sport recreation

The Joy of Fly Fishing in New Brunswick

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 06:22 AM PDT

Like I said in the previous post, Casey, Jamie, Ron and I were fishing French Lake New Brunswick on Sunday and had a pretty good day. We caught lots of chain pickerel and even acted a bit foolish at times, well okay, most of the time.

We started of the day with Jamie in Ron’s boat and I was in Casey’s boat.

We moved to the middle of channel to head out to our first fishing spot. Ron and Jamie took off while Casey and I trolled to our first fishing spot.

It was about a minute or two of trolling and I felt a hard strike and it was gone, then almost instantly Casey had a fish on that doubled his rod.

Casey's 23 1/2 Chain Pickerel, first fish of the day.

He landed the first pickerel of the day and it wasn’t too shabby at 23 1/2″. We know how big it was because Casey has this cool invention, called a ruler, fastened to his boat for easily measuring fish.

That last little dig was for Jamie.

I, on the other hand decided it was probably better to save my energy for later in the day, so I didn’t bother landing any fish for the first few hours.

I did pretend to fish so Casey wouldn’t think I was slacking off.

Casey landed 4 pickerel before I even got one close to the boat, but once I started I was on fire and soon caught to Casey. The last day we were out Casey had me 3 to zip before I got started too.

I caught a few pickerel that looked like they beat Casey’s 23 1/2 inch pickerel but once measure well they didn’t measure up. One particular pickerel looked like it would beat him but he looked at it and said 22″. I measured it and sure enough it was 22″.

Then came pickerel number 25 and it hit hard and didn’t come near the surface. It fought hard and stayed down, so of course I thought it was was big pickerel.

Jamie did his best to beat it to death with the net but it was a determined pickerel and a good hook set, eventually Jamie stopped smacking it with the net and I landed it.

When I measure it I started doing my happy dance as it measure out at 25 inches, a new personal best for me. I beat my previous personal best pickerel by 1/2 inch, which I caught at French Lake a couple of months earlier.

I am still trying to beat my fishing buddy Roland’s best pickerel at 26″ more than 20 years ago in Cassidy Lake near Norton. That was his very first pickerel every by the way.

Both Casey and Jamie tied at the end of the day with 22 pickerel each and I ended the day with 26 pickerel. Casey and Jamie also landed a perch or two.

You can see Casey cheering me on from the peanut gallery. Now I know why Jamie laughed and took a second picture of my 25 inch pickerel.

25-inch-chain-pickerel
Oh Happy Day, A New Person Best for Jimmy

Jamie was in Ron’s boat for the better part of the day so I didn’t get to take any images of his fish. But once he was back in Casey’s boat he landed this angry pickerel.

jamieandpickerel
Jamie’s First Chain Pickerel Once Ron Returned Him

I think Jamie landed another 7-10 pickerel and one perch once he was back in Casey’s boat.

It’s so much fun getting out like that. Great to have met Ron although I didn’t get much of a chance to talk as our boats headed in different directions for the day and only met up to brag about our catch.