I won’t say it’s been a record season for me though, as I had an especially difficult time keeping big fish on the line earlier in the season. I’m not sure if I’ve finally shaken the dust off my streamer fishing skills, or if the trout have had a change in attitude (or both), but hook-ups with big fish have picked up somewhat over the last month for me. I suppose I can also attribute this to the arrival of warmer weather and the corresponding increase in night fishing success.

A big wild brown from last week, caught just past dark.

The above fish was caught just past dark on a last-minute trip to the river after work. I had tied a couple realistic stonefly patterns using some newly ordered Hemingway wings and I was hoping to give them a try. However, forgetting about the rain we had the day before, I was greeted by a chocolate colored river when I arrived.

A day in the life of a river this season – high and dirty.

The stoneflies were definitely out, but the fish were too busy dealing with the low visibility to care much. I haven’t been finding a lot of time to tie flies this year, so I’ve been keeping a vice and box of tying supplies in my truck for emergencies. My supply of articulated streamers was in shambles, so I decided to tie one in the back of the truck before hitting the river. I went with a bright color given the water conditions.

A last minute tie in the back of my truck before hitting the river.

The result was four big fish in a couple hours, although only two were landed.

Another slightly smaller wild brown from the same night.

As is usual for me, big streamers and mouse patterns have been moving most of my larger fish. I’ve had a couple nice fish on stoneflies as well on the clearer days and I know for a fact that nymphs have also been catching a lot of big fish for people this year – in pretty much all water conditions.

Most of my trout (but not all) have also been caught past dark this month, largely because my weekends have been a write-off and fishing after work often doesn’t get me to the river until 7 or 8 o’clock. The fish below was another memorable one that smashed a streamer early evening in some more off-colored water.

A good looking brown caught on an articulated streamer on a mid-July early evening.

This fish was followed up by yet another decent brown shortly past dark on the same night – and it was preceded by a slightly larger one a week earlier.

The first brown of the season caught on a mouse pattern.

Needless to say, it’s been a pretty good season this year if you’ve been willing to put away the dry flies and emergers and fish meatier flies. I don’t expect this to let up any time soon, but hopefully we’ll be treated to some good dry fly days as well.

We still have lots to look forward to in August… terrestrials, late Isonychia, the understated White Miller, perhaps some straggler stoneflies and of course, even better night fishing. If you’re a masochist, there’s also the Trico hatches.

The post Big Water, Big Flies, Big Fish appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Early spring was largely spent pursuing brook trout on small, quiet streams. The MNR dumped an undisclosed number of adult/broodstock Atlantic Salmon into the upper Credit this year, including some previously brook trout only sections of river. This drew an unprecedented number of new anglers to the river – some with good intentions and others, not so much. The fact that these fish were dumped into some of the smaller brookie-only waters (which were already sensitive to over-fishing and predation) had me pretty unhappy about the state of things on the Credit, so I stayed clear of that area for a while.

A small stream brook trout from early season.

I never get sick of the colors on these fish.

When I did return to fish the brookie-only section of the Credit where the Atlantics were dumped, what I found were far less brookies and instead, a bunch of atlantics and a few rainbows. The rainbows were quite unexpected as I had rarely seen them in this section of river before. I’m not sure how to explain that. My normal fish catches in this section of river from years past were something like: brookies 96%, rainbows 2%, browns 2%. This year’s visit yielded me more atlantics and rainbows than brookies. I hope I was just unlucky…

One of a couple unexpected catches in primarily brookie-only water on the Credit

There’s been no lack of rain this spring and it’s kept our rivers in a constant struggle to stabilize themselves. Whenever it seemed they were just about ready to settle down, we’d get dumped on again and start all over. This is to be expected in spring, but it did have an impact on the early insect hatches. Hendricksons in particular were not nearly as successful (from a fishing standpoint) as last year due to all the rain and corresponding temperature fluctuations.

Water level graph for the upper Credit River this spring.

As you can see by the graph above, water levels on the upper Credit have been all over the place (the blue dotted line is the average). There have been some opportunities for dry fly fishing amidst this, but there’s also been lots of opportunities for throwing big streamers. This is something that can be both a blessing and a curse.

On the plus side, big streamers catch big fish. But on the negative side, well… big streamers only catch big fish. Actually, there are rare cases where this isn’t true, but for the most part we can ignore that.

A large articulated streamer that was lost to a log jam shortly after being tied

High, off-colored water is a perfect excuse to fish big streamers and if you cover enough quality water, you’re more than likely to move some huge trout. This was the case for me, as I elicited strikes from at least a dozen large trout over several days of streamer fishing – some subtle and some extremely violent and rod bending. Unfortunately though, in all cases, I failed to hook up with the fish. One particular strike that occurred just as the fly hit the water at the back of a very big pool still haunts me daily. That fish moved more water than any I can ever recall.

My failure to hook up with fish was a stark difference from last season when I missed very few strikes on big streamers. I’ve been toying with which hook to cut off on my articulated streamers this year, leaning more towards keeping the front hook (whereas last year I was fishing the back hook). I’m not sure if this played a part, or if it was bad luck or my own error, but I accepted it as part of the challenge and risk of this type of fishing.

When the rivers were tame and fishing normally, I was back to my old ways, stalking wild trout with more delicacy and matching the hatch. Despite being ashamed that the biggest fish I caught this season so far was a hatchery-raised atlantic, I’ve certainly also caught a few memorable brown trout.

One in particular was during a recent Grey Fox hatch while fishing with a friend. There was a single trout rising in a pool we were fishing, in a slow pocket at the back of the pool. In between us and the pocket was a lot of very fast moving water, which made presenting a dry fly nearly impossible (for more than a split second). I decided to move a good distance up above the pool, putting several other pockets and an overhanging tree in between me and the fish. There was a current seam from this position, that, with some patience and many mends, could deliver my fly along the insect escalator, under the tree to the feeding fish. I managed to deliver a perfect drift over the fish and it inhaled the fly with a convincing take.

Not very big, but a beautiful Credit River brown trout and a memorable one nonetheless.

A nice Credit River brown taken on a technical Grey Fox drift.

Grey Foxes have been fairly prevalent this year on the Credit.

When the fish and bugs were inactive, going sub-surface with nymphs also yielded a few decent browns.

An otherwise handsome Credit River brown with some battle wounds.

Another medium sized plump brown taken on a nymph.

It’s good to see the river in relatively good health as of late and somewhat refreshing to be catching smaller fish and seeing lots of insect activity. The Grey Foxes are still going strong. They seem to be quite prolific this year, more so than I remember in past years (but perhaps I just missed them). Even more exciting though is the insect that overlaps the foxes and has been underway for a few days now on the Credit… the Green Drake. I’ll post more on these when the hatch is complete –  and hopefully they’ll stick around for a bit longer. With all the rain and storms we’re expected to get in the coming days, I’d hate that to result in a short-lived (and barely fished) Green Drake hatch.

The post Catching Up appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

For the last week, I’ve been confined to a couch in my living room where I’ve relocated my computer and enough conveniences to keep me entertained. The first couple weeks of post-op will be mainly resting and icing my knee in between physiotherapy, leaving a lot of time to waste watching Netflix and messing around on my computer. It’s a long healing process, but if all goes well, I hope to be back on the water for trout opener next May, not missing a beat.

With lots of time to waste, I’ve been going through and organizing some of my old photos. As I browsed through my mess of fishing pictures, I realized how much we favor celebrating larger fish, with the smaller ones rarely making it into the spotlight. It’s understandable how we’re all drawn pictures of large fish, but it’s the rest that keep us entertained on slow days. In fact, we spend the vast majority of our time on the water catching small fish, helping us learn and fine-tune our fly fishing skills so that perhaps one day we’ll come back to catch grown-up versions of the very same fish we release.

So this post is dedicated to this season’s smaller, often overlooked unsung heroes of fly fishing. Without these little guys, fly fishing would a whole lot more dull. As it happens, these fish by and large inhabit the most picturesque environments that can be found. In Southern Ontario, our Brook Trout are the real gems of our cold water rivers and it’s no surprise that most of the fish here are Brookies.

Colorful small stream brook trout caught on a new budget Echo Carbon 2wt rod.

I picked up a new Echo Carbon 7’3″ 2wt rod this year specifically for Brook Trout on small streams. Given the budget price, it was a no-brainer purchase. As you would imagine, it’s super light and ultra fun for small Brookies, but it’s also very well constructed for the cost. At the other end of the price spectrum, I purchased a new 2016 Chevy Silverado this year, making my trips to the river much more roomy and enjoyable. It’s still begging for a drift boat to be towed behind it and/or a pontoon to be tossed in the back though.

My new toys: an Echo Carbon 2wt on my new Chevy Silverado.

I put a good number of fishing kilometers on the truck this season, although most of my Brookie fishing happened earlier in the year when the water levels were higher. Most smaller brookie rivers and tributaries were unfishable from mid-season all the way to closer due to the abysmal water levels. Thankfully though, much of the the Brook Trout waters of the upper Credit maintained a fishable amount of water and I was able to sample some of its excellent fall brookie fishing before the season ended.

Another colorful September Brook Trout, this one from the Credit River.

As for the smaller streams which were absolutely teeming with native brookies in the early season, they were largely overrun with Atlantic Salmon after the MNR dumped tens of thousands into them. When the water level drops out, the hatchery raised Atlantics seem to very aggressively hold in the best spots on these streams, likely driving Brookies into less ideal water. On the rare occasion that I visited these streams later in the season, I was hard-pressed to find Brook Trout.

Stocked Atlantic Salmon dominating a once pure native Brookie Southern Ontario stream.

In addition the the Atlantics overrunning these small Brook Trout streams, it’s no secret that they are also very abundant in the wild Brown Trout waters of the upper Credit. It’s become more common to catch larger (16″+) Brown Trout than small ones, which is definitely not what you would expect. Water that is typical for small Brown Trout is similarly overrun with stocked Atlantics and it’s become exceedingly difficult to find and catch small browns. This season I managed to catch a few however, which was an improvement from the previous season. I’d heard similar reports from other anglers as well, so hopefully my experience was not just a fluke.

A small Credit River Brown Trout, always good to see.

Going back to the Brook Trout… something I have noticed that is very interesting about them is how distinctive Brookies from different streams will often look. They seem to adapt to the water and bottom color of the streams they live in. I suppose it’s just a form of natural selection that is common among all trout, but it’s especially noticeable and beautiful in brookies. If you browse the brookie photos on my site (or even just in this post), it’s fairly easy to pick out which fish were caught in the same streams.

I spend the majority of each season fishing small streams for Brookies and in the process catch hundreds of fish, so it’s impractical to take pictures of all of them. While I’d love to have a collection of 16″+ Brook Trout pics that rivals my 20″+ Brown Trout, I’m very far from accomplishing that goal. We still have healthy populations here in Southern Ontario, but our Brookie rivers and streams are simply not taken care of like they need to be. Most streams still allow anglers to keep fish and those that are catch & release are poached heavily. Add to this heavy stocking of hatchery fish and global warming – and catching a couple 12″ Brookies in a season has become a real accomplishment. Rarely a Brookie pushing 14″ may be caught and I know for a fact that there are still Brookies equaling or exceeding 16″ in our local streams (I have seen them!), but they are extremely rare and nearly impossible to fool. I equate catching such a fish on a fly equal to catching a 30″ resident brown trout by today’s standards.

At any rate, these fish are still fairly plentiful in Southern Ontario and they are as wild and beautiful as ever. Each one is as diverse and colorful as trout come and they are always a pleasure to catch. Below is a small slideshow of some of my Brook Trout fishing from the beginning and end of the 2016 season.

The post The Unsung Heroes of Fly Fishing appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Not exactly for fly fishing: this “Scum Frog” was all I brought to Windsor to fish with

When my parents bought their place, I remember casting off the dock and catching almost nothing but northern pike. I don’t keep the fish I catch anyway, so the explosive strike and fight of a pike is (almost) always a welcome treat. For a number of years though, I think as the water level dropped and the weeds grew thicker in the summers, the pike gave way to almost exclusively largemouth bass and panfish. This past year though, they seemed to be back in slightly greater numbers, with the bass unsurprisingly in lesser numbers.

After dinner I decided to take a few casts and tied on the scum frog, which was still in its original package. As it turned out though, one cast is all I would get. As I twitched the lure across a thick clump of weeds, a large pike literally exploded out from under the mess, rising at least a full foot out of the water and splashing back down through the weeds. Before I could even process what had happened, the pike had completely inhaled the large weedless frog, cut my line with its razor sharp teeth and disappeared. In fact, it happened so fast that I won’t rule out the possibility of that fish being a musky, as they do inhabit the area. Whatever it was, it cut my fishing short that night and I was out a few bucks.

Fast forward a few days and my wife and I are back in Georgetown enjoying a week of vacation, kid-free. Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy my kids – it’s just nice to be completely free of responsibility a couple times a decade! Mid-week, I set out to the upper Credit with my friend Ryan. We were fishing the new water I had discovered weeks prior, in some overcast and rainy weather. We worked our way through the same runs and pools that I mentioned in my last post, with only a couple fish caught between us. I was eager to arrive at the big pool that I’d got skunked in before… it was so fishy looking, there was just no way it didn’t hold some large fish.

Ryan was casting a dry fly up into the pool from below and I carefully snuck around and upstream of the pool so I could swing a large streamer through it. On the second or third swing, something BIG slammed it. I thought I’d caught one of the biggest trout of my life as it tore up the pool and worked the drag on my reel. Suffice it to say, I was pretty ecstatic and basically freaking out. However, although this is solely Brown and Brook Trout water, the fish felt different than other large trout I’ve caught in the past. A large trout will usually head shake and run either deep to the bottom, or into some structure, but this one was just out of control, running all over the place. As I got the fish closer to Ryan’s net, I got a quick glimpse of it as it splashed near the surface. In disbelief, I shouted: “Is that a f#@%ing Pike!?”.

An unexpected surprise while fishing a nice hole on the Upper Credit River

After netting it, Ryan carefully removed the streamer from the corner of its mouth and before we could even consider what we just caught, it slashed its way out of his hands and back into the pool from where it came.

I’ve been fishing the Credit for about 12 years and although I’ve heard stories of the odd Pike escaping into the Credit from Island Lake (upstream in Orangeville), I’d never seen one. It definitely explained why I hadn’t seen any trout in or near that hole yet and as soon as the fish escaped back into the pool, it dawned on me that I really should not have let that happen. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Pike – I love to catch them and they are even good eating if you can clean and cook them properly. However, they have no place in the Upper Credit which is a protected trout-only fishery. There are enough pressures on the Brook Trout and Brown Trout there already – we don’t need a bunch of super aggressive and carnivorous Pike preying on them.

As a testament to just how aggressive these fish are, a couple days later I went back to the very same spot. In the back of my mind, I thought, maybe I can catch that pike again and get it out of that hole. Once again, on about the second cast, the same pike hit the same streamer. Like I said before, I don’t discriminate against Pike, but they have their place and this one won’t be eating any more Brookies or Browns.

The post Freshwater Sharks appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

I got out again Friday morning before work. There weren’t many bugs early morning, so I started fishing wet flies. When that was unproductive, I moved on to nymphs and later tried streamers. Fishing was slow, with little more than a couple missed hits on the wet flies.

As the sun came up and the temperature began rising, I started seeing a bunch of these:

Lots of Tricos were hatching an hour or so past sunrise

The water was very clear, but I wasn’t really seeing any rises. Since the sub-surface patterns weren’t doing particularly well for me, I figured I may as well try some Trico dry flies. A couple refusals (from some very small fish) was about all the action I had with these. Despite the hatches, fish simply weren’t feeding on Tricos, at least not on the surface.

I went back to wet flies, again with no real success. Mind you, my supply of wets was less than ideal, with only a couple unweighted patterns tied on standard dry fly hooks. I don’t think I was getting the fly down far enough. I could have added some weight to my line, but I just didn’t have much confidence in these flies.

There was still no surface activity, but I decided to tie on another (larger) dry fly: one of my historically most successful attractor patterns for this river, a Red Humpy. I had only one left and on top of being a pretty bad tie, it was also quite beat up. A few casts in and I caught my first fish of the morning: a tiny brown trout. Shortly after, I caught a couple more small browns.

The first few fish were all 6″ or less, so assuming that my Humpy was only managing to fool the young dumb fish, I switched back to a Trico. I figured, maybe the dry fly action was just now picking up and matching the hatch would get me into some better fish now. Well, it didn’t… the Trico continued to be ineffective.

Before switching back to my Humpy, I tried a few other flies to rule out the possibility of the Humpy not being the reason for my previous luck: a Stimulator, Caddis, BWO and a Partidge and Red.  I caught nothing on these flies, but after tying the Humpy back on, I was into more fish almost immediately.

As I waded downstream (further from the access point), the fish began increasing in size. A couple more 6″ fish, then some in the 8-10″ range.

I started to catch some better fish as I moved further downstream

It was getting late and the sun was now high in the sky. I was pretty happy with the outcome of the morning and the fact that I managed to figure things out and land a few decent trout. I started to wade a bit more quickly down river towards the next exit point, still drifting my fly through some of the better looking water. That’s when this good looking brown trout gulped up my Humpy:

A nice brown trout caught mid day on a Red Humpy.

I caught this fish midstream in some pretty shallow riffles, full sun and no cover nearby. Needless to say, I was not expecting it! I had 6x tippet on and he got into some pretty fast water, but I managed to get him to the net to wrap up another great trip.

So, why a Red Humpy? I remember my reason for deciding to start tying and fishing it on this river many years ago. My dad’s friend PJ introduced me to the Humpy and I liked how durable the fly was and how well it floated. My theory was that since the Isonychia Bicolor (Slate/Mahogany Dun) is so common on the this river almost all season long, a Humpy tied in red around size 12 might work as a rough imitation. I can’t really say whether this is the key to its success here, but I guess it’s a theory. Or, it might simply come down confidence. Everyone has their favourite go-to fly for a particular river and for me, this is it.

The post When Matching the Hatch Fails appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.