I grew up living either close to, or on the water, in an area rich with lakes but devoid of both trout and fly fishing. Fishing since early childhood, I was introduced to fly fishing as a teenager after visiting a camp ground in Southern Ontario, situated on the banks of the Grand River. What started as a will to simply find a way to catch trout in such a shallow, fast moving river, turned into a lifetime passion and addiction that continues to consume me. I now live within minutes of several blue ribbon trout rivers and streams and within easy driving distance to dozens more.
The last couple of weeks have been fairly chaotic—much of it the good kind, but also some close calls that could have turned out very differently. Before getting into the meat of this story though, a little catching up first.
The May long weekend saw me taking a last minute trip to the Lake Superior Park interior for four days of paddling and trout fishing. Work had been unusually busy, which both delayed and shortened my spring backcountry trip plans. What’s usually a month of planning for up to ten days in the backcountry was condensed into about two days of rushed planning, packing, and a 9.5-hour drive north to a hastily chosen destination. I forgot some food and gear at home and was very low on sleep, needing to adjust my plans once again at the eleventh hour.
I’ll save the details of this trip for another post, but aside from the horrendous black flies and difficult portages, it was a good time, with some excellent fishing, scenery and solitude.
The view from my campsite on Old Woman lake in Lake Superior Provincial ParkContinue reading →
Over the years, I’ve collected a number of photos of various mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies from our rivers in southern Ontario. I’ve been wanting to put them together in one spot for a while, to serve as a reference for fly tying and fly selection when trying to match the hatch on our rivers.
Well, I finally got around to doing this and you can check out the full reference here. It includes some supporting information for each species, such as (fly) size, timing and description. I even linked to these photos from my Credit River Hatch Chart.
An Isonychia and Golden Stonefly from the reference library.
Most of the adult insects from the Credit River are present, but this reference will be fairly accurate for the same insects on other rivers throughout Ontario and other eastern provinces and states. The main differences will be timing and some slight colour and size variation. I’ll be adding more adults and nymphs (especially those that don’t occur on the Credit) in the near future.
With trout season just a couple weeks away in Ontario, I hope these will be useful for topping up your fly boxes!
A few weeks ago, I did a short 3-day backcountry trip to the Dunlop Lake area in Algoma. This was a combination of an exploratory, fishing and unwinding trip. Being the second week of July, it wasn’t the ideal time to be trout fishing lakes, especially with a fly rod. We were also still under a fire ban, so there would be no campfires to help ward off the hoards of mosquitoes.
It was another super enjoyable trip. Despite the overall slow fishing, I still managed to get into a couple nice trout. Check out the full trip report below.
While early season started with plenty of water in our rivers thanks to a good snow melt and plenty of rain in April, May and beyond brought some near drought conditions. As a result, most of our rivers in southern Ontario have had some of the lowest water levels I’ve ever seen. Local creeks and even the Credit River have been almost unrecognizable. Ontario was also under a fire ban for most of the summer (which has just recently been lifted). Things seem to be returning to normal now, with some more frequent rains and storms. Hopefully it will top the rivers off to provide some stable late summer and fall fishing opportunities.
That said, there are still plenty of rivers and lakes with more than enough water, even in dry years such as this one – and that’s where I’ve spent most of this season. They aren’t particularly close by for me, so it does mean some extra driving. Sometimes I’ll try to make the most of my trips though and stay a night (or, a week, or more…).
On the longer trips, I’m in the back country with a canoe and tent (or hammock). I’ve got a new trolling setup for the fly rod this year with the new(ish) universal Scotty rod holder, which works well for pretty much any rod type – casting, spinning or fly rod. Of course, I’m not only trolling from the canoe. I’ll also cast (mostly streamers) when I’m not travelling or trying to locate fish – but it’s nice to keep a line in the water even while travelling.
Trolling with a fly rod from a canoe on a back country lake.Continue reading →
Last month, I embarked on my most ambitious solo backcountry trip to date. This time around, I chose a nine day, 30+ portage canoe trip to Ranger Lake and the Algoma Headwaters region in northern Ontario.
Some of the main trip highlights included some beautiful native Brook Trout and Lake Trout, no bugs (still too early for them!), great weather aside from some below freezing overnight lows, a couple injuries, taking a swim in some muck and some seriously challenging (and confusing) portages.
You can read the full trip report on the page linked below:
It’s hard to believe we’re a month into trout season already! If I haven’t completely missed the Hendricksons yet, then I’m surely on track to – thanks mostly to my relatively new tradition of doing a big spring backcountry trout trip each year. Most of late winter and early spring was dedicated to planning that trip, which I’ve now wrapped up and will be posting a trip report on soon.
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.
Well, here’s another lengthy post as I continue work through content from this past season. This year turned out to be quite a bit different than seasons past. While I still spent time fishing my usual haunts, especially for the major hatches, I spent considerably more time than usual fishing different rivers (and lakes), in different ways. Below is a recap of much of my 2022 trout season, roughly organized by time of year.
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.
A few early season brookies – note the different colorations from different streams
In May of 2022, I embarked on my first solo backcountry trip, doing the Lake Lavieille / Dickson loop through Algonquin Park. Read the entire trip report on the following page:
Apparently it’s been nearly two years since my last post – yet, while so much has changed in that time, there really hasn’t been much to write about. Such is the life of being stuck at home during COVID. I do have some content from last year that I may eventually get to posting – but none of it is as important as the topic at hand.
Let me get right to the point:
The proposed Erin Wastewater Treatment Plant is threatening to drastically impact the health of the native Brook Trout populations on the West Credit River.
This is not a new subject, but it is one that is continuing to gain traction and importance. Before attempting to give my own opinion, I highly suggest you check out the Coalition for the West Credit River. This group of concerned organizations, including Trout Unlimited, Izaak Walton Fly Fishing Club, Ontario Streams and more, have put together a wealth of factual information on the subject.
I should probably be writing about this year’s trout opener, but I couldn’t bring myself to write another post before wrapping up this long overdue one. I hope you’re up for reading, because it’s going to be lengthy.
It’s been almost 10 months since our family vacation to Florida last July. It was a trip largely planned around my daughter’s visit to Disney. We’d spend a few days on the Atlantic side, where my kids would enjoy the big waves and breeze of the ocean, followed by a week on the Gulf side, relaxing on the calmer white sandy beaches. Fishing wasn’t even a consideration at the time. I was clueless to saltwater fly fishing… I’d heard about it and seen pictures of it, but being a resident trout purist from Canada, it’s not really something I ever thought about pursuing.
That is, until about a week before our trip, when some last minute reading prompted me to throw my fly rod in the back of the truck, just in case. I also packed a tying vice and a small selection of tying material, again, just in case. What little research I did left me with images of Tarpon and Snook (along with a few other species) ingrained in my mind. Embarrassingly, the only thing I really knew about these species, was that they were often targeted by fly anglers. I was surprised to read that Tarpon were apparently plentiful on the Gulf, in the Tampa area (which was just south of where we would be staying near the end of our trip). In addition to that, our timing seemed to align with the tail end of Tarpon season.
To be honest, the thought of catching any fish on a fly rod in a great big ocean was overwhelming and seemed hopeless – at least without a lot more information than I had thus far found online. So a couple days before leaving and during the drive up (while my wife shared some of the driving), I started emailing some guides in the area, trying to get an idea of what I could expect or where I could start.
The drive through the scenic mountains of Virginia helped scratch my fishing itch.
