Because it's there!

FAOL Community Fly Anglers Online
1

I’m sure most of you have heard the quote of the development of a fisherman, from most to biggest to most challenging fish, but one of the things I really like is fishing challenging rivers, those that give up few fish but when I do catch one it makes the whole day worth it. Does anyone have a favorite of their own, where you are just as likely to be skunked as catch anything, but you keep going back? I’d like to know why you feel it is difficult and if you want to mention the name that is ok with me, but don’t feel obligated. It’ll be interesting to me what your thoughts are on what makes your river challenging, such as fishing pressure, flow, location, etc.

My river is the Niagara River below the falls to Lake Ontario. I fish it only from the shore with flyrod. It has a huge flow that fluctuates between 90,000 cfs and 150,000 cfs depending on the time of the year. You don’t wade this river because of the surges of water that can come up three to four feet in an instant and in many places it drops off ten to twenty feet deep two or three steps in anyway and goes even deeper (I have heard it is up to 90 feet deep or more in places). It is also difficult to walk into the gorge and even harder coming out. I fish there for steelhead, chinook salmon, lake trout, brown trout and smallmouth bass but I haven’t landed a chinook salmon yet because of their size and the current.

2

tigfly -

Any wadeable river or stream in a beautiful and / or remote place that I have not been on before. I’d rather get skunked trying to figure out how to read the water and find the fish in a new place than have an outstanding day of catching ( whether one or one hundred fish ) on familiar water.

If I catch a bunch of fish on new water, that just adds to the satisfaction of applying all the things I’ve had to learn since I first picked up a flyrod. If I get skunked, I get to go back and try to figure out what I wasn’t doing well enough last time out.

And no excuses, because …

3

The Davidson above the hatchery at the start of the Smokeys in NC. No fish is still a good day.

4

I tend to fish Shoal Creek near my house a lot. Most of the time that I’m able to go there, the fish aren’t that active, and I usually end up wading and practicing my cast (which is still a little unorthodox). Being there in the water with the wildlife around makes it worth it to me. Even when I do catch fish they are usually small. I even caught a minnow once. Didn’t know it was on the line and slung the poor thing all the across the creek.