May Long Weekend Fly Fishing – Part 2

As mentioned yesterday, the weather forecast was not looking very promising for any productive fly fishing with Colin today. Indeed, the weather sucked. We even had some wet snow flurries! The high for the day was about 4C. And the wind.. let’s not talk about the wind. Well, I’ll just say there were gusts up to 70 KM/hour, so the weather pros said.

So fly fishing today was just not going to be. In lieu of fly fishing, Colin and I went to Pizza Hut and then drove to Newmarket where we browsed in the “Chapters” bookstore. I picked up copies of Fly Tyer, Flyfishing & Tying Journal, and The Canadian Fly Fisher magazines. Colin wanted a copy of Fly Tyer for himself too. I also picked up the softcover version of “Still Live With Brook Trout” by John Gierach. Any fly angler who has not read any of Gierach’s works really ought to do themselves a favour and get on to that which will be an enjoyable and entertaining task. I’ll write a review of the book when I am finished reading it.

My three year old son, David, came into my office while I was browsing Fly Tyer. He looked at some of the pictures of flies and exclaimed, “Look Daddy! Bugs!”

Now, that was pretty good! So I took the opportunity to show him some real flies that I had handy at the time. He was very interested – wanted to know all their names and walked out of my office, all ready to help Daddy tie some flies soon, and then use them to catch pretty brook trout – I had also shown him a picture of a brook trout with a fly in it’s mouth.

I don’t need to take Colin home until Tuesday – and it appears the weather will be improving tomorrow, with a high of 13C and thankfully, the flow rate at the Shand Damn is decreasing quite a bit too. So hopefully I’ll still have an opportunity to get Colin into some brown trout on the fly rod. If not – I’m not sure what I’ll do – he seemed so excited about the possibility of catching some trout after his fly casting lessons with Ian James. I’m trying to figure out if there is any suitable water between Orangeville and Ottawa to try out, along Hwy 7. I’m just not all that familiar with what might be in the rivers along the way.

I’ve often travelled that route – many times, and there are some rivers and streams I’ve always thought might be fun to stop and explore on my journey. One such river is the Salmon River near Arden, Ontario. It’s a gorgeous looking river – and it’s named for the fact that Atlantic Salmon used to run up the river from Lake Ontario, decades ago. But whether there is trout in the river up around Hwy 7 – I have no idea.

I have to admit I’m quite disappointed at how this weekend has turned out. Two weeks ago on the Grand River, I caught 7 brown trout in about an hour’s worth of fishing – and I figured it would be a shoe-in for Colin to get his first fish on the fl rod this weekend. If the weather had co-operated, he likely would have.

Tomorrow night, I’ll report on our success, or lack of it, and go from there with regard to some possible fly fishing while driving him home to the Ottawa area.