Category Archives: Fly Fishing

2012 Trout Closing Weekend

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Well, trout season is officially over here in southern Ontario, which means my fishing days are going to be limited to some remaining warm water fishing (bass, pike) and possibly some steelhead fishing if I can manage to find a place and time where the crowds aren’t too bad.

My wife graciously agreed to let me spend way too much time on the water this past weekend, to finish off the trout season. I took Friday off work and managed to get out for three consecutive days, all of which were spent on different sections of my favourite local river. By the way, you’ll notice that I rarely mention river names or locations. This is on purpose, in an effort to avoid random lazy people from typing a couple words into Google and going away with sensitive and hard earned fishing locations. If you really want to know where I fish… well, I probably won’t tell you unless you’re family or friend 🙂  But, you’re more than welcome to ask.

Anyway, on with the report!

Friday, September 28th

Friday was supposed to be a full day of fishing, but I slept in a bit more than I would have liked and as usual, I needed to do some last-minute fly tying to top up my box. The main ties included a bunch of Red Humpy dry flies (which are always productive on this river), as well as a number of Simulators and a couple Gartside Gurglers for a bit of night fishing.

Lots of Stimulators in sizes 12-14 would be the main go-to fly during the days

Gartside Gurgler (size 6) for hopefully enticing some hungry Browns at night

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Chinook on the Fly

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There’s a section of river about five minutes from my house which, although nice looking, isn’t usually worth fishing due to its location between dams. However, for a few weeks during spring and fall, this section of river comes alive with big migratory fish that gain access via a fish ladder on the dam several miles downstream.
Historically, I haven’t fished much for salmon or steelhead – I normally prefer resident trout waters, where the crowds are less and the fish are (in my opinion) prettier. Since this section of river is close to home though and one of the lesser fished stretches, I figured I’d give it a try for a couple hours before work.
The river seemed pretty empty when I arrived, but a walk downstream showed a much different picture: lots of Chinook salmon cruising the shallows. I’ve never targeted Chinook on the fly and I’d say I’m not very well equipped to deal with them. An 8wt rod (intended for steelhead fishing) with 12 lb tippet suddenly feels very inferior when you imagine hooking these freight trains. Unfortunately though, this would have to do as it’s the heaviest setup I currently own.
Well, it did… sorta. I hooked 2 fish, one of which lasted a mere couple of seconds before it bent my hook completely straight, bringing me to the realization that large hooks are a necessity for these beasts.

A Chinook Salmon landed during some morning fishing before work

It’s mind boggling how strong these fish are. This was my first Chinook and considering the fact that it was probably an average sized fish, I can’t imagine what a large one could do. I’ve caught plenty of other large fish in the past, but nothing has come even remotely close to the girth and power of this thing.
Since the fishing days are numbered, I decided to tie a handful of salmon flies tonight and will be heading back tomorrow morning for some revenge. Here’s hoping my equipment makes it through!

Trout Season is Fading

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It seems like trout fishing season (open May-September on most waters here) was barely existent this year.  Now, there’s only one week left before it’s gone. Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak out a couple more times next week, before or after work and on the weekend.

I absolutely loving fishing in the fall.  Cool crisp temperatures and colours galore, on both the trees and the fish. Yesterday was full of walking and roller coasters, as I took my son to Canada’s Wonderland, but today I managed to get out for a few hours of fishing. Normally I would choose to fish my favourite brown trout water this time of year, but seeing as how I failed to catch any fish during my Algonquin trip, I thought I’d try to make amends and head to some brookie water today.

Fishing was pretty slow for most of the day. Rain was off and on and temps were quite cold, but overall it was great to be out. I managed to catch a few small brookies in the first couple hours – nothing to brag about, but better than nothing.  I also took a break to watch a beaver that lives in this section of the river (I’ve seen him here for several years now).

Resident Beaver chilling out on a rock in the middle of the river

I started out casting dry flies and eventually switched to a small streamer since there wasn’t anything happening on the surface. The streamer provided 2 hits, but no fish landed.  As daylight faded, I approached a nice stretch of water and decided to go back to dries. I tied on a size 12 stimulator and the second cast produced a nice brookie.

Nice colourful resident Brook Trout caught on a Stimulator

I had hiked in quite a way from my car and it would be a long walk back. Since I packed my headlamp, I figured I’d push my luck and stay a while longer and hike back in the dark. Then it hit me… I had put my headlamp in my fishing net in the car… and now I was wearing my fishing net on my back. Unfortunately, the lamp was no longer in the net. It had obviously fallen out somewhere along my trek today, which took me through a lot of heavy brush. Not only did this mean I just lost my new $50 headlamp, but it also meant I had to stop fishing if I wanted to avoid stumbling back the 30 minute hike in dark without a light. Doh!

Big Crow: There and Back Again

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September 2012: Big Crow
A 5 day trip to Big Crow Lake in the Algonquin backcountry

Au Sable River Trip

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I took a well deserved week-long trip to a favourite destination of ours on the banks of Au Sable River in Grayling, Michigan.

Grayling is a fly fishing paradise.  I won’t go into detail on why this is such a great fly fishing town, but suffice it to say that it’s surrounded by several blue ribbon trout rivers, it’s host to river stretches with nicknames like the “Holy Water”, it’s got more fly shops than most towns have gas stations and it’s the birthplace of Trout Unlimited… you get the idea.

I made an effort not to spend too much time on the water this trip, since my wife doesn’t fish and we had other things planned for the week.  Most of the time I didn’t stray too far from the place we were staying.  Located on the Holy Water, one of (if not the) best stretches of trout water on the entire Au Sable, it’s just too convenient.

The main hatches for the week included Tricos in the mornings, terrestrials (mostly ants) in the afternoons and some sporadic BWO hatches in the evenings.  No overly large trout were had during this trip, but a nice assortment of brown, rainbow and brook trout were caught.  That’s one of the things I love about the Au Sable in this stretch… all three trout species are very plentiful and on any given day it’s entirely possible to hook up with trophy sizes in all of these fish.

Au Sable Brown Trout

Au Sable Brook Trout

Au Sable Rainbow Trout

And then there’s the night fishing…

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Floating for Bass

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Took the float tube out tonight for a few hours hoping to get some good top water bass fishing in.  Arrived around 4:30 and fished to dark.

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:

My first Largemouth Bass of any considerable size on a fly rod. This fish was caught when casting terrestrials towards a bank from my float tube. It was sitting in no more than 2 feet of water. I had no idea this pond held Largemouth of this size and it wasn't until it bolted straight towards me into the middle of the pond that I realized what I had hooked into.

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!

When It’s Too Hot For Trout

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When it comes to fly fishing, I’ve traditionally been a resident trout only type of guy.  If I wasn’t able to fish for trout, I generally wouldn’t fish at all.  Although this might sound foolish, my reasoning was as follows:

  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!

River Monster?

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One evening early in the season, I was fishing a favourite local river and decided to wade up a familiar stretch of water that leads to a nice hole, which I had known to hold some nice browns. This stretch of water is generally not very productive. Some riffles and runs where you will usually find a few small fish, but not many holding spots for larger fish until you get further upstream. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot during my trek.

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