The East River runs through my home town. It has a fall run of Atlantic Salmon as well. There are sea trout earlier in the year (sea run brook trout). Surprisingly, I only recall fishing there once as a kid. We always took trips further out.
Anyway, a few days ago I was back in Stellarton to visit my parents. Vanessa, Genesta, my Dad, and myself decided to head down to see if there were any salmon in the river. Took the rods and our licences, and off we went.
It’s a short walk through the woods to get to the river. Took us a bit to find the path, but eventually we spotted two fellows comming back up from their morning’s fish. They didn’t have any luck it seemed. Still, we now knew how to get down to the river.
When we made it to the river there were more fellows there. One was fishing a large orange dry fly, the others I couldn’t tell as they were up river a ways. However, the water looked good, and there was a good deep pool well within casting distance. We moved down river to some free water and started to set up. We only had two rods with us as one of us would have to attend to Genesta while the others fished. During the last month of the season you must use barbless hooks, so we bent down the barbs and tackled up. Vanessa looked after Genesta for the first shift.
We were fishing some wet flies, hairwings of various colours. Dad sat down and Vanessa took over that rod. Genesta watched us casting away, eventually she found a reed and she started to pretend she was fishing! Looks like I’ll be having another fishing partner sooner than I expected. Very cute.
There was a nice hatch of mayflies comming off, light cahill’s size 16 looked about right. Also spotted some black caddis of a similar size on the grasses by the water. Two small trout leaped to grab one of the mayflies, or perhaps one trout twice as it was in the same area, and that was it for fish. Apparently, two grilise and one salmon were landed the day before, but on Saturday, nothing. The run is often quite late in the East River, and some years the fish don’t make their run until after the season has closed in November.
But, hope springs eternal. See, this week, there is call for rain until Thursday. Friday is meant to be sunny, with overcast on Saturday. We’re heading home next weekend for Thanksgiving. I’m thinking, this fresh bout of rain may just bring them on their run. I might just have to take a look.
- Jeff
