Fishing With My Boys On The Rideau

I guess it's every dad's dream to spend time doing what he loves with his children. Thanks to the kindness of my wife's cousins, my boys and I have been able to spend time together fishing on the Rideau. The cousins have a place just north of Kingston and they have graciously offered us the use of it for a while the past two summers. My older boy is a very serious university student and has many years of study behind him and still ahead. He really appreciates the chance to unwind and fish alongside his younger brother and his dad. We catch a few bass and a few pike but we really have a blast fishing for bluegills and crappies from the kayaks and float tubes.

I really enjoy watching my sons catch fish and supplying them with my hand tied jigs. They are impressed at how well they can catch fish with dad's " fur and feather stuff"


There was even a new personal best bluegill for Dad on our visit in July of this year.

Solo Kayak/Camping /Fishing Trip

I was all set to go out with a fellow yakfisher and had my Tarpon on the car and all my gear packed when my friend suddenly had to cancel. Since I was ready I decided to go to another lake closer to home where I have soloed in the past. This lake has big smallmouth in it but the shoreline is swampy almost every where. There is only one good place to camp. I set up right at the water's edge. Kayak paddled a little easier with the two coolers on shore. It's rather amazing to find this one grassy piece of solid ground in a place where the shore line is a boggy mess of Labrador Brush and drowned cedar trees. Anyway this would be my bed and breakfast for this excursion.


I was able to pitch my tent right at the water's edge and my kayak slid right up on the grass in front of it. One of the most convenient pitches I've ever made. I was able to organize a nice cooking area with some logs and an old piece of plywood. After cooking lunch I inflated my backpackable float tube by mouth. It rolls up small enough to lash onto the bow of the yak. Got my flyrod and a couple of boxes of flies and kicked around in the tube for a couple of hours with nothing to show for it except a couple of rock bass.

The day was too windy for the flyrod and the float tube so I explored a bit with my spinning rod in the kayak. After a couple of hours of casting practice I paddled back to camp and pulled up the yak for the night. After supper when the winds had subsided I planned to go out in the tube again and cast surface poppers with the flyrod. It took quite a while for the wind to die down and the results of my efforts with the flyrod were again a couple of rock bass. I decided to call it a night and get up at dawn.

In the early light of morning I made coffee and enjoyed a breakfast of bacon and eggs. I'm a surviving heart patient who underwent quintuple bypass 10 years ago so I hardly ever eat bacon anymore. Boy was it good!
With little to show for my efforts with the flyrod and the spinning rod I decided to give my baitcaster a workout. That proved to be a wise choice as you can see below.

That is a big net and that is one of the biggest smallies I've ever caught. It was just shy of 23" long and with the girth I estimate this fish was easily 6 pounds. It fought hard for quite a while and went on several reel screaming runs. Tried to throw the hooks on a couple of spectacular leaps but for once, I was able to land the big one. With bass I usually just "lip" them but too many fish lost at the last minute have made me wise and I now carry a net for the big ones.

The fish took a white "lipless" crankbait trolled slowly from the kayak. So as you can see although I love to catch my fish with flies I am definitely not a purist and will try a number of different presentations before admitting defeat. Twice now I have camped on this lake and almost been "skunked" but both times I caught a very significant fish to save the trip. Last years fish was almost a clone of this one and it too was caught on a crankbait. Unfortunately I had "stowed" the camera as I was on my way out. That fish took on the "proverbial last cast". It's picture is permanently etched in my mind and the "last cast" aspect will help me remember it for a long time.

River Smallmouth From the Pontoon

Last outing was for river smallmouth, floating and fishing from my pontoon boat. I took along the whole arsenal. Baitcaster, ultra-lite spinning and of course the flyrod with a zillion flies. I even added some nice new crayfish patterns that I had tied up the night before. As things go I started out with a jig and twistertail and the fish wouldn't let me put it down. I missed a huge bass on a Zoom Fluke with the baitcaster. With results like this the flyrod didn't get exercised the way it should have. My buddy was doing okay with his flyrod crayfish but he wasn't hitting fish the way I was on the jig. So to make a long story short. I had my small tackle box full of Rapalas, cranks and spinnerbaits, a big carry bag of plastics and my usual arsenal of flies. I got all my fish on that one jig and twistertail. I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to go minimalist and fish out of my shirt pockets but it hasn't happened yet. You never know when you might need something that wouldn't fit in the shirt pocket.
Here's the first fish to grace my new landing net.

Yarn Flies

I enjoy fishing streamer type flies. For several years now I have incorporated various craft store yarns in my tying. They have been very effective. Some of the poorest quality "Dollar Store" yarns have great mobility in the water. Try it you might like it!

Personal Best Crappie

Got this "binder-sized" crappie on a tiny chartreuse and white jig fished with an indicator on my 5 weight flyrod. Bluegill and crappie are a blast on the fly. So too are their beautifully coloured cousins, the pumpkinseeds. These panfish give a good account of themselves on a light rod. (3 weight is even better) I'm hoping my next post will include lots of panfish caught on my upcoming trip to the Rideau River north of Kingston, Ontario.

Hybrid Yaks/Standing

As a 64 year old man I am blessed with good balance and have always been interested in standing capability in a self propelled fishing vessel. Recently I had a chance to fish from a Native Ultimate 12 on the Grand River near Paris and Bradford. It's probably a good thing that I didn't come away impressed by being able to stand in this yak. (more money invested in the fleet). I can stand almost as well in my own Tarpon but even with good balance, standing in a kayak is an accident waiting to happen. I have no qualms about standing in my 16 foot canoe but even these hybrid canoe yaks need stabilizers to provide confidence while standing to fish. All that aside, this Native Ultimate has an incredibly comfortable seat that all yak manufacturers should seek to emulate.

Pentax Optio 90

I recently purchased a new waterproof camera and all the recent pics uploaded are coming from it.



I still haven't had the courage to "dunk" it yet for some underwater release shots but I have checked out its fine "macro" capabilities. Here are some fly shots from my early experimentation.











Here's just the head from the same streamer.

The Other Flyfishing Vessel

With my love of kayak and float tube fishing sometimes my pontoon gets neglected. I bought a new set of oars and rigged a piece of plywood to act as a standing platform. It is pretty cool to be able to stand and flyfish. Here's a large trout I caught recently while standup fishing. Although stand up fishing is good, I still have to sit down to land the fish. Also I like to kick troll at times so standing in fins is somewhat problematic.



Big Rainbow

Old Mojo

I have been using my 11 year old Outcast Fat Cat lately instead of the new Fat Cat that is to be its sucessor. "Old Blue" still has its mojo. Here are some of the trout I have been catching in the month of June. Should have taken this tube on my recent Kwagama Lake trip. This speckled trout caught from one of the ponds at my trout club was bigger than anything I caught on the wilderness trip. The great thing about this fish is that it is a wild trout as the ponds have been stocked with nothing but rainbows for a couple of decades.


SPEAKING OF RAINBOWS

Moose Encounter/God's Grace

By the Grace of our loving Lord, my friend,Bob, and I arrived home safely after our trip to Kwagama. Between Sault St. Marie and Sudbury, after dark we came within inches of hitting a huge cow moose. It was after dark and I was driving the Forester around 105/110 kph. We were enjoying Bill Cosby on my mp3 player. All of a sudden we had the closest encounter with the big moose. The big cow was crossing oblivious to the presence of my vehicle. To imagine the scenario think of a horse coming to your driver window to take an apple from your hand. If my window had been open I could have touched her. She was that close.

My reaction was to rotate the steering wheel an inch or two in the direction away from her and she raised her head with this “holy shit” look on her face and the top of my vehicle went under her head and we passed without contact. A normal violent knee jerk reaction would have had me cranking the wheel frantically and probably flipping the car off the road or into the animal. I know it was the Lord’s presence that made me turn the wheel just ever so slightly to keep us away from tragedy. Praise God! We’re safe at home and exhausted. Would you believe there is no gas on the Trans Canada Highway between the Sault and Parry Sound? If not for the Esso station at Parry Sound we would have had to pull over to sleep in the car until something opened up in the morning.

It is truly miraculous that I made such a minimal steerage correction. That creature just appeared out of nowhere and I wouldn’t have had time to even react on my own strength. It is amazing that I could see the shocked look on the face of the cow and even more amazing that she was able to lift her head and allow me through unscathed. Bob and I could hardly talk we were so taken by the experience and the reality that God was there with us at that moment.

I got to thinking of everything we had done to bring us to the point in time where that moose was going to be there on that stretch of road at precisely that time. If the train had been on time (Was an hour and a half late!) we would have been well on down the road. The stops for coffee and dinner all conspired to put us fatefully on that stretch of road at exactly the same time as one of God’s magnificent creatures was sauntering across the road. Good thing God is in control and fate is not a factor.

Oh, I had to use the spinning rod at times. Ultra-lite of course!

Trout On The Fly

Kwagama Wilderness Speckles

Kwagama Lake is surrounded by Canadian Shield mountains typical of the Lake Superior area.

This lake is reported, by the ministry, to have only speckled trout and it has them in abundance. However, our Humminbird finders kept marking fish at depths which are not frequented by speckled trout. My friend just picked up a portable downrigger to attempt to fish those depths to see what is laying on the bottom in as much as 100 feet. We suspect that there is a lake trout population as well. He'll have to wait until next year to find out as we don't have the financial resources to visit these kinds of places at will.

That's Bob sitting in the ATV trailer waiting for me to take the picture. Some lodge guests choose to fly in at 5 times the price of our Algoma Central Railway train ride. The "Windsor Wormers" on the other ATV chose the economy route as well. The lodge owner and his son meet the train with two 4X4 trucks and then load all the gear onto the ATVs and trailers. After that everything is loaded on a party style pontoon boat for the trip down the lake to the lodge. Those Windsor boys were deadly with a spinner and worm or a worm on a floating jig. The Ministry encourages harvest on this lake and we had a couple of big feeds of fresh caught speckled trout. The wormers from Windsor could have kept all of the guests fed every day the way they were catching fish. Although I'm still a dedicated flyfisherman and ultra-lite spinning enthusiast if I had to compete against these guys I'd be using worms. Good old "garden hackle"!


The boys from Windsor set for the "ride" in. Maybe it was a combination of the worms and the Bass Pro camo that was the secret to their success. Bob looks out of place in his regular jacket. The boys make regular cross border hops from Windsor to the Detroit Bass Pro Shop.

Kwagama Lake Lodge

Got to the wilderness just in time to rendevous with the black flies. We were actually there for two days before they arrived. Am I ever glad I brought the head net. They seemed to like me better than anyone else.

Didn't land any personal best brookies. But fishing was good and we caught our share. Apparently the "wormers" were apportioned a greater share as they caught fish with their worm-tipped spinners at will. In comparison us fly flingers had to work harder for our fish. My flies did take some of the better fish but I definitely have increased respect for the "power of the worm"

First Ever Total Wilderness Trip

Not much to say right now as I'm waiting for all this cold weather to go away. I'm tying a lot in anticipation of my first ever paid wilderness trip for speckled trout. My friend and I will be taking the Algoma Central railway, flagging down the train at Frater and loading our gear. We will be dropped off and met by the lodge owner who gets us in by truck, ATV and then barge. We have the use of a boat and motor, but we will be using it mainly to transport our float tubes around the lake. There are also a few back lakes we could portage into with the tubes. I'm really looking forward to the middle of May. My friend went with his son last Fall and here is a pic of the kind of fish that can be caught.