O.k., I know, I have been very bad about keeping up with my reports... and I am sorry, at least, a little sorry, however, I have been on the river pretty much since the 1st of June and I finally have a few days off to catch up and do other things.

I wish I had some great news to report, but I do not. As a matter of fact, things here are a bit slow at the moment. Here is what is happening and what has happened over the last 50 days of fishing.

The season started off very slow for all rivers (June 1-15) then things really picked up on the Cascapedia and the Bonaventure Rivers. Late June and early July saw perfect to near perfect water levels and lots of fish entering the rivers here, well, at least on the Cascapedia and the Bonnie, the Petite is a different story that I will get to later on.

Like I said, things were GREAT on the Bonnie and the upper Cascapedia, including the Salmon and Lake branches up until about two weeks ago, then, the bottom dropped out of the river. The main stem of the Cascapedia was still fishing and continues to fish fairly well, however, we need water badly to get things pumping again. Sectors B and C are producing the best with C being the better of the two, as always. Sector A on the Cascapedia has been slow all year due to the fact that the fish were blowing right up the river early on in the season. While the Salmon and Lake branches had water they were fishing very well, but like I said, things have slowed to almost a halt there as there is barely any water in each branch. Simply put, WE NEED RAIN. Until we get some rain in the upper part of the river we will not see many fish coming into the branches.

The Bonaventure enjoyed about three weeks of super fishing from about the 20th of June up until about a week or ten days ago. There are still plenty of fish in the river, however, they have been very difficult to catch. I floated from Sinclair down to Dambar yesterday and fished over 100 fish+ but to no avail. We even had a few showers pass through and I thought that the fish might spark up during the low pressures, but they did not. It has been like that for about a week now. Sure, some people are stabbing a fish or two here and there, however, it has been tough, very tough. The river managers made a count on June 25 & 26 and counted 600 fish back then. I can safely say that there are well over one thousand fish in the river at this very moment. The nice thing is that almost every single pool on the upper river (C, D and E sectors) is holding at least a few fish. Of course you will find the usual suspects holding in the main pools like Sinclair, Run a Pit, Salmon hole etc on D and C sectors. It would appear that E sector is holding about 70-80 fish at the moment and B4-B3 and B1 are all holding fish as well. I have not gotten any clear reports for B sector of the Bonnie as I do not fish there due to the ABS hatches that happen each day there.

O.k. now for the bad news. The Petite Cascapedia is having a really tough time at the moment, however, I did get a little bit of bright news from an old client of mine who I bumped into this morning. It would appear that some fish came in over the past two days and they did fairly well releasing 3 in two days - all being fresh fish. This is not really new news as there have been a trickle of fish coming in for the last 2 weeks but no great numbers. As a matter of fact, the Petite has less than 100 fish in the entire system and I am being generous. I have heard from decent sources that there are a lot of fish swimming around in the bay at the moment waiting for some water to enter the river, however, it would appear that some of them are not even waiting for the rains to come and have decided to enter in groups of 3-4 fish at a time. I wish I had better news but that is the straight "poop" as they say. I tell it like it is and that is the way it should be told. I have hopes, as the Petite is usually a late river, that things will change but I am not sure. I know that we will get at least another hundred or so fish entering the river in the next weeks but we will need some rain in order to spread them out a bit more in the river. Despite the low numbers of fish there, we still have managed to catch some fish there, especially the fresh arrivals.  I will be keeping a close eye on things there and will float to the sea this week to see with my own eyes what is below the ZEC waters. I will update this report before I start guiding again on the weekend.

Before I end, I will leave you all with some good news... despite the low salmon numbers on the Petite, the TROUT numbers are up, way up and the fishing in the West and East branches is pretty darned good, that is, if you know where and how to look for them! I will not go into detail but will only say that I had one day with a client where we hooked 23 and landed 18 fish between 19 and 25.5 inches long. Enough said!

May your rods be frowning and your reels be  screaming!

David