GuitarBuildingAngler

you should have another rod ready and throw in a wacky senko a.k.a. bass candy....I was out at Peterborough last weekend and have casted my entire tackle....spinners, jointed plugs, crankbaits, big Os....take note this is sight fishing too. I can see them swimming around and have varied my retrieve speeds......nothing. went back to my car, I was ready to pack up, but grabbed a pack of senkos, first cast was a decent smallie, and it was like a pinata after that....just get hit after hit....bass after bass...I don't use a lot of senkos as I usually fish for muskie in PB.

Not meaning to thread hi-jack but let me know the next time you are in PTBO DILLIGAF. We should get together to fish!

Well welcome aboard! There is a great amount of knowledge and friendly people on here. Enjoy!

Ever since getting highly addicted to fly fishing, I have noticed fishing brings out the absolute worst in people. It's like people lose all sense of decency for nature and other humans. Hahahaha of course, this isn't everyone but I do see it a lot. 

Like you picture this guy on the river "greasing" bows for row, smoking darts and throwing them in the water, and leaving his Tim Hortons garbage everywhere. He sees a guy fishing 100 feet down river and makes sure to obviously run to his favourite hole. That other fisherman gently and carefully wades behind said angler and then gets an ear full about how he is a f**king idiot and is scaring the fish.  Monday comes around and this dart smoking, polluting arse puts his suit on, goes to work and sells homes to people with a smile.

Its just such an odd transformation. 


Does anyone else feel this way? 

It also depends on the sensitivity of your rod. Is it a slow or fast action rod? I find a medium-slow action 6wt rod with a 7wt line can give you a switch rod like feeling. Ever since going to switch, that is all I fish (except when doing dry flies and fishing for small brook trout). I personally see no need for half size lines. With a high quality rod, going a weight up in fly lines should be fine. As with any fly casting I am aware of, there in no power needed in casting. It is all about the motion and timing. 

Learning the double haul will also make casting streams a breeze for you. But definitely practice at it, as the double haul done wrong is a good way of getting a hook in your body. 


I remember the time Madoc and I went sight fishing for Gar pike. We were using 8 weight rods but the streamer pattern we were using for gar was extremely weighted, articulated and tipped with a size 8 treble hook. There was NO way you were going to catch any Gar if you couldn't double haul (the casting distance was sometimes 20-50ft). That streamer fly would have been something you should have been using on a 12wt rod but with a good double haul we made it all possible. 

Honestly - most things will work for them during the Spring feed bag.  Opened up a couple bellies on small ones and they were full of white tiny shrimp like buggers, the medium sized one had dragon fly larvae and other bugs ... larger fish had crayfish.  I'm not a fly guy but have caught them on wooly buggers and saw a couple guys angling them with zoo cougars.

 

Hopefully MFG can chime in here, hes pretty good one those back lakes with a fly rod in hand.

I am not sure how much MFG follows these threads anymore (super busy with school) but I will try and help.

In all honesty, black or olive wooly buggers will get you into fish. Really small ones, size 14 up to size 6 large ones will all work. During spring, the fish will easily go after those patterns. Best thing to do (what Madoc and I would do all the time) is tie on a sink tip. After the sink tip, go to something like 5 feet of 4-6lb flouro. Just troll up and down close to shoals or rock beds. The trout will be anywhere from 5-20ft down in the cold water and will readily swim up to hit the wooly bugger. You want to move at a relatively slow speed. A speed that will allow your sink tip to get 10-20 ft down. Madoc and I would let out our lines (about all 100ft of fly line) and troll. We let out that amount of line because we were usually paddling as well and wanted to have a nice buffer between us paddling and the trailing trout. Be on high alert though. The bite will be extremely light and you are more than likely to miss 3/4 of the bites during these times.

I hope that helps, good luck!

 

What's Rapala?

Black stone flies work really well. I have witnessed many black stone fly hatches during winter and using the pattern always produces for me. Come winter, I will fish a spot over and over (when I think it could hold fish). Don't get antsy and want to move on. Those steelhead are going nowhere fast, so you may think there are no fish in a particular spot, when their actually are. 
You just have to present to them right on the nose.

Freak warmer days will get the fish moving and I have seem swung buggers catch fish during this time.
 

make it a sanctuary between the 401 and cnr tracks then make a  0 possession limit would do it, I mean if the MNR camped out at the ganny for a night they would make their monthly quota on fines. I see a shi* ton of garbage right next to the ******* garbage bin, people there don't care 1 bit about the fishery they just care about getting roe to catch salmon...which their just gonna take the roe from and throw out. 

I don't necessary agree with lengthening the fish sanctuary. That would just equate to less fish-able area for us responsible anglers. 

In all honesty (and this may be because I am a fly fisherman and use fake everything), the killing for roe needs to end. It is a vicious cycle of killing one species for roe, only to catch another. That is why SOME of the problems exist in the first place.
If a 0 limit (province wide on salmon, brown trout, steelhead)  existed, and use of bait (roe) was not allowed, I think our water systems would not see a lot of the sh*t we are talking about right now. Let alone fish populations would go way up.


I know a fair amount of you guys are gonna hate me for saying "no roe", but I tie and use fake roe imitations. Why can't everyone else?

In all honesty, thank god. 

Hear me out for a second though. Don't get me wrong, I love fishing the ganny. But I am a responsible angler and completely C & R. It does suck that a sh*t load of idiots will now ruin fishing that waterway for the rest of us, but the things I have seen on the ganny make me sick. I have seen full blown slaughtering of salmon under a bridge. I am talking way past limit and the carcasses simply thrown into a bag and the roe kept in another bag (which you know the bag with the carcasses was going to be tossed the second they are out of sight). I have pulled HUGE treble hooks out of the backs and tails of salmon. The list is just endless. Hence why I try not to fish there anymore. Because of the people it attracts.


What they need to do is (get ready for some flack) make the limit per person ZERO. No fish are allowed to be kept. This would weed out some of the anglers and would make the ones doing illegal things a lot more obvious. I don't see why we need to keep these spawning fish. Go to a friggin' grocery store. 

*nerd voice* In my expert opinion I would have to say they are most definitively Salmo Trutta.

In my experience, roll casting is the place to start. Once you get a good feel for loading the rod (roll casts), it can help the feel for overhand casting, double haul and a whole bunch of spey casting strokes (even if you are only using a one handed rod).

I roll cast 70% of the time, spey and switch casting strokes 20% and overhand cast 10%. 

Hey Will.

I don't have a personal pattern to share with you but YouTube is always a great place to look. I usually look for pattern videos on YouTube and just tie from those. 

Conehead sculpin patterns can be easy if you know how to stack deer hair (with little practice, you can get it).
I like pretty heavy flies, so I stack the body with some weight wire. That conehead helps with weight as well though. 

https://www.youtube....h?v=3j_X6YUOE_c

I have a fishing spot that I frequent 1-2 times a week. My soon to be wife and I  have been going to this particular spot for well over a year and a half. We discovered this spot by throwing a wet fly across the rushing water and having a 5 inch brown trout nail it. At that point, we were sold. This was to be our brown trout fishery.

A normal brown trout in this particular fishery does not get large. Nothing like Lake Ontario run brown trout. A normal sized brown trout here is 5-9 inches long. You are very lucky to get a 12 inch brown on the end of your line. This area is what you would consider a small creek pool. The fish to fish competition for food is fierce here and the brown trout are very aggressive against one another.

Before I get into the story any further, I have to first state that one of my favourite fish is the brown trout. It is something about their colour, their mannerism and aggressiveness as well as their fight and power that draws me towards them. I think this love started very young in my fly fishing career. While out for steelhead and resident rainbow trout, I caught my very first brown trout. Not big, but still in my opinion; beautiful.

Since that small brown trout, I was hooked. Luckily enough my wife and I found something closer to home that held my favourite fish.

The brown trout here love dry flies. Anything resembling a Light Cahill. I personally use an adaption of that fly called “The dog hair special”.
Small Nymphs are also a great menu choice but these little brown trout are deceptive and will only give the lightest tug. Light fly fishing gear is essential!


 

A couple months ago my wife and I were fishing for these beauties with some dry flies. With a perfect drift, they were killing them left, right and center. Half way through our evening of fishing I saw a small 5 inch brown trout hit my fly top water. Behind him is what scared me and left me with my mouth open for close to 5 minutes. I was awe struck… Behind him was what looked like a 18 inch golden bar. It was a massive brown trout. The biggest I had ever seen in this fishery. A trout so big for this area, it is the thing of legends. I made it my goal to catch this golden illusion.

Many weeks passed with no sight of the monster. Until one night, something tugs at a size 20 mayfly nymph. Behind this tug was not a 5-10 inch trout but a 18″ monster. My 5 weight fly rod felt useless. The fight and power was unlike anything I was used to. After 1-2 minutes into the fight the rod tip shoots up and she was gone. I drove home with my tail between my legs that night.

Round two. Two weeks later I was swinging a white death fly across the current. It was on a very bright sunny day. I could see every brown trout that wanted to inspect my fly. I see a flash of silver and gold and right behind it was her… the golden illusion. She takes the white death and runs. The fight ensues and again, within one minute, she was gone. At this point I thought I would never catch her.

For weeks I did research on luring and catching huge brown trout. I tied ridiculous flies and streamers. The type that only humans would find appealing. I was grasping at any thing to reinstall the hope of catching such a beautiful brown trout.

I set out to try catching her at night. I was hoping with a veil of darkness, she would come out of her hiding spot. I caught a lot of brown trout that night but they were all of average size. Before heading out, I threw out a huge black stone fly and managed to hook into this wider sized brown trout. It was a welcome surprise.


 

Fast forward a couple weeks and I finally felt ready to head to the good old fishery and try again. This evening was more so about relaxing than catching a monster.
My wide and I had dinner in the car and set out to our spot. We set up a blanket and just took in the scenery. While sitting down, my wife turns to me at some point and says “you are going to get her tonight”. I laugh and shrug it off. I was here to catch beautiful little browns and that was it.

The brown trout were hitting dry flies this night so I played at that a little while. We had only been fishing about an hour when I cast and laid out a perfect drift. A 5 inch brown trout surfaces to the dry fly and I strip set the fly. Darn… I missed the set. But what do I see behind him? A flash of gold. My eyes go wide and I call over to my wife, “she is here! I just saw her! She just went for a little brown trout”.

I tie on a small (1 inch long) muddler minnow. I have used this fly here before with no such luck. Why did I tie it on? I really have no clue. Something was urging me to try it. I do a couple false casts and send the muddler minnow across the current. Strip, strip, wait… strip, strip, wait. Time to recast. I cast back into the exact same spot. I do the same retrieve pattern and wait. I lay out what will be my fourth and final cast with this fly. Strip, strip, wait… I pulled a longer strip and watched as a golden bar bursts through the water. This illusion destroys my muddler minnow and without thinking, I strip set and put my rod tip up. Almost like an extra appendage, I physically move the fly rod without consciously thinking about it. A good hook set and I was in for a fight like no other. With pulls left and right, a 4 foot jump and ridiculous head shakes I kept saying to myself, “please don’t get off, please don’t get off”. Another 2 foot jump and I feel something hit my foot. My reel had somehow fallen off of my reel seat and hit the ground. Did I care? Nope. It was like that part no longer mattered. I realized I would need to play the fishing rod at a perfect angle now because too much angle and my rod would break. Too little angle and my tippet would break. With rod and line in one hand and no reel, I guess this is the closest I have ever been to Tenkara fishing.

Our 5 minute fight continued and I found my self constantly chanting to my wife “this is him, this is him, this is him, oh my god”. After two runs while trying to get her in the net, I was finally able to bring her in.

Worth. Every. Minute. Week. and Month.








Never give up on a dream. No matter how small or how big. I didn't on mine and that golden illusion became a reality.

Tight lines everyone.

-G B A

Super bummed out myself. The tape edge lifting will only lead to wader failure. I am trying to hold out sending them back until the season is completely closed.

Think they would pay for my shipping to them? Ha! That will probably cost me $45.

I bought a pair of Simms Headwaters about 6 months ago. I am fortunate enough that I have good still water trout fishing near me. This has caused me to only put a handful of days on my waders. So you think they would be in perfect condition? Well, they are not.

I have had two parts of the tape edge start to lift off the neoprene on the stocking feet. I take great care of the waders and properly dry them all the time. What's the deal? They see little use and tape is already coming off at the edges. Whats up with that? I would not call that "Simms quality".