The Joy of Fly Fishing in New Brunswick

Source: FlickrFishing as a sport and recreational activity is very popular in the United States as well as Canada where I live.

Fishing has been a traditional hobby of the Americans as well as tourists in the USA. The Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, including the many streams of water across the country offer greater opportunities for Salt water fishing.

United States has so many rivers, lakes and inland streams for fresh water adventures that you could never fish them in just one lifetime.

Fishing in the US of A is very diverse because of the fish migrating every season. The weather, however, is one factor that restrains people from fishing. Rain, fog, snow, and wind affect the fishermen since these conditions may sometimes be dangerous to them. One of the great things about nasty weather fishing, not too much competition for the best fishing spots.

Since the fish are diverse, fishermen have a lot of fishing techniques depending on the type of fish they are targeting. They can do surf fishing, fly fishing, bait casting, pier fishing and many other techniques.

Florida for example, is one state that has long been famous for fishing and has to be my favorite location for big bass and bonefish. Everywhere in Florida you see a lot of men and women of different ages getting excited about fishing. You see them holding fishing lines in bridges, causeways, riverbanks and piers.

Also, Charter fishing boats are popular in all coasts of Florida.

Florida is known for its saltwater fishing and fly fishing. You need to be versatile to get the most out of Florida’s fly fishing adventures. Fly fishing and saltwater fishing are your choices depending on the time of the year.

There are abundant Redfish in Daytona Beach, Titusville and St. John’s River. Spotted Sea Trout are also found in Florida. You can find a local guide in the area and they will be able to help you enjoy your fishing experience.

Florida has been a hot place for fishing especially during the start of October. There are large numbers of Redfish until mid morning. There are a lot of Snooks being caught. During the afternoon when the temperature is high, there are a large numbers of jacks, ladyfish and trout that keep the fishermen in action.

Americans and tourists have a variety of reason why they fish in the U.S.A. Some love to see the sunrise and sunset in the water. Besides fishing, some love to watch dolphins, whales and birds. But still it is the catching of fish that really thrill them. Fishing in the U.S.A is a meaningful pastime whether in groups or all alone. The money you will spend is worth the fun and excitement including building relationships.

Image from WikipediaA few years ago my good fishing buddy Roland took me to a spot along the side of the road where he used to stop every time he drove by and dropped a line in to see if there was a brookie sitting there. That’s as far as he ever went at this spot and never ventured into the thick under brush to see what was on the other side.

He always seemed to catch a few nice trout in the early part of fishing season but nothing much later on. I am glad he at least showed me the spot.

I was talking to another fishing buddy and we were talking about going out to catch a few trout and that it would be good to try a few new spots.

I started telling him about Roland’s little brookie spot and said that he had never fished beyond the road and that it was less than an hour away. In just minutes we were ready and on the road.

I didn’t bother taking my Fly rod with me because the brush was just too thick. It was going to be tough just using a spinning rod. We fished the road, caught a couple of little brookie and then we headed in.

It was farming country but it looked more like a war zone in there. Downed trees, old cars, garbage. What’s wrong with people anyways?

I am not sure how long we had been fishing or at least trying and we were talking about heading back when the trees opened up and the river widened into a brook we could both walk and fish.

It was like we had been teleported to an entirely different river it looked so different. At that moment I wish I had my Fly rod with me but I wasn’t fighting my way back.

It was only a few minutes later that I hooked a trout that didn’t seem quite the same as the brookies I have caught over the years and when it jumped it didn’t look the same.

I had just caught my first brown trout and both of us were blown away. We didn’t even know there were brown trout in New Brunswick and I have been down here living for about 15 years at that point.

Our day just got even more exciting that it was when we came out of the bush to such a nice river to fish. It’s easy to lose track of time when you are having a day like we were having.

We fished all day and caught many fish and before we knew it the light was fading and we had no idea how much further it was to the next road. At that point we heard voices up a head and though it was the road.

It turned out it was a father and son having a little fishing fun. They had access to the river from the road and told us that the bridge was about 20 minutes ahead of us and that when we were done they would pick us up and take us back to the car.

We measured the distance back to the car and we would have had to walk just about 5 miles to get back there. Thanks for the ride buddy.

Sport fishing brown trout in New Brunswick is a new pass time now. Just a few more weeks and I will be out there again, but I don’t go in the same way now and I do take my Fly rod with me and always a friend.

I am in love with fly fishing in New Brunswick, well that’s what my wife says. Really I am not in love with it it, it’s more of an addicted if you ask me. If I dont’ get my fix of fly fishing I get cranky. Like now, since it’s been way too long since I was able to wet a line last.

When we visit family in Ontario the subject of fly fishing in New Brunswick comes up. All the guys in our family are fishermen but I am the only one that fly fishes. In 30 years I have not been able to convince any of them to come down here to New Brunswick and do some fly fishing with me.

They don’t know what their missing. Instead they just sit in the middle of the lake where our cottage is and dangle their lines and drink beer. That’s not for me, plus I don’t drink until after the fishing is done for the day.

I still enjoy getting together with my relatives but I don’t enjoy their fishing strategies, or lack of them.

They are going to read this post and most likely be a bit annoyed with me but hey, I get under their skin all the time. I am the youngest of the bunch at 55 and don’t plan to change.

I don’t care to tell people where I do my fly fishing. New Brunswick anglers can be pretty tight lipped. I can tell you a few locations, just not specific enough for you to find my honey holes.

Just a little plug for one of my website design clients, Big Paw Outfitters. Kevin knows the best places to take his clients when they come to him for a fly fishing New Brunswick experience at their lodge. So giving you Kevin’s website may just lead to you finding a few of my best spots but when a fly fishing guide is taking you there I guess it’s ok.

Big Paw Outfitters is located in Renous, New Brunswick and is only a stones throw away from prime fly fishing for our great Atlantic salmon.

Check out Big Paw Outfitters website. Kevin also guides for black bear and moose, but I will let him tell you all about that.

My best fly fishing buddy Roland and I headed out for a day of brook trout fishing in a few beaver ponds just outside the north end of Fundy National Park.

There are 5 or 6 ponds that I know of but I am sure there are more. We try not to point out their location as they are small and can get fished out pretty easy.

We used to take my canoe back in and that was always a job that had me exhausted by the time we fought our way through the thick brush. Then came the float tubes and that part of the trip got a whole lot easier.

What used to take us at least a half hour to get in there was now cut down to about 10 minutes or so and I would arrive in a better mood and not so wiped.

I actually dragged my canoe in there by myself a few times and was so angry and beat that I had to sit down and wait until I was more relaxed before heading out on the water. Always better to fish with friends anyways.

We have had a few nice feeds of brookies from these ponds.

This one year, about 10 or more years ago now, where the water was much higher than we had ever seen it.

This particular place I am talking about has two beaver ponds with a water way between them just big enough to take the canoe through and deep enough so that it doesn’t freeze to the bottom in the winter so the beavers can still get around.

So, like I said the water was high and it was early spring so we didn’t have the canoe this time. If we had I would not be telling you this story.

We walked into the first pond and started walking around it amazed at how high the water was. It was like a totally different place. More like a lake now instead of a pond. Okay maybe not that much bigger.

We wanted to get to the other side where we could get a better position to fish for a while. With the water so high it was going to take us another half hour or so to walk around it but we were eager and decided to cross at the little water way between the ponds. It was normally about 3 feet deep at the most.

I tried to step in slowly but couldn’t quite reach the bottom but I was sure I was only inches away but didn’t want to take that first step of faith so we had this ‘you go first’ thing going for about 10 mintues before Roland decided to be the brave one and stepped in.

Quickly the water was right to the top of his waders but he made it to the other side with only the top inch of his getting wet. I laughed and thought to myself how happy I was that I was a bit taller than him.

Well I wasn’t standing two feet from his left arm when he crossed and thought I would be fine. Well I wasn’t fine and that water was freezing cold.

I made that first step, right where I thought Roland did and instantly I was right up to my neck. Even though Roland was right their and grabbed me I was very wet and his laughing didn’t help.

I had to strip off and get the water out of my everywhere but fortunately the day was wasted because the air temperature was a whole lot warmer than that water and after a few minutes of grumblin’ and complaining I stopped shaking so much and got dressed again.

A couple of minutes back in my waders and the temperature all evened out and I was fine.

It was my first time fishing the Renous river in a line-up of other fly fishers and I was a bit nervous about moving at the right speed. Some of the old guys, older than me that is and I’m 55, tend to get a little cranky if you don’t move your butt fast enough.

It was a nice day with a bit of a breeze blowing, nothing I couldn’t handle. Then things changed, the clouds moved in, the wind picked up and then it started to rain.

The rain was refreshing as it was pretty warm but the wind I could do without. I struggle with windy days.

I was moving up the river and the salmon were all along bank of the river jumping about every minute or so. It was pretty exciting.

The tide was out and there is a rock bottom like a sandbar my son was sitting on watching us fly fish.

Well as the wind picked up I tried moving my rod from my right hand to my left hand while casting and was doing quite well until on gust of wind that seemed to spin right around me caught the line and wrapped around my head and my neck and the fly went right through my earlobe.

It wasn’t painful at all because it happened in a split second. Some glad I always were a hat and glasses.

Well my son jumped up and started laughing. He did stop laughing long enough to say I finally got up the nerve to get an ear pierced, as the blood was running down my neck.

The blood wasn’t as bad as it seemed, it was more the rain making it look like that.

I never missed a beat, more out of being nervous with all the people around me, but I snipped the line, left the fly in my earlobe and kept moving as I tied on another fly.

It was easy to cut the hook because it had gone clear through so it was a plainless piercing.

My son wanted me to keep the fly in to show his mom. It brought back painful memories of her going to the hospital with a hook in her head.

Here in New Brunswick the Atlantic salmon don’t always make it back to the ocean the same year they head up river to spawn. These are the salmon I am aiming for when fishing season opens.

The Atlantic salmon don’t feed when the come up the river and if you want to catch one you need to know how to get a predatory reaction or you won’t be fighting anything but time and black flies. Okay there won’t be any black flies, yet.

Today I am ready to tie a few of my favorite early spring in New Brunswick streamers, the Mickey Finn.

The Mickey Finn was just about the first Atlantic salmon catching fly I ever tied. It’s simple to tie and only takes a few minutes so I can tie a bunch in an evening and I can even tie them right at the waters edge and be fishing it in under 10 minutes. If I am really excited it might take me 15 minutes because I get real shakey.

The Mickey Finn I use to catch the hunger black salmon in the early spring.

The Ingredients that make for an early spring Atlantic salmon’s dinner.

Hook: Mustad #3665A, #38941

Sizes: 2-10 and maybe even a 12

Body: Flat silver tinsel right off your Christmas tree, it’s still up right?

Ribbing: Oval Silver Tinsel

Wing: Yellow bucktail for the bottom of the wing, red for the middle and then yellow again for the top layer of the wing.

Thread: Black

As you can see there isn’t a lot that goes into the Mickey Finn but the salmon love and destroy them even though they are very durable flies, so I like to keep a few extras on hand. My fishing buddies never have enough. I like to give them a hard time so I pretend that I don’t have any left and then I start checking my many pockets and before you know it I come up with one or two more.

FACT: Something I didn’t know until recently was that the Mickey Finn was made famous by John Alden Knight in the 1930s.

Image from WikipediaMy life isn’t just about fly fishing in New Brunswick oh no. I also love to bait cast and spin cast for early season salmon, trout, bass and pickerel.

I have a few friends that don’t fly fish but I still love a day on the water with them pretty much any time. Of course if I have been asked to go fly fishing most of the time fly fishing will win out.

We even fish for salmon in the early spring while the fishing rules have not changed to fly fishing only as they do after the middle of May. The dates are not the same for all our salmon fishing areas so you really have to know your guide and the rules.

I have about 6 spots that I like to try on opening day, or as close to it as I can, to see how I do compared to previous years. I have had a couple of great years but for the most part the open day has never been that great so when I get a year that rocks I remember it.

One year that stands out in my mind was a spot just about 1 hours drive from home. It is so easy to get to that I am surprised I don’t see more fishers out there. But then again the first year I found this place I had to crawl through brush and it was tough going.

On the way out I looked for a better way and that’s how I now an easy way to get to it. My lips are sealed.

Back to the story…

I found this spot in the middle of the fishing season about 20 years ago and thought it would be a good place to try opening day.

So April 15, about 1988 or so I headed to this spot which is right at where the lake empties into a nice little brook.

I was standing about 30 feet away from where the beavers had it damned up. I didn’t even get to the water and a snow storm hit. It snowed so hard I couldn’t see across this little brook that wasn’t much wider than rod was long.

I had the best day of brookie fishing I have ever had. The trout all seem to have a death wish and I could hardly get the line to the water before I was fighting one of these spunky little brook trout.

I admit they weren’t big but for the area 12 and 13 inch trout are a good size and in the early spring while the water is still cold they taste soooo good.

The lake was still completely frozen and only about a foot of ice was gone around the damn so getting a cast into the lake was out of the question.

I have had a few other opening days like that in different areas and its fun to get out and see if I can do better than other years.

Sport fishing New Brunswick is a lot of fun but it’s so much more fun when you take a friend.

Well I gotta go and tie a few more flies for opening day. I am going to start tying the Mickey Finn. An easy salmon fly to tie but a deadly one for those salmon that have been in the river all winter and are heading to sea.