Archive for the ‘Competition’ Category

Just received some unofficial individual results for the 2009 Canadian Fly Fishing Championships.

1st Place: John Nishi

2nd Place: Ryan Suffron

3rd Place: Todd Oishi

I haven’t heard the team results yet but this year, there were only 9 teams competing.  There was also a report that some of the beats on the Elk River weren’t the best for the competition and apparently there was only about 1/3 the number of trout caught as at the Grand River in the 2006 Canadian Fly Fishing Championships.

Up until about June of last year, I was a member of The Ospreys, the team that competed in the Canadian Fly Fishing Championships. Because I had somehow severely strained my casting hand, thumb and forearm last year, I resigned from the team but am still proud to be associated with them.  Yesterday, I learned that two of the members, Ivo Balinov and Graham Murfitt had made the trek down from the Ottawa area to have a team practice with Arron Varga and Ernie Kalwa.  So I made sure I was up early this morning so I could head over to see the guys, do some fishing, and learn about their recent experiences and plans for this year’s upcoming championship to be held in Fernie, British Columbia.

Graham and Ivo casting from the boat.

When I arrived just after 9:30, the guys were out in the boats but we managed to say our “hello’s” and joke around a bit while I stood on shore.  It was a beautiful morning, and I figured I wasn’t going to waste it watching anglers fish from rowboats, so I set up my fly rod and decided to fish one of the other small lakes (or large pond, depending on how you want to describe it) from the bank.  Yesterday, I had very good success with the Orange Crystal Wooly Bugger, but today, the fish were disinterested in that. After switching flies a few times, what they were interested in was Arron’s Viva variant. Basically a black rabbit strip streamer with a chartreuse/green body.

Using a very slow figure of eight retrieve, the ‘bows seemed to want this fly. I had three hits before hooking and netting two decent sized fish,  about 22 and 24 inches. These rainbows were also very thick and fat around the middle!  Good sized fish that didn’t give up without a good fight.  Both were resucitated and released back into the water. After the second one, it was just about time for The Osprey team to come ashore.   All in all, it was a pretty good day for everyone.

Here’s wishing The Ospreys the best of luck in September!

I was thinking of heading back out for a couple of hours this evening with the “wee man,” but the winds are gusting to 50 Km/h now so I think I’ll wait for that to calm down a bit.

Regular readers might recognize the name Arron Varga, one of my teammates for the past two years on The Ospreys fly fishing team participating in The Canadian Fly Fishing Championships.

From personal experience, I can say that Arron is one of the most selfless anglers I know, always willing to share his knowledge about fly fishing and fly tying.  And he’s very good at both.  I’m honoured that I have been able to fly fish with him – and am proud to say that he’s been selected to be on the Canadian team heading off to New Zealand in April for the Commonwealth Fly Fishing Championships.

For these fly fishing competitions, all expenses are borne by the individual competitor. Therefore, sponsorships and fund raising activities can be very important to help get the anglers to the competitions.  To this end, The First Cast fly shop in Guelph, Ontario are holding a fund raising raffle to assist Arron and the prize is a $250.00 gift certificate.

More information is available at the The First Cast’s website.

Hurry – the draw takes place on March 8th, 2008.