Good To See The Ospreys

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.