I had organized a trip for nine to go to Chevreuil Blanc for three days but another member of the OFS had organized a trip for two nights to Bing Retreat for six at the same time.   Bing is located near Westport, Ontario.

I was only able to go for one night at Bing.  When I arrived a very good fisher had been skunked for a whole day of fishing!  Imagine paying to fish and getting skunked.  Well, I can well imagine because it happened to me at CB last year and that was for 2 1/2 days!

Earlier at CB there was a party of 6 fishers and they had only landed 6 fish over three days.  This recent group did much better.  One fellow had caught a six pounder and a four pound Rainbow.

This is a hint that the fishing in our area, even on private water which we know has adequate numbers, has something negative going on.  The last three years we had drought and this year we had too much rainfall.  This is not Climate Change but Climate Variety which may be the same thing and maybe responsible for making the trout grumpy.

At Bing the trout (mainly Rainbows with some Brookies) are mostly in the center of the lake.  This is fairly common in lakes with pan fish hogging the shoreline.  It may be that the pan fish and smaller minnows are eating all the shore food so the pickings are scarce.  Obviously, the larger trout will hunt for minnows and pan fish along the shoreline but they may be doing that more at night than when we are fishing.

Normally in monoculture lakes (one species), casting to shore and retrieving is a staple method of flyfishing.  Some of the fellows were doing this and catching.  Of course, you would end up catching a lot of bluegill which is most annoying.

This girl above was caught casting a Grey Adams with my 3wt to the center of the lake over 80 ft of water!  There must be something of interest coming up from the bottom to have them there.

All in all, I landed nine fish, lost two in 1 1/2 days of fishing, half on the dry fly, the very best way to fly fish.  The Black Coney Leech was my best wet fly.  Most of the other people were catching on black leech patterns.  Leeches are a desirable and easy food in the fall as trout bulk up for the winter.

BTW, the Minky below did not catch a fish.  Back to the drawing board for that one!

I'm hoping this new fly using mink will work when I go fishing next week.  Stay tuned.

Returned to the lake where I had so much action a week or so before only to find that they weren't so active.  Of course I brought a friend who was hoping for the same.   He got one on a foam boatman as we saw a few rising (and falling).  Often, even though we see a hatch, it doesn't mean that putting one of those on is the most effective.  I got four fish but on completely different dry flies and two on minnow imitations (Mrs Simpson and Orange HK.   Actually the orange version of the Hammills more represents a shucked crayfish.   Earlier that day, we tried another lake that has a significant Ladybug "hatch" around this time of year.  It brings the fish up from the depths to feed on them.  But alas, no luck.

I was at one of the lakes that the Ottawa Fly Fishers adopted to supplement stocking of Rainbows.  I started to fish the dropoff with a wet flies that in the past had been successful at this time of year while occasionally casting a dry fly towards the center of the lake.  Usually one casts to 'wood' on shore but for some reason, this lake is different.   Sure enough, there was a rise to the dry with no action on the wet.  This went on for awhile.  Catching on the dry but nothing on the wet.   All in all, after four hours I had landed 18 small trout.  I  abandoned the wet line and fished exclusively dry flies, my favorite method of flyfishing.   It is exciting to see the fish rise to the fly, even miss.  As the fish were small, I was using my 3wt rod.  I don't think the actual fly matters all that much.  It should be a good fly but if they are feeding they will take it.  I did note that a darker Caddis seemed to work better a lighter version.  As well, I was getting better hookups subsurface, so no need to keep putting on the gunk.