The Joy of Fly Fishing in New Brunswick

I like hearing stories from those who hooked into their first Atlantic salmon that they managed to land and photograph. Well even if they didn’t get to photograph it, like my first salmon, but that’s another story.

A guy who has become a good friend, Jamie, who has also taken me on so many fishing trips got to go on a salmon fishing trip and got his first salmon.

Take a minute or two and read Jamie’s Atlantic salmon fly fishing experience. I always love the excitement when someone is sharing.

You might laugh at the title but sometimes I need protection for other fishers trying to catch my fish, so I started training pickerel, when they are still pickerel pups, to recognize my call for help. They protect me for those that would catch my fish.

They usually do one of two things. First they will try to cut the line of anyone close to me that has a fellow fish on that exceeds 20 inches and if that fails they will come out of the water like a torpedo and try to knock them out of the boat.

Even with all that training and dozens of them scattered around New Brunswick I still couldn’t stop Jamie from catching a bigger pickerel than me. I may have to resort to sharpening the edges of his paddles so they cut the line better.

Jamie took a good hit to the kidneys from one of my trained pickerel but it didn’t stop him, barely slowed him down.

Well now I’m off to think up a new scheme for getting the bigger fish.

P.S. I did think of leaving him home the next trip but it’s his car and his canoe, so I had to rethink that one as well.

First, my personal best chain pickerel was caught while fishing with a friend some 20 years ago in Cassidy Lake. He was pickerel fishing for the first time and landed a 26 inch pickerel, show off.

Well I have caught plenty that size over the years but was never able to break my personal best until Casey took Jamie and I fishing in French Lake a couple weeks ago. I laned a 24 1/2 inches for a new personal best. And was the biggest for the day as well.

Then a week later Casey was out with a first time pickerel fisher and Casey landed his personal best at 24 1/2 inches, tying my record.

I guess Jamie felt left out because when we went fishing a few days ago he caught his personal best which smashed our previous record. Jamies’ chain pickerel measured in at 24 5/8 inches.

Jamie’s Record Breaking Pickerel

You can read about it on Jamies’ Pickerel Fishing in New Brunswick post.