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.
