Medway Report 1 April 2008

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