fight, including trying to force it out of some sunken structure on 5X tippet, I got my first taste of big Grand River browns for the 2015 season!

A hard earned 21″ Grand River Brown Trout.

In all the excitement, after snapping a couple photos and releasing the fish, I waded quite far downstream and fished for another hour or so before realizing that I no longer had my net.  I’d left it exactly where it appears in the picture above, floating in some shallow water on the side of the river.  This was a Christmas present from my wife and I wasn’t looking forward to telling her I’d lost it.  I headed back to the spot I landed the fish, only to find the net missing.  I then walked downstream from that spot again and luckily found the net hung up on a rock in the middle of the river!

I’m back to work tomorrow and next weekend is both Mother’s Day and my wife’s Birthday, so I have a feeling there won’t be much fishing to be had in the next week or so.  Hopefully we get some rain by then to normalize the river conditions a bit.

The post 2015 Trout Opening Week appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

I’ve been itching to break out the 3 weight on my local stream this year, but early spring steelhead makes it too risky until they drop back out to the lake. With everyone awake early, the sun shining through the bedroom blinds and birds chirping, it seemed like a good morning to sneak out for a couple hours before work.

I love small streams and all the perks and challenges that come with them: solitude, stalking wary fish, light gear and technical casting. Sure, fish size generally correlates to stream size, but when you’re casting a 2-3 weight rod with 6-8x tippet on a small stream, an 8 inch trout can be just as exciting (or more so) than a 12 inch trout on a larger river.

A wider-than-average stretch of the stream I fished Wednesday morning

I had a quick breakfast, geared up at the house and arrived at my destination a short drive later. I decided to try out a new path to the stream and while it was fairly well marked at the beginning, it had all but disappeared by the time it reached the river. I considered marking the exit of the path so I could easily find my way back when I was finished, but it seemed to be in a recognizable enough location, so I decided that wasn’t necessary.

The path to the water was fairly visible here, but would not be so easy to find on the way back

I started out with a sparsely tied Partridge soft hackle in red and was immediately into small Rainbows. Some fish were small enough that they still had visible parr marks, though many were a bit larger. Atlantic juveniles are also known to be in this stream and I still have a hard time differentiating them from small rainbows at times. If I’m wrong in any of my identifications here, please comment and correct me!

First of many fish caught on a red partridge soft hackle

Since the fish seemed eager to take my flies, I also tried a couple different dry flies with moderate success: a Patriot and Red Humpy. In case you’re wondering, the tape on my finger is due to a likely (still unverified) broken finger from volleyball last week.

A tiny Rainbow Trout with visible fading parr marks, caught on a Patriot

As I worked upstream, I came across some nicer looking pools and decided to go back to sub-surface pattern to try and get into some better fish. One of my favourite ultra-versatile flies has to be the Bead Head Pheasant Tail Soft Hackle (or any similar bead head soft hackle). The easiest way to fish these is to swing them, but you can also dead drift them like you would a standard nymph. The bead head is enough to get it down and the partridge collar gives it some nice action in the water compared to a standard Pheasant Tail. It proved once again to be an excellent producer as I landed many more fish on it, including a couple unexpected browns.

A couple Brown Trout took my Pheasant Tail Soft Hackle while upstream nymphing

From the same pool the two browns were caught in, I also landed a few more rainbows, including a couple like the one below which I am not quite sure about.

Rainbow or Atlantic? I still have a hard time differentiating when they are small like this.

Another fish like above, a bit less silver.

Still pulling fish out of the same pool, a decent strike led me to give a solid yank upwards to set the hook, when my pheasant tail shot up into a tree branch several feet above my head. I couldn’t manage to pull it free and lost the last bead head soft hackle in my fly box. Part of the joys of fishing small streams.

I tied on a small Hares Ear to continue where I left off and after a couple more small fish, I was completely surprised by hooking into an 18-20″ steelhead! With a 3 weight rod and 6x tippet, while it may have been possible to land, as soon as I got him on the reel he tore upstream and snapped me off. An exciting way to end things for sure!

When I began heading back, I came to the unfortunate realization that I failed to memorize what the entry point of the path looked like. I retraced my steps a few times, walked in the direction of where I thought the path should be, but couldn’t find it. What ensued was about 30 minutes of bush-whacking my way through fairly dense forest trying to find my car in 20+ degree weather with a sweatshirt on. Needless to say, I took a much needed shower before heading to work. Never a dull moment.

The post Sneaking Out appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Unlike many excellent steelhead rivers in other regions that are open year round, we’re limited to fishing only the lower stretches of rivers that drain into the Great Lakes for the bulk of the year. The remaining middle and upper sections of rivers are open for steelhead only during regular trout season. This means that fishing between October to April has you sharing limited sections of open water with everyone else, while fishing the upper sections of water in the few weeks of open trout season when steelhead are still in the rivers brings massive crowds. Thankfully, this year’s colder temps and excessive precipitation seemed to have dragged out steelhead season longer than normal, providing more time and options to target them in the rivers.

So, a few days after opener, I hit a nearby tributary that I heard held decent numbers of fish. It’s a pretty quiet spot, surprisingly unusual to find other anglers around. The river is tight in this section, with lots of debris making it difficult to fight and land fish without having them run under a fallen tree or log jam and snap you off. My timing was right, with a good amount of rain falling in the days prior and water levels still high. Water clarity was also quite good here, making sight fishing a solid possibility. After a bit of scouting, I stumbled onto a pool with a number of active fish that seemed to be feeding.

A number of active steelhead could be seen feeding in this pool

I really wasn’t expecting to see this and likewise didn’t arrive with much of a game plan. In fact, I hadn’t prepared a single steelhead fly – no egg patterns, no bright headed buggers or anything other special. I had a bunch of size 12 hares ears, some white and black woolly buggers and a few other large streamers that I used for resident trout.

I started swinging size 6 buggers, but the fish didn’t seem interested. In addition to not enticing any strikes, I managed to spook the pool. I rested the water for a while until the fish moved back into a comfortable feeding mode. This time, I thought I’d go with a bolder piss them off type tactic and tied large fish skull zonker style streamer. Not something I would consider a typical fly for steelhead (but then, what do I know), it was actually the same fly I caught my 20″ brown with on opening day. After a few failed swings, I tried stripping it and hooked into my first fish!

Since I’d never caught a steelhead before, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was surprised at how fast I got it into my net, though after removing my fly it swiftly leapt out of the net and back into the water before I could snap a picture. In retrospect, while it fought harder than most of the browns I’d caught in the past, it wasn’t until my next several hookups that I realized it was an unusually gentle introduction to fighting steelhead.

My second fish came from the same pool a few minutes later, after switching to a Hares Ear when my streamer failed to produce any more hits. Watching my nymph drift downstream and seeing the entire take was pretty thrilling. I literally watched the fish open its jaws to inhale my offering. This fish put up a much better fight than the previous one, catching some serious air and skitting across the water as if it were water skiing. I managed to get a quick photo before releasing this one and by the dark colours I assume it had been in the river for quite a while.

My second steelhead on the fly (the first leapt out of my net before I could snap a photo)

Over the next hour or two, I managed to hook into a total of six fish, the first two (including the one pictured above) being the only landed. The remaining four proceeded to show me just how much power this fish have and used their strength and acrobatic abilities to either shake my barbless hooks free or break me off under log jams.

To be honest, as much fun as this was, coming from a primarily resident trout fisherman, I almost felt like this was cheating. Being able to see the fish, the fly and the whole take was pretty intense, but it somehow didn’t feel as rewarding as hooking into a fish holding on the bottom of a deep, dark, mysterious pool. I’m certainly not complaining, it just didn’t feel as rewarding as it might have if I had to work harder for the fish.

A few days later, a buddy of mine from Windsor was heading up to Mississauga for several days of training. It worked out that I was off all week and he was able to allocate a big chunk of time for a couple days to get out and fish. Him being an avid steelhead angler and me being keen to mooch some of his knowledge and tactics, we decided to spend the first evening hunting steelhead on a section of the Credit River that neither of us had ever seen or fished before. It was nothing like the small river I fished days before as it was a much larger river here with enough stain to make spotting fish impossible.

When we arrived, one guy was leaving and there was only one other car parked at the access point. Considering the popularity of the lower and middle Credit during steelhead season, this didn’t give me a lot of hope – but we geared up and hit the river nonetheless. We walked along the river bank looking for promising looking water. For the most part, the river here was wide, shallow and even. There wasn’t much for fish structure or interesting river characteristics. It wasn’t until several of minutes of walking that we came to a slight bend in the river with some deeper looking runs and pools. With nobody else in sight, we stopped here to try our luck.

I hadn’t finished setting up my line back at the car, so as I stood on the side of the river tying a leader,  Eric stepped into the river and began fishing the water at the tail end of the pool. After what seemed like only 1 or 2 casts (he later corrected me that it was more like 20 or 30 and that I spend more time out of the water than in), I heard “FISH ON” and looked up to see Eric’s rod bent over. He hooked into a lively steelhead that had a few good leaps and runs before eventually being landed. I barely managed to get the fish into my net, which is fine for trout, but less than ideal for steelhead.

Steelhead landed by Eric – a promising start to the evening!

It was relieving to have hooked into (and landed) a fish so soon, as it removed a lot of the guesswork about whether or not fish were actually in this section of river. In my head, if we caught no more fish that night, we’d both leave happy knowing that Eric landed a steelhead in a new river and I found a nice pool close to home to return to.

As it turned out, with limited time remaining, that was the first and last steelhead we landed. I did manage to hook into one nice fish, which promptly snapped my 9 lb tippet as he smashed my streamer on the swing. It was an enormous take and a hard lesson learned. I might get away with such sloppy swings fishing for trout, but the amount of stress a steelhead puts on your line means you better have your rod positioned correctly during a swing to absorb the take and your drag better be set appropriately – mine was not. I had one other hit before the evening ended, but did not get a hook set.

All in all, this spring was a pretty positive intro to steelhead for me. The mystery behind it all seems to be slowly unravelling and I’m definitely more positive about it than I have been in the past. This was probably the last time I’ll be out for them this spring (back to my staple of resident browns and brookies), but I feel confident enough to want to be back on the river for more when they return in the fall.

The post Steelhead Abound 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.

Dark, work, kids, weather and more dark… that about sums it up.  The much shorter days mean less opportunity to get out after work and less time spent outdoors with the kids (I have three of them by the way).  That basically writes off weekdays completely and when the weekends come, it’s a lot of catching up with the family.  For me, evenings are always prime fishing time and that just doesn’t work well this time of year.

It’s not all a loss though, since thankfully there are things other than fishing to keep me busy.  Like… tying flies, or reading about fishing, or playing fishing video games!  OK, just kidding (sort of)

Seriously though, I’ve wondered for a long time why there are absolutely NO good fly fishing video games.  Just think about how great a fly fishing game would be on the Wii, done properly, where you cast using a realistic motion with a Wii Remote.  I’ve searched for fly fishing simulations and the only ones I could find are extremely outdated and not very appealing, at least aesthetically.

In case you weren’t aware (or it wasn’t obvious from my writing), I’m a pretty big geek.  I’m a software developer, currently on the gaming team at RIM (BlackBerry).  You know those really outdated BlackBerry games, Brick Breaker and Word Mole?  I made those, years ago granted.  Technically I did not create Brick Breaker – just took over it a couple years after it was created when I joined the team.  Word Mole though, was all mine (along with a couple artists and a co-op student).

Anyway, my point is that I spend a lot of times either writing games or playing them and I’ve been giving this whole fly fishing simulation a lot of thought recently.  If I can muster up enough motivation and free time, I am seriously considering starting a project working on one of my own, with modern 3D graphics, realistic environments and simulated casting motions using something like the Wii Remote.  Maybe then, my southern Ontario resident trout fishing can extend into the winter months (in my family room)!

If you’ve got a bit of geek in you as well and think this is a good idea, I’d love to hear your thoughts/comments.

The post Winter, Fishing (or Lack Thereof) and Video Games appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.