Well, last week I missed the opportunity to go fishing because I allowed myself to stay at our guitar jam just a little too long and had a couple more beers than I should have and then there was that BBQ at 4am. I am sure that didn’t help. Anyways it was after 5am when I arrived home and there was no fishing that day.

I was invited to another guitar jam this past Saturday night and thought about declining the invite, for about 3 seconds, but said yes. Fishing was on my mind so I had no trouble calling it quites early and was in my bed by 2am. 5 hours of sleep was all I needed to be ready for a day of fishing and I didn’t drink enough to have a hangover, I was good to go.

Jamie’s little girl had a bad case of Hives so we almost didn’t get to go as they were concerned they may need to take her to the hospital. I had hives when I was a kid and it was far from pleasant so I completely understood. Well everything seemed under control and his little girl was hanging in there just fine so we took off.

On The Road Again

I tend to babble a lot when I am excited, and I was, and I did, all the way there.

Of course we looked at every bit of water on the way up commenting on how high the water was running in most places. My thoughts immediately visited years past when the water was this high and had memories of little or no fish but heck it was a day out and it was a gorgeous day.

When I fish all day without catching anything I just tell my wife it was a great day for hiking and then smile.

Seeing the brooks and rivers bursting there banks didn’t really prepare me for just how high the water was yesterday.

For starters the spot we park the car at Redbank has a drop off to the water of no less than 15 feet, maybe more but today the water was right up to the car, so if I stepped into the water at the point I am sure it was at least 15 – 20 feet deep.

In 27 years of fishing Redbank I have never seen the water this high. The reason I remember it was 27 years is because that was the year my wife and I married. On the way to Fredericton from Moncton the river was right to the road and the moose were all standing on the road side. Police and rangers were everywhere along the highway keeping people from stopping to take pictures as the moose were stressed enough already.

NEWS FLASH

Just as I am writing this post the gal on the radio said the Saint John river just peeked so hopefully we can go a few days without rain allowing for the water levels to drop. I am sure the fishing will pick up after that.

The two culvarts at Redbank, both are about six feet high, were almost complete submerged by the water. There was only about 2 inches of space at the top of the culvart and the waves were smashing through it making such a roaring sound you would expect a sea monters to reach out and grab you.

Already looking forward to our next fishing trip.

Image by smikulen via Flickr

We have had extremely windy days for the past week or so and it’s been really cold, even though the temps were a bit higher than freezing. So, it was nice to get up this morning to see how still it is outside, not the slightest breeze. Would have been a great day for a bit of fly fishing but I should tease myself by even thinking about it.

I was up at 5am as usual, can’t seem to sleep past that any more. I grabbed a nice hot fresh cup of coffee and headed to my office to check the email. The sun is coming up earlier every day and by 6am it’s already bright out. It’s nice to sit here in my office and gaze out into my backyard. You can hear all the birds but as it gets brighter you can start to see them moving around throug the shrubs and bushes in our yard. So relaxing.

I took my son’s pitbull, Honey, out to do her business a few minutes ago and even though the sun wasn’t above the horizon yet it was quite bright out. I opened the back door and looked out. The driveway was a big matt of little wiggling worms migrating from one side to the other, not sure why they do that. Most don’t finish the journey and end up being swept into the compost pile.

Honey is strange, she will chase a leaf around the yard when the wind blows it but she just totally ignored the worms, like they weren’t even there. Normally she is sticking her nose into everything but she just went about her business, then found an empty spot in the drive and sat there watching the birds flying around her yard.

My mind was raising trying to figure out how I could get out of yard work and slip away with a bunch of those worms for a day of brook trout fishing, but the truth is I would have to come home to a very cold house if I did something like that. I will have to get out during the week while she is at work.

Well I am off to grab another coffee before Jenny wakes up and puts me to work.

Image via Wikipedia

I was a little slow getting my fishing act together this year. There was a time that I couldn’t sleep days before fishing season opened but this year we don’t have a car and my mind worked entirely different than other years, heck I didn’t even get my fly fishing gear out of the basement until yesterday, that was already 5 days after opening day. What a slacker I am become in my old age.

Then I get a phone call asking me if I was interested in going fishing yesterday. I wasn’t expecting that and had gone out the night before for a guitar jam. We drank a bit and jammed until day light, so when Jamie called I was brain dead. I even think I had trouble talking for a change.

Well after I got some sleep and took a couple of headache pills I started gathering up my fishing gear and brought it all up here to my office to sort it out. I saw what I had and what I needed and headed up to Canadian Tire for supplies.

Here it is Monday and now I am ready to go fishing while all my fishing buddies are at work, bummer.

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A friend of my mine, who asked me many years ago to take him fishing with me, showed me a place that he would catch a few brook trout a year. He told me they run around 8 inches but that he had never left the road to see what the river actually looked like. I don’t know if I could fish a spot at the road, catch fish but never venture into the bush to see what’s in there.

Well a couple of years after he showed me that little spot I took another fishing buddy, but we headed into the bush to see what we could find.

I could see why people would just fish the culvart there and leave the rest. We walked into the bush and everywhere we looked it was trash, even old rusty cars and a few dead animals farms had just thrown in there.

We continued for about 15 minutes and couldn’t even get our lines wet there was so much cover over the river. But then, just about the time we were going to turn around and head back to the car we came to a clearing and the river opened up.

We caught trout immediately. It was great. It went from not being about to get a line wet to where we could walk side by side down the river. What a day we had.

It just goes to show that you can’t really tell what a river or brook is like unless you fish it.

I had never, ever caught or seen a brown trout in New Brunswick but this day I caught two brown trout. I was exstatic and couldn’t stop talking about it. I actually caught a brown trout, heck I didn’t really think we had brown trout here at all.

Kerry and I walked that river all day until it was dark and still hadn’t seen a road. We weren’t sure how much longer we should stay in the river. We knew there was a road on either side of the river, we just weren’t sure how far away they were.

Then we heard voices. There was a father and son fishing from the bank just in front of us. We asked how far it was to the road and the dad said about a 3 minute walk ahead of us.

Then he asked where we were parked. I laughed and said it was a day’s walk behind us.

He told us to wait at the bridge ahead of us and when they were done they would pick us up and take us to our car. It was 5 miles to the car and that would have been a long walk in the dark. Especially when we didn’t know how far away it was, plus we had on our waders and boots so it would have been a tougher walk.

I know that when we hit that spot this year we will leave a bike hidden by the bridge so that Jamie will be able to ride and get the car. Notice I said Jamie would, Ha, he’s much younger than I am and in much better shape.

We didn’t take our fly rods in because we thought it was all bush and would be really tough to use the fly rods but I will be sure to take it with me on the next trek in.

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