Fishing Hole: Rusagonis Stream

This morning I fished a short section of the Rusagonis Stream. There's a good place to park directly beside the covered bridge pictured above in Rusagonis on Route 655. (See more great photos by Greg McCracken at http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=397196) When I arrived around 8:15 it was very grey and it started to rain shortly after that. The location has a variety of water depths and conditions; if you wade down below the bridge there are lots of exposed rocks, calm pools, and vegetation along the edges of the stream (see picture). If you hike above the bridge, there is a junction where the South Branch Rusagonis meets the main Rusagonis Stream, and creates a nice little area of shallow rapids. There are more calm, deeper pools in that area, too.



Under the bridge looking downstream.



All in all, it was a very successful morning. I caught 4 trout in an hour and a half. Unfortunately none were big enough to keep. All four were caught on this minnow hardbait, which I have discovered works very well in overcast or rainy conditions. It has two treble hooks (which I have de-barbed) and is mainly dark blue with some brown in there too. There is a bright silver area near the head, and it 'swims' like a fish as it's reeled in. I was able to catch my biggest trout ever on this yesterday, and it was overcast then, too.

Canoeing the Saint John River

Yesterday, Dad, Mom, Anna, Steve, Rachelle and I took a couple of canoes and a kayak and went down about an 8km section of the Saint John River. It was fun, but became difficult near the end of our trip due to the tidal influences on the river - even though we were going down-river, we were battling a current going the opposite way.



There are a lot of 'cow islands' in the part of the river we paddled. At one point we even saw a cow ferry. There are lots of little inlets to explore and even the occasional sandy beach, like the one where we stopped for lunch.



It was a great day and the weather couldn't have been better.

Sauble Falls Provincial Park

On May 2 and 3, we went camping with Jeff, Sari, and the girls at Sauble Falls Provincial Park, Ontario, which is close to Lake Huron west of Owen Sound. Although the weather was rainy most of the weekend, it was still a lot of fun. It was an experience setting up our campsite in the rain; in fact, it started to downpour just before we arrived. Once an initial tarp was set up, we could assemble the tents under it and stay relatively dry. When it wasn't raining, the bugs were out in full force. Luckily, there was a hardware store close by that sold some good bug net hats. And the smoke from the fire kept the bugs away, too.

Alicia and I went fishing (didn't catch anything; you can see the river that ran right behind our campsite) and we did some hiking around the park. But mostly, we sat under our tarps and cooked food and watched the girls running around and getting dirty. We all had a great time.

The falls themselves were pretty spectacular; they stretched on for about a hundred meters, though they didn't have a large vertical drop. We saw lots of fly fishermen near the bottom of the falls, but thankfully none of them seemed to be having better luck than I had.



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