I spent over 3 hours with my #4 sink line thinking that I was getting deep enough.  But the other guys were hooking  trout with their #6 sink.  I like my #4 because I can easily bring the fish in by hand without the tangle you get with thinner lines.  With only an hour and half left of fishing and after not getting anything but small bass, I switched.  In 45 minutes I had three fish.  The top picture measured 21" (about two inches wider than my net).  I don't like taking the fish out of the water if I can help it.  I lost the next one within 20 feet of the tube.  The bottom two pictures of my last fish measured at around 24" and very fat.  He would not settle for a pic. You can see that he far exceeds the width of my net.  All three RBs were caught in 30-32 FOW and with the #6 line I was right at the bottom and often catching weeds.  Wade caught his two fish in the same depth.  So what this means is that around 28ft of water has the ideal conditions, perhaps oxygen, food, safety, whatever.  Phil Rowley says that fish are opportunistic feeders but selective on depth.  I didn't get to see the second fish but he made a few runs and was very heavy.  He could have been even bigger or at least that is what my imagination tells me.  BTW,  I had a single fly and it was very small, a size 12 yellow Hammill's Killer on a 10 ft leader.  The thick line on my scope told me that the thermocline was at 40 FOW.  This is low for this time of year.  It goes to show that our waters are warming.

Shall I go or shall I stay?  That is what faced me on Friday.  A planned trip was cancelled and it had not started raining as forecasted.  I decided on a local trip on the Mississippi which requires some paddling.  This fine fellow was caught under an inflatable along the way.  I have caught a SMB this size before at exactly this same spot so I am assuming it is the same one.  Bass will stake out a territory such as a dock and keep everyone else away, its owner's too,  if it could.  Of course it started to rain (after having waited all morning), but when I got to the faster moving water, all was forgiven.  I was catching SMB regularly.  I was seeing some caddis and mayflies coming off and put on a white phentex humpy.  A very large SMB jumped into the air and was gone almost as soon.  I figured well over 20".   Later on, I had a Red Rabbit on  (red body, white rabbit strip along the top).  This was a trout fly originally but I was seldom using it, so it ended up in the Bass Box (where most of my failed trout flies end up, bass being less discerning than trout).  I thought a log had caught the fly and was heading downstream but no, a few very heavy head shakes and the line whizzing out of my reel told me otherwise.  In 20 years of fishing the Mississippi, this is the first time for a "whizzer", at least as far as I can remember.  Snapped off!!  How many times do I have to learn this??!!  I had noticed my 3X tippet was a bit crinkled and I did not change it.  The tippet spool is also getting a bit aged.  Big fish fishermen write that you should be throwing out tippet and leader material after one or two years.  Being the trout bums that most of us are, we like to spend our money on gas rather than throwing out what seems to be good line.  But if you do, you may just pay the price.  At least I have the knowledge that 'Grand Dad'  is out there, ready to be caught again.

It's finally trout season!  I start cruising for trout starting in September.  I was out once in early September but got skunked.    Six of us from the OFS went to Sugarbush last Monday to Wednesday.   This size of fish was common but there were a few in the sixteen to eighteen inch range that were caught and many fourteen inchers.   We suspected it might be slow but it was the only time we could get in September.  We go to Chevreuil Blanc in October.  Kenauk stocks their lakes according to the same formulas as NY State and Ontario, however they compensate for harvest, so that at any given time, you are fishing in a lake which is stocked to maximum capacity.  Unfortunately, MNR cannot do this.  During the mid morning to mid afternoon, the average catch was 1-2 fish/hour but in the early AM, just before daybreak it was common to get 5 fish/hour.  On parting day Wednesday, I had caught eight rainbows in 1/2 hour.  Then as the sun peeped over the hillside, it slowed right down.  It is still too early.  Surface temperature was 67-69F which is OK for trout but  only one was reported caught casting to shore.  Most were caught in deep water with full sink lines.  Not the most exciting kind of flyfishing.  Best fly for me was an Orange Hamills but Olive WBs were good too.  No trout were caught on dries and late evening fishing was no better than daytime.    Trout are still in the summer doldrums.  We need a few frosts to wake them up.  And by November even the much more cautious larger trout are grabbing anything that moves in order to fatten up for the long winter.  Quebec is more advanced than Ontario in this regard.  Trout are easy targets for ice fishermen.  They occupy a narrow band of oxygenated water during the winter.  Lakes can easily be fished out in winter, especially smaller lakes.  Quebec closes the trout fishery in the middle of September.  They should keep it open another two weeks as their closing date has not taken into consideration the documented increase in lake water temperature over the past number of years.  Hopefully this is just a cycle and not the disastrous man-made global warming claimed by the Alarmists.  A few fish were cleaned revealing not much food in them.  The anticipated boatman hatch was happening at Collins, quite a bit lower in elevation so this hatch will be happening in Calabogie any day.