What a difference a week makes! After some slow fishing two weeks ago, the rains finally came, at least for the Bonaventure and the Petite Cascapedia, the Cascapedia only received a splash and no real bump in water.

The Bonaventure is currently on fire! That is, for the anglers I just had from Germany (Uwe and Chris) two excellent double hand anglers who fish hard and are great to be around. They arrived to see the Petite back to June conditions after a bump of around 10-12 inches and a brand new Bonaventure River that swelled 18-inches - perfect conditions! Couple that with new arriving fish on the full moon and they hit it right, again! I will not go into the entire week day by day, but let's just say that we had excellent wet and dry fly action all week, hooking over 20-fish and landing about half that with only one grilse. Two days ago Uwe and I fished together and landed 3-salmon and one grilse and had 5 other fish up to dry flies. Chris ventured over to the Cascapedia and scored an 18 pound fish at the Forks Pool (one of 8-hook-ups) and returned to release another nice fish around 25 pounds on the lower stretch of the river (A-sector). Green spey's and John Olin Templedog style where on the menu this past week as was the Picasse on cloudy days. Simply put, it was one of the best weeks all year for my anglers.

The Petite Cascapedia is also on fire, or was, up until yesterday. I did not guide today, so I do not know what happened today. All I can say is that yesterday was super with 3-fish landed, three lost and 2 additional pulls. Chris had a crazy 10-pound fish take his 3-inch winged J. Olin at around 6:30 p.m. that took him into his backing right away jumping all the way. The river has held its water quite well over the past week and is still at excellent levels. Oh, and yes, fish are streaming into the river now. There are still not a ton of fish, however, it is a lot better than two weeks ago when we did not have 100-fish in the river.

I have not been trout fishing lately, however, I imagine it is very good. There have been very few anglers fishing for trout over the last week and most of them are fishing the West branch were there are a couple of hundred trout to find!;), if you can. The East branch is my next destination!:) Looking forward to revisiting my "Church" with new friends.

We tried to fish the Cascapedia River this week, however, that lasted about 4-hours. The water was just too low to hold any signifigant numbers of fish in the Salmon branch and we got skunked! Not wanting to throw in the towel, we headed back to the Petite and stabbed a couple of fish there! I have not heard of any great fishing up on the branches, as a matter of fact, there is barely anyone fishing that area for now. Once a bump of water comes, things are going to go crazy up there, I am sure of that. If you are looking for a last minute (when-the-bump-comes, trip) then stick close to your favorite weather station and wait for the rains to come because once they do, there are a whack of fish in sector C that are ready to scramble up there!

It is too bad that a couple of the private camps did not fill their season this year... and I am sure that there are some people kicking themselves for not booking, probably due to such a poor run last year. This year things are totally different and the Cascapedia is starting to show signs that she is coming back slowly but surely! Up until August 1st, sectors B and C were fishing well and it would seem that they continue to fish well, along with A-sector, which is starting to show more signs of life. Fresh fish have also been reported throughout the week and they seem to keep on coming. Some of my friends and I here estimate there are about 1800-fish in the river at the moment. If all goes well, we may even top the 2,000 mark this year. Wouldn't that be nice.:) By the way, the hot fly for Chris was the John Olin Stonefly (one of the many flies I will be soon selling on www.salmonsteelheadflies.com). The site should be up and running in about 2-months, so stay tuned!

So that is it for now. I am going to take a bit of a break for the next few weeks and will be working on my Guideline representation and my Atlantic salmon and Steelhead website. I will probably be posting more often now that I am not working 7-10 every day. It has been a long two monthsn but things are really starting to look up!

I encourage any of you who read this and have the time to come, come now, or, wait for another bump as there are a ton of fish in the Bonaventure and Cascapedia.

Screaming reels to you all,

David