The Joy of Fly Fishing in New Brunswick

I wasn't thinking about trout season coming to a close on the 15th so I'm glad Casey and I got another day on the Shepody river before it was over for another year. It gave me an opportunity to finally catch a rainbow trout.

It was also good to get out of New Horton lake before some of those waves swept me overboard. Okay, they may not have been big enough flip me out of the boat but they sure were chilly when they went down the back of my neck.

Since moving to New Brunswick I've caught lots of brook trout using both spinning and fly fishing gear. I never tire of fishing Brookies. A few years ago I was fishing with fishing buddy Kerry and hooked into my first every brown trout. I had no idea we even had brown trout in New Brunswick.

On a fly in fishing trip into Quebec Kerry and I got to experience sight fishing for lake trout in early spring. It should have been rather cold but the temperature was so hot that year we didn't even need shirts most of the time. What an experience.

However in the 30 or so years I've lived in New Brunswick I had never caught a rainbow trout, well not until our last day on the Shepody river.

Casey was showing me how to catch rainbow trout but I can be a little slow to catch on I guess because I believe he had landed about 5 before I learned enough to catch my own rainbow.

In the image on the right Casey has dinner in his hands. A nice fat little rainbow that measured in at 12".

Most of the rainbows we caught were in the 6 and 8 inch range but they didn't realize they were that small and fought like they were considerably bigger.

The Shepody river was the perfect place to be on a windy day like we had and Casey knew exactly where to fish to avoid the worst part of the wind. The sections of river Casey took me to was so much clearer that the main parts of the river which were pretty churned up and dirty.

We were fishing sections that were so calm and clear that I could easily see 10 or more feet into the water. When we could come back to the main section of the river the water colour was completely different and I could not see two feet into the water.

Out of the wind on the Shepody river

Casey definitely out fished me on both New Norton lake for smallies as well as the Shepody for rainbow trout but I did manage to catch 6 or 7 rainbows before the day was done and I had a great time.

The scenery was awesome and even though I get to see New Brunswick scenery all the time I never get tired of it. Now that I have a camera that helps cancels most of the shake in my hands I jump all around the boat taking a lot of pictures.

The image on the right is actually two trees that have grown so close to each other they look like one tree.

We also saw dozens of planes leaving their trails all over the sky. I don't think there was a time I looked into the sky that I didn't see at least one high flying play going over head.

There was one section of river we moved up and down where there was a busy beaver hauling lumber. Every time we got too close he would slap his tail on the water and dive.

Of course we never saw him until he had already slapped his tail and scared the crap out of me.

I did finally get a picture of his head sticking out of the water.

I was hoping the wind would die down enough for me to get my fly rod out. I so love catching trout on the fly rod. But it was meant to be as we fished until dark and of course that's when the wind stopped and the water turned to glass.

I was taking pictures of the plane flying high over our heads and even tried to zoom in as close as I could. I am so pleased with my new Canon Vixia HFR32 Camcorder.

The shot on the left was taken without an zoom while the image below was zoomed in as far as I could zoom it in and the camera shows almost no shaking at all.

Very impressed. I took 300 pictures this day. Maybe that's why it took me so long to start catching those feisty rainbow trout.