I forgot about it being Opening Day while I was at work today. It rained hard most of the day and blew hard too. When I got home about 4:30PM, I was tired, but decided I would go out to the river, just for a few casts. The wind was steady from the Southwest at 40 kph, gusting to 70 kph. It was about 6 Celsius, 42 Fahrenheit, cloudy with light rain. There were a few stoneflies on the water, but no surface feeding that I could see.
I tried a hot orange/yellow #8 Muddler Mickey streamer, then a #8 Royal Coachman Hairwing streamer, and finished up with a #8 Rumsey Lake Minnow. A nice, fat 11 or 12 inch Brook Trout grabbed the Royal Coachman. As I brought the fish to hand and released it, I was amazed at how cold the trout felt. Checking the water temperature, it was no wonder - 2 degrees Celsius, about 35 Fahrenheit! That explains it.
That's all the action I got. I didn't see any other anglers, or any other fish. I was hoping for a rainbow trout, after the Hurricane Noel destruction of a local aquaculture farm last fall. All in all, I was happy with my hour on the river - it was a bit bigger fish than I usually catch. I will keep you posted on my angling adventures on the Medway this season.
About the Royal Coachman - the fly in the illustration is not exactly how I tie them - I use a sparse collared soft hackle instead of a throat hackle, and I believe the one I used today had a sparse white bucktail wing instead of the white calftail. Be careful with the length of the wing - a wing too long will get fouled around the bend of the hook. It can be a deadly fly for Brook trout in Nova Scotia. I always have this attractor pattern in my box for times when no obvious surface feeding is happening.
Good Luck and Good Fishin'!
- Random Phrump
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Medway Report 1 April 2008
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5 comments:
Good for you.
I heard from Larry at Fishin' Fever today. He said two rainbows were caught in the Sackville River on the 1st. They were hatchery fish judging from the blunt fins. No question some will have found their way into the Medway too. You may need to try a brown pellet fly.
Cheers,
Steve
Steve: You jest, but I have a few brown pellet flies somewhere. I made them from beeswax. I worked a lump of it into a ball in my hand until it was warm and malleable, then formed a pellet around the shank of a hook. Easiest fly I ever tied - no thread or head cement needed. The bonus is, they can be made to float, or suspend in the water column, or slowly sink according to the ratio of wax to steel. Thanks for reminding me... maybe I'll dig them out.
"Brown pellet fly"...
Thats a good one.
We have a good number of pellet heads kicking about on the St Clair river just down the street....they fight like wet blankets and are just about as smart.
;O)
I was out on the Medway yesterday and took the boat out to cover some more water - still looking for evidence of Rainbows, which are not a native species - but a half million of them were released into the ocean only a few miles from here last November. (See Hurricane Noel for the whole story.)
Long story short - I was heading for the mouth of a brook - it's spring fed and a little warmer than the main flow - rowing and dragging my fly behind, when I thought I saw some commotion in the water near the fly. Just about that time a big fish launched itself into the air - at least a foot, maybe two above my fly. It was not a Brook Trout. It was not an Atlantic Salmon, nor a Bass - about the only thing it could be is a Rainbow Trout. It looked to be about 20 inches long. I trolled flies all day long, but I never saw it again.
As I always say... if there's one, there's more. I'll be out looking for them every chance I get.
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