After my heart attack I started walking. I was only able to walk 3 minutes the first time and was really scared to death to leave the house but I did it.

The next day I walked a few more minutes and kept doing that until I was up to 30 minutes a day. It took me a bit longer but I eventually reached 40 minutes and at that time I requested a stress test as it was the only way I was ever going to get the okay to go fishing again.

Well we lined up the stress test and when I arrived I noticed the wall where the treadmill was was a huge scene of a river that I am sure I saw a salmon or two jump while I was being tested.

Even though the scene was inspiring and I was willing to go until I dropped the heart specialist stopped the test mid-way. I just was ready to push the limits.

That was another year of no fishing for Jimmy. Bummer, to day the least.

I continued walking and change the area I walked to one that was more hilly. Wow, what a workout.

The next time I went for my stress test I passed with flying colors but by then we were broke because I could no longer work so I still didn’t get fishing that year. Another bummer but if we can’t afford to do other things as a family I don’t feel right about going fishing. So I stayed home, all summer and fall.

Now it’s four years later and I have make a living on the internet now and I am ready to go fishing, but…

… today I went for my first walk since the snow and ice started. I can’t go outside if the weather is too far below zero. My muscles lock up and I just can’t function.

Well long story short, my legs need more walking. I’m exhausted but I feel great. A week or two of walking again and I will be ready for a day on the water with my wife’s blessing as well and my doctors.

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.

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.

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.

FACT: New Brunswick has more than 60,000 km of rivers, lakes and streams, that’s 37,284 miles for you non-Canadians.

We have 49 species of fish in New Brunswick but I really only fish salmon, trout (brookies, lake and browne), smallmouth bass, chain pickerel and some perch now and then.

Our Atlantic salmon is world-renowned and we get anglers from around the world coming for the challenge of catching salmon that don’t eat while in the rivers spawning.

We also have some of the most colourful brook trout that come in all sizes from pan fry size up into the pounds. Many anglers have been surprised by catching them in pounds, when they thought the rivers and brooks had had 8-12 inchers.

I live in Moncton and when I get the urge to cast a line I can be on the water fishing trout in just a few minutes and to fish for a few salmon I am within an hour.

The 2008 Fishing Guide

It extremely important to have your fishing license on your person and to have read the 2008 fishing rules and understood it because their is no room in our system for ignorance of the law and the wardens will take you in.

I moved to Moncton, New Brunswick in 1981 after been raised by various foster parents from the time I was 5 until I ran away at age 15. I knew my roots were in Moncton and that’s where I headed. Well I fell in love with New Brunswick and especially the fly fishing.

This information on Moncton is directly from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Moncton is a Canadian city located in Westmorland County, New Brunswick.

The city is situated in southeastern New Brunswick, in the Petitcodiac River valley, and is about 55 km (34 mi) from the Nova Scotia border. Moncton lies at the geographic centre of the Maritime Provinces. The community has the nickname “Hub City” because of its central location and also because Moncton has historically been the railway and land transportation hub for the Maritime Provinces.

European settlement began in 1733 when Acadian farmers arrived after migrating up the Petitcodiac River from the Bay of Fundy. The region was captured by the English in 1755, and the original Acadian inhabitants were subsequently deported. The official founding of the community was in 1766, with the arrival of Pennsylvania “Deutsch” settlers sponsored by the Philadelphia Land Company. The settlement was initially agricultural but by the mid 1800s, a wooden shipbuilding industry flourished. The shipbuilding economy collapsed in the 1860s but was quickly replaced by the railway industry when, in 1871, the Intercolonial Railway of Canada chose Moncton to be their headquarters. Moncton would then remain a railroad town for well over a century.

Moncton was first incorporated in 1855 and was named after Lt. Col. Robert Monckton, the British military commander who had captured nearby Fort Beauséjour a century earlier; and who had later been given responsibility for overseeing the Acadian deportation. The collapse of the shipbuilding industry caused the town to lose its civic charter in 1862 but the community was able to survive and to reincorporate in 1875 on the strength of the developing railway industry. As a result, the city adopted the motto Resurgo.

Although Moncton was traumatized twice; by the collapse of the shipbuilding industry in the 1860s and by the closure of the CNR locomotive shops in the 1980s, the city’s economy was able to rebound strongly on both occasions. At present, the city’s economy is stable and diversified. Moncton’s economy is based on its transportation, distribution, retailing and commercial heritage, but is also supplemented by strength in the educational, health care, financial and insurance sectors. The strength of the economy has received national recognition and the local unemployment rate is consistently less than the national average.

The Moncton Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) is one of the top ten fastest growing metropolitan areas in Canada and is also the fastest growing urban region east of Toronto. The CMA includes the neighbouring city of Dieppe and the town of Riverview, as well as adjacent areas of Westmorland and Albert counties.

Moncton has a CMA population of 126,424, which makes Moncton the most populous metropolitan area in New Brunswick, and also makes it the second largest CMA in the Maritime Provinces, after Halifax, and the third largest CMA in Atlantic Canada, after Halifax and St. John’s, Newfoundland.

The municipal coat of arms illustrates Moncton’s agricultural, industrial and railway heritages, along with the Petitcodiac River’s tidal bore.

When I started fly fishing I began fishing trout in small streams. Nothing like a good feed of brook trout while the water is still really cold. Later in the season as the water temperature rises I tend to strictly catch and release as I find they are a bit wormy by then.

After I had practised fly fishing for a while I moved up to fly fishing for salmon. That is an experience you can share but it is always best experienced to really understand why it’s so addictive.

Fly fishing for salmon and trout is great but one day I decided to fly fish for bass. I found this to be a great way to get some one hooked on fly fishing. The main reason is that you can fly fishing for trout and salmon but a lot of care needs to be taken to keep out of the trees but not so with the places we fish for bass.

I purchased two float tubes so that I could reach areas that are out of reach of other boats and even canoes, plus I was equipped to take friends fishing.

Over the years I have found a ton of places bass live. Out of those many great fishing spots I have a few places that are just made for fly fishing newbies. They can learn fly fishing basics, catch fish with dealing with the wind or getting hooked on everything around them.

As they grow in experience I introduce them to some of my other fishing spots that take a bit more learnin’ and practice.

My favorite spot to take fly fishing newbies is a flooded strip-mine that has been stocked with smallmouth bass. This is such a great spot because it has little to zero wind, a lot of hiding places for bass to ambush their dinner and you can fish this area with or without a boat or float tube.

The area is surrounded by high hills created by all the mining which keeps the wind down. Plus over the years trees have taken root and now there is even better cover for the bass and more trees block more of the wind on those windy days.