Sometimes You Can Blame It On The Weather
This past weekend, both Saturday and Sunday had fly fishing scheduled. Saturday turned out to be a fantastic day, while Sunday not so much as far as the fish were concerned. I headed over to Humber Springs on Saturday about 4PM (I’m spoiled, having such a place within a ten minute drive of my home) and met up with Arron Varga and his friend Alec. Alex is a great fly tier so I’m told, and I watched him fly fish. At only 18 years of age, I predict Alec is going to become a great fly angler and caster! It was a mild day (about 21C), partly cloudy when we started out, but as it went on, some light rain continued to fall.
Alec and Arron decided to drift the boat around one lake while I decided to see what I could do from the long dock of the other one. After my third cast, I knew it was going to be a pretty good day. Nice sixteen inch rainbow, hooked, fought and netted. About fifteen minutes later, another rainbow took the “Viva Zonker” and was brought to the net. Over the course of the next hour or so, I netted two more fish, one about 20″ and another 18 incher and lost 2 before I could get the net into the water.
Alec and Arron decided to quit fishing from the boat and joined me. It was great to be able to fish with Aaron and chat with him about everything from work to fly fishing to competition plans and reminisce about our past competitions together. Arron hadn’t caught anything all day and wasn’t feeling in the best of moods, but was a little excited to see me get some hits on another fly I had tied on – one he had given me that I’m sworn to secrecy about describing or photographing until after September. A “secret” Scottish pattern called a “Shimmy.” We also watched Alec take a rainbow about 22″ while fishing from the bank on the same pattern.
About 15 minutes later, I felt the tug of a fish, set the hook and the fight was on. A nice ‘bow about 20 inches. Aaron obliged with the camera and took the photo.
(Geeze, I look different in every picture. This one, I look 20 years younger than what I am. I think I’ll hire Arron as my official photographer).
Another fish lost on the Shimmy, and I know I’ve got a new fly to learn how to fish and see how I can make it more effective! About fifteen minutes later, Aaron got his “mojo” back with a beautiful ‘bow that took his Shimmy, and tore off half way across the lake. This fish was full of vim and vigor taking about 60 feet of Aaron’s slack line and then quite a bit more off the reel before Aaron could settle her down and net it. The fish was safely released and took off like a shot, probably a little angry.
Shortly after the last fish, I hooked into the biggest, hugest, ugliest crayfish I’d ever seen in my life. It went for the Shimmy too. I knew I had something on the end of the line that wasn’t a fish, but wasn’t quite weeds either.. there was some kind of fight to it – and pulled up the beast. I really didn’t want to touch the thing – it had mean looking claws and I don’t think it liked me very much. I did manage to get the hook loose from it and it began marching across the dock in my direction. I think it wanted to hurt me. A swift kick got it back into the water where it belonged.
We soon called it a day – a successful day too. And I was looking forward to Sunday and meeting my friend David Moore who had never fished these small lakes before. Dave and I have been fishing together since we were about 16 or 17 years old and have seldom missed an Opening Day in all those years. But as we’ve got older, and moved – distance and other pressures have cut into our angling time and Sunday would be the first time in over a year that we’d wet a line together.
But in contrast to Saturday, Sunday was a brutal day. It began with fierce thunderstorms hitting the Orangeville area, knocking out power. And the temperature surged from an average of about 20 to 22C high in the past week to over 31C with the humidity almost knocking a body over. The weather reporters were suggesting that with the Humidex, it felt more like the mid 40’s Celsius. By mid afternoon, when Dave and I met up, there was a nice breeze blowing which helped to evaporate the sweat and feel a little more comfortable. The sun came out a few times, and I did have one fish on that liked the Shimmy pattern, and Dave had a few follows and touches to the Viva Zonker. And then everything just seemed to go dead. We tried different flies, different lines, different retrieves, and different places on the lake – and there was nothing. But there was more rumbling… and like the day opened with thunderstorms, it closed out with even more fierce ones. We were casting our flies when I noticed some lightning in the distance and heard the low rumbles of thunder. As they approached, I yelled to Dave that I thought we had better take cover. I didn’t want to be caught near the water with a graphite lightning rod in hand.
As we arrived at the small lodge, the rain began to pour and the skies darkened such that it looked like it was 9:30 PM instead of 7:00 PM (it is almost dark at this latitude by 9:30 at this time of year). Then mother nature sent us the most spectacular thunder and lightning show that I’ve seen in a very long time. It is no wonder the fish weren’t taking – the barometer must have been dropping like a rock and after the weather extremes that we’d already had, I’m sure we can blame our lack of success today on that.
We watched the lightning strikes through the rain that was teeming down – probably not a 30 second period went by in that hour without lightning bolts being seen and the thunder was tremendous. I mentioned to Dave about a warning I had heard some years ago, “Dave, if you feel the hairs on your head rising during a thunder storm, take cover right away! Oh… sorry.. you don’t have hair on your head anymore!” Well, I still have my hair, and we had pretty good cover under the overhang of the lodge, where we could stay dry and watch the the show that was going on.
After about an hour, the rainfall lightened, the sky lightened somewhat, and we hoped that maybe it would clear enough for us to give some flies another chance even though we knew it would probably be fruitless. But with continued lightning to the west, we eventually decided to call it a day.
Even though the fishing was disappointing, it was great to see you and fish with you, Dave! My apologies for forgetting to pour a wee dram of Black Bush – I’ll make sure I remember the next time yer oot. Don’t wait a year! And let’s pick a better day, weather wise.
This is not a black and white photo – it’s the rain teeming down and the darkness of the
black clouds overhead at about 7PM