Favourite pond — then and now
When you read this I will be floating around on my favourite pond and casting flies in search of a few brook trout. I’ll either be in my canoe or kayak, not sure yet. If Goldie wants to tag along I’ll take the canoe. I have a great new roof-carry setup on my F150 that I can’t wait to try out. I’ll be sure and take a few photos.
Yes, this is the first day of trouting season for spring 2021 and I’m taking a solid full day break from yard and carpenter work.
I’m not laying my hand on neither a hammer nor shovel. I’ve been too busy with that sort of stuff, although I do enjoy driving nails and getting clay on my hands.
Last year we started gardening on a small scale with three raised planter beds and a bunch of five-gallon buckets. This year we are adding an 8ft by 12ft greenhouse and a ground level potato patch.
I’m also digging and building a root cellar. I’ve been busy.
But one still must find time for angling. I will have my month of salmon fishing and snag a few trout here and there.
My dad did the vegetable growing thing, greenhouse, cellar and so on. In fact he and I built both the greenhouse and the cellar together in the same year. I also had a boat under construction and we worked together at it all the same time. You talk about multitasking. And even in those days I’d throw it all down and disappear for a day on my favourite pond.
Dad understood. He was a trouter.
You know what? It’s the same pond. It’s not the only place I go fishing for brook trout but this body of water holds a special place in my fishing heart.
My pond is right beside a paved roadway but holds a fantastic run of decent-sized tasty brook trout. I always manage to catch enough for a meal and that’s really all I want.
It a big pond so I usually navigate and explore by either canoe or kayak. Maybe I’ll try my float tube this summer but I’m wary of getting wind bound on the far end. That could happen.
I’d fished the area with Dad as a kid but I really got into this pond in my late teens after I had my driver’s licence.
I had this plywood boat that I built a few years before and it was sitting in the backyard not doing much. I was working at construction in St. John’s and wasn’t getting enough trouting time. I wouldn’t get home till 6 p.m. and needed a place close by to wet a line conveniently for a few hours before dark. Dad suggested over supper that I moor my flat in the pond and leave her there for the summer. Maxwell Smith was an insightful man.
The following Saturday I loaded the boat in the back of my truck, along with rope and an old 56-er. Any idea what that is? Fifty-six pounds is half a quintal and 56-ers were iron weights with handles, something like a kettle bell, but for weighing salt cod on a balance. The handle was perfect to reeve a rope through for a make-shift mooring. So I got the boat situated and spent the rest of the day rowing, trolling and trouting.
I came home that evening with a couple dozen fine plump trout. We had a grand Sunday morning breakfast.
A boat can teach you much about a pond in a full summer of energetic youth. There wasn’t much else cluttering my mind either. Previously, I had only fished this pond from shore and the simple rowboat opened up a whole new universe. There were rocky shoals and deep dark holes. Around islands I’d discover swarms of hatching mayflies on warm summer evenings. On hot sunny days trout took refuge in deeper cooler water. On dull overcast mornings big trout could be found chasing schools of minnows on rocky outcrops. I learned so much that summer, not just about one pond, but about trout behavior in general.
I became a better angler, evolved I suppose.
I like ponds and lakes with structure. I mean, shoals, rocks, boulders and islands. I love fishing around islands. On a windy day you’re sure to hook a few trout where the wind is whipping a few terrestrial insects off the bushes and into the drink. Trout are opportunistic and they know these things. I’ll slowly paddle along the leeward side of an island and look for trout slurping down insects blown to certain doom. Cast a fly to the shore and let it drift out to the waiting predator. Give it a try.
I’ll tell you another island story. Then I have to go tie a few flies for Saturday. This was over a decade ago but was such an epic hour’s fly fishing I will always relish in it. I decided to walk on this day, up the brook and to the main pond. It really is a lake by conventional definition, but you know how we Newfoundlander’s are with lake and pond nomenclature. So here we go. It was late June.
I left the road around 7 a.m. and fished my way up through the babbling brook’s riffles, runs and steadies. I didn’t catch much and retained zero, even in the deep holes that normally give up a few lunkers. I reached the run-out of the pond around 10 o’clock and sat on the shoreline to eat my bologna and mustard sandwich, homemade bread, of course. The wind was blowing a mid-morning gale from the southwest, typical for late June. The sun warmed my face and I felt good.
There’s an island about a 100 yards from the runout and sitting just a good double hauled cast from the boulder-strewn shoreline. The wind whipped around a point creating a calm area in its lee. I liked the look on it and watched while I ate. Sure enough I spotted feeding trout. I figured terrestrial bugs were being violently dislodged from the their natal bush. I went for a closer look.
No and wow. It was a massive mayfly hatch, aquatic dwelling nymphs, morphing into flying insects in massive numbers, all in a 20 by 20 or so patch of calm amid a white capped chaos. I tied on my best imitation and made the cast. Instantaneously I was into a plump 14-in brookie. And so it went, me perched on a massive round granite boulder, casting aggressively into the wind, a trout on every decent cast. I placed a dozen trout in my creel and released two. I felt fulfilled for that day. Home I went to do some yard work.
I apologize for not telling you the name of the pond.
Explore and you will find. It’s really the journey that counts.