A Fish-Filled Trout Opener

When I woke up this morning it was still pouring rain. My hopes for a dry, sunny Southern Ontario trout opener disappeared. But this was the day I’d been waiting for and nothing was going to stop me from hitting the river.

After a quick breakfast Darrell and I gathered our gear and, with Jack running ahead of us, walked down to the river.

Open and ready to fish...what a great sight!

The rain had slowed to a drizzle as we made our way to the first pool. I chose to start the day with a Mepps Black Fury spinner on my new Bass Pro Shops ultralight rod. The water was still high and fast so it took a few casts to figure out how to make the spinner work effectively. It didn’t take long before I had my first hit, I saw a flash, felt the weight, set the hook…and it was gone.

My two best fishing buddies!

I was pretty pumped to get that first hit of the season and in the next pool we stopped at I had yet another hit. This time I know I ripped the hooks away too early. There were more than a few choice words being uttered by myself. I tried to entice another bite but to no avail.

While I had managed two nice hits on the Black Fury I decided to switch it up and go to my favorite lure for this river – a silver Panther-Martin spinner. Turned out to be  a good idea. Only a few casts with the new lure and I felt a weight on my line and saw the flash of a good trout. I could barely believe I finally had one on the line! When I got her out of the water I realized I had just caught my biggest brook trout, a good 10-11 inches. What a rush! I was so busy trying to get Darrell to turn around and take a picture that I never got a good hold of her and she got off the hook, fell to the ground, took a hop, ended up in the water and swam away. The adrenaline rush from that catch lasted the rest of the morning.

Jack had an impromptu bath after he decided to roll in something that was extremely fragrant.

After a couple of hours hitting our main holes we had just the one catch to show for our efforts. It didn’t matter though, we were both so happy to be fishing again that being out there was enough of a reward. We took a break to run some errands and headed back out for the evening bite.

The biggest of Darrell's catches. Brookies have got to be some of the nicest looking fish around.

The evening bite was awesome! I didn’t have much action but Darrell started catching fish after fish on the Black Fury spinner. His skill and experience showed as he was able to refine his technique with the spinner in such a way the fish couldn’t resist. No matter what I did I couldn’t keep the blades moving when I retrieved the spinner slowly, and when I hurried up my retrieve it was just too fast.

That's not a brook trout...it's an atlantic salmon.

It was neat that on top of catching brookies Darrell was able to hook into two different year classes of atlantic salmon. We had caught quite a few last year but it was really nice to see the younger ones in the system this year.

Another of the evening's catches

All told we caught and released over a dozen fish. We spent the whole day outside, getting lots of fresh air and sun. And we got to spend the majority of our time doing what we love most – fishing. Tomorrow’s plans call for another full day of fishing, with visits to a few different locations.

It’s such a relief to be on the water and catching fish again! What an amazing way to spend the day.

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argosgirl

Sporadic blogger and sometimes podcaster who loves fishing, the outdoors, hanging with her animals, gardening, and reading manga.

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