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Fly Fishers should be constantly observant.
As well, they should not always stay with the
routines of camps into which they go. Vivid in
my mind is a late August trip that a friend and
I made to Minipi River many years ago. The routine
was to get up leisurely for breakfast arund 7:00 A.M.,
then canoe from camp to the section of river we were
to fish. We carried a box lunch and fished until late
afternoon when everyone returned to camp for supper.
The evenings were devoted to tying flies, relaxing
and telling tall tales.
We saw few flies over the water and dry flies were
not effective. We did catch what we thought was of
share of big brook trout - two or three each day - but
for such a remote haven something was missing. One
day I noticed some of the back eddies were matted
with caddis shucks - empty skins of the pupa stage.
I knew that caddis hatched early in the morning and
laid their eggs at dusk, so we were obviously missing
both activities. The guides had no idea what happened
at dawn or dusk because they had never been on the
river then!
Bill and I convinced our guide to eat supper early
and head back down for the evening fishing. What
occurred was an experience that I do not expect ever
to repeat. We went to the most likely pool for this
kind of activity. A riffle poured over a gravel bar
into the left side of the pool, and then the water
became slick and glided in a semi-circle past big
boulders and left the pool at right angles to the
way it entered. The evening sky was heavily overcast
when great numbers of caddis adults in three different
species came out early to lay their eggs. Trout started
rising everywhere.
We gave our spare rod to the guide and asked him to join
in. The fish were not selective, so we all ended up using
a Royal Wulff dry fly. Its white wing made it very visible
on the dark water in the dull light. It was absurd!
Rising trout everywhere - fighting, big fish - and us
upset that they fought so long because we wanted to get
our flies back onto the water to catch another giant.
When darkness set in after almost two hours of frantic
fishing, the three of us had landed 24 brook trout that
were all 18-22" (45-55 cm) long. ~ Ken Robins
Credits: From Fly Fishing Canada, From Coast to Coast to Coast,
By Outdoor Writers of Canada, Published by Johnson Gorman Publishers.
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