Outstanding start to the season!

I know that some of you have been checking here for reports and I apologize for not getting to this sooner, however, I have been very busy catching fish with my clients and friends!

Outstanding is the word that I would use to describe our season thus far. Without going into details on what my actual numbers are, I can tell you that I have been averaging over a fish a day and have had many multiple fish days. I have a total of 2-days where we have not landed fish. Like I said, outstanding!

Our largest fish to date was a beautiful Cascapedia fish that measured over 46-inches and I estimated at around 38+ pounds. Taking into account that this is was a Cascapedia fish, renowned for their tremendous girth, the fish could easily have been 40 but to be safe we called it just shy of that!

The same day we caught that big fish we hooked a total of 6 fish (one even bigger than the one we released) but only landed 2 of the 6. All of the fish were over 20 except for one that weighed in at a modest 15 pounds. This all happened on the Salmon branch where things have been going very well for just about everyone fishing there.

The day of June 14 was simply a crazy, crazy day and I spent it with someone who deserved a bit of craziness! We floated the Bonaventure River and were treated to some crazy action! It was one of those days that usually only come along once in a blue moon. To think that I have enjoyed two of them in the same week is simply amazing.

Since the middle of June things continued to go very well, especially on the Bonaventure where the river managers there counted over 1200 fish by the end of June. This is great news for this beautiful river. At the rate the fishing are entering the river, we should easily hit the 2500+ mark by mid August. Fish are just about everywhere and it is easy to fish in peace and quiet throughout the unlimited rod zones. I am not sure if the fact that the entire river is now catch and release for larger fish over 63-cm (about 24 inches), is keeping the "fish killers" away, or what, all I know is it is a welcome change from seeing blood stained rocks this time of year. Hopefully, the time of blood stained rocks will remain a thing of the past.

In the land of BIG fish, the Cascapedia River is also having a great year. If my estimate is correct, I imagine there are well over a 1000 fish in the river at this very moment. The branches, although very low up until just a few days ago, has been producing on a consistent basis as has the main river. The fact that there is no more netting at the mouth of the river is certainly proving to be making a huge difference in the run this year. As if we all did not know that already - duh.

The Petite Cascapedia is not as hot as the Bonnie or the Cascapedia; however, things are going fairly well just the same. There seems to be a decent number of larger fish, however, only a few pools are actually holding fish due to lower water levels. As a matter of fact, the Petite has been down since the season opener there on the 15th of June. I have been up to the East branch in search of some big brookies and am glad to report that there are a decent number of fish there. The sad thing is, I am not the only one who knows this and the slaughter of some of these fish has been going on since the end of June. Hopefully we will be able to pass a new regulation next year reducing the bag limit from 5 big trout a day to 1-3 a day. Common sense should suffice, however, there are still many who do not understand just how fragile, unique and precious this resource is. If you care about the future of this resource, write the ZEC and tell them how you feel. You may want to suggest a C&R sector and a reduced bag limit on both branches. If enough people write them, I am sure that the message will be heard!

Ok, so that is it for now. I hope that you all are enjoying you season wherever you are. If any of you have the time, I would suggest jumping in your car and hitting the Bonnie!

More reports to come!

Screaming reels to you all

David

Hello Folks!

 Seems like an eternity since I have not updated this site. I am sorry about that, however, I have been very busy travelling around Eastern Canada as well as in Thailand since November!

 Although there is not much to report on the salmon fishing front, I do have some good news regarding my fly business. My site, www.salmonsteelheadflies.com will be up and running by the end of this week!

You will all be able to find some great A. Salmon and Steelhead flies there! Please drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.

Screaming reels to you all,

 David 

Hello Folks,

It is almost that time to start thinking about next years fishing! Whew, the season has been over for less than a month and it is already that time again!

So, for those of you who do not know how to enter the fall draws, or, who do not even know what the heck I am talking about, let me explain and lay it out for all of you.

In Quebec we have two management types, (actually three, however the last one is not important for us now) ZEC's which in English are Controlled Exploitation Zones, or CEZ's. These are rivers that run under a system that allows for 2 draw types per year. The first being the NOVEMBER 1 draw, which will allocate up to 50% of the available RESERVED water sectors, and a summer or 48-72 hour in advance draw where anglers can enter to secure the second 50% of the available RESERVED water beats. REMEMBER, there are NON-RESERVED beats or areas, if you will, that are VERY VERY GOOD and do not require entering the draws.

The only reason to enter a draw is to try to secure a couple days of reserved water in advance. This is to say that if you want to try to get some water through the fall draw, great, however, if you do not enter, or do not win, it is no big deal as there is always the Summer 48-72 hour draw and also a whack of public-non-reserved water to fish that can be just as good as the reserved sectors.

If you wish to enter the draws, you can do it two ways, ask the ZEC's to send you the inscriptions sheets, fill them out and fax, or, mail them back with payment, or, you can simplify your life by doing it online by going to www.saumonquebec.com . On this site you will find all of the ZEC's and explainations on how to enter the draws. You will also find a bunch of info on each river. If you want the site in English, simply push the English button on the top middle. Then, look down the screen to the middle of the page and you will see a button that says 2009 Draws. Just follow the instructions and poof, you are in!

The second management system we have here in Quebec that is important to know are the RESERVES where we have SOCIETIES that run them. Expamples of these are the Matapedia and Grand Cascapedia Rivers. You will find their info online at the same address.

For those of you who are seeking guiding for next year with me, call me SOON! I am booking up VERY VERY fast this year. For some reason everyone wants to come to fish the Gaspe next year. I do not mind this, however, I can only take  out so many people each year and I already have guests from previous years who have booked in advance. Please call me at 418-392-6768 soon. I will be away from November 4 through December 14 but you can leave a message or email me and I will be getting back to you during that time away.

Also, look for my new website for THE BEST FLIES you can buy very very soon! www.salmonsteelheadflies.com is the site and I will be offering some awesome A. Salmon and Steelhead flies there. I am not kidding about the quality of these flies, they are awesome and will include Marc Leblanc signature series along with a Jack Cook Steelhead Signature series and a David Bishop series as well. 

So that is about it for now. If any of you have any questions or comments, please call me. It will be my pleasure to help you out the best I can!

I look forward to hearing from many of you soon!

Screaming reels to you all

David
David Bishop

What do you get when you combine super low water conditions with sun, cold weather and a good run of fish?? Well, the usual answer would be slow fishing because of low water, or, slow fishing due to sunny conditions, HOWEVER, the fishing has been simply mad over the last week and a half! And I mean MAD! For those of you who know me, I do not bullshit about hook-ups, ok, maybe on occassion a 15 pound fish may become 17 or 18, just like any other angler, but when it comes to hook-ups, I tell it like it is and I have a lot to tell you about!

On September 10th I hit the river with David and Andrew Clarke along with the Atlantic Hall of Fame member Bryant Freeman (who was fishing our area for the first time), we hit the Bonaventure River around the crack of 9 and stepped into Sinclair pool, alone, for once. During our morning fish we released one small salmon/grilse, and hooked up or had 4 other fish come to the fly. Not a bad morning for a few hours of fishing. As luck would have it we ended up at Salmon hole in the evening and released one more salmon and had a few pulls to go along with that small fish that David released (around 7 pounds).

I made a quick phone call to my friend Reynold Sexton from Sexton and Sexton fly shop in Cascapedia and asked if there was any water available at his camp, he said yes so we booked a day there. To say that the fishing was pretty good would be a gross understatement, because for Andrew it was a dream day with two landed fish, the largest of which was 32 pounds! His second of two fish on two passes in this particular pool we were fishing. His father David and Bryant did not have quite such good luck, however, they did manage a 12 pound fish and one more hook-up that day as well. How did I do? well, after pulling a dry fly out of the jaws of a 25+ pound fish (the guides got a kick out of that) I hooked and lost another fish around 15 pounds on a dry immediately after the big one! I lost that fish along with another 25+ fish behind Andrew in the other pool along with three other good hard takes on the same pass. One of those fish broke me off on the take and was VERY large!

The third and final day was spent with Andrew back at Salmon Hole on the Bonnie with no results at all. Nada!

After my morning fish with Andrew on the final day I headed out to the Matapedia to join my next guest and good friend Chris Wilson for an hour or so of fishing. The water there was super low, however, locals had been reporting me some decent catch stats and no anglers to compete with at all, We fished through two pools and I got one small pull but cannot sweat it was a salmon as there were a lot of trout around that evening. The next morning Chris and I booked some more water on the Cascapedia River and proceeded to tear things up and I mean we tore them up. Chris landed two fish and lost one more, I proceeded to continue losing fish after fish and was subjected to some serious abuse from Chris and my other guide friends, and I have to admit, I deserved every nasty comment I got! I am sure, or at least I am blaming, my extra long poly leader for most of my fish losses because once I switched to a solid leader, the hooking turned into landing fish. The tally for day one on the Cascapedia River with Chris was 6 fish on the line and 3 landed.

I will spare you the gory details for the next 2 days of fishing in this same sector, however, I will tell you what the final tally was after 3 days of fishing there: Released salmon 9 with 17 hook-ups/lost fish. The last fish was one of the best and I have to tell you about it quickly... it was around 6 pm and supper was waiting for us nearby at 7:30 so we wanted to finish early. We had just waded through one of the hot pools with no results and decided to quit but then our guide suggested that we take one last pass through a pool that had a lot of big fish in it. As I stood with the guides up on the road and watched Chris work his DH magic, we ignored the fact that his fly was getting dangerously close to a big fat hen fish at the tail of the pool. It is easy to get distracted when watching Chris cast, he is one of the smoothest and prettiest casters I know. Anyhow, as we watched and waited for Chris to pick up his line for another cast we saw the line go tight and the rod bend over, really bend over! We looked down to the tail of the pool and said "you hooked the big one" all at once. As the final rays of sun set upon the river the fish took a quick run to the far end of the pool and shook free. I looked at Chris who had a big smile on his face and said "what a perfect end to a perfect week"! He looked up and only smiled in agreement. We shook hands and tipped out our guides and drove home with two huge smiles on our faces, knowing we had just experienced one of the best fishing weeks of the season, or, maybe our lives!

I would like to say that things ended there, as it was sort of a romantic end to this story, but as with guides, there is always another chapter until the season is officially done!

Yesterday marked the arrival of two anglers from Toronto, Anthony and Neil, two great gentlemen who are ardent anglers for all sort of species. Neil Houlding is a well recognized DH hand caster from Southern Ontario who is part of the Guideline Power Team in N. America and a very nice caster. After a morning session of casting our rods with different lines we headed back up to the Cascapedia River for an evening fishing session. As we drove up I told them about the previous experiences I had lived with Chris but in doing so, I started to worry that maybe we had stabbed all of the fish over the previous 3-days we had fished and started to regret how much info I had shared in fear that I might be blamed if we did not get any fish. Note to self, shut the hell up sometimes! 

We started fishing in the afternoon and had a soft pull after about an hour and a half of fishing but did not move any of the 30 or so 25+ pound fish at the tail of this pool. We headed down to one of the other previous hot pools from the week before and started fishing. As the sun was still on the water, I could see that there were around 15 fish in the pool and that Anthony was getting really close to the first group of fish. I called out to him telling him to get ready and as luck would have it, he hooked into and landed a nice 18 pound cock fish. Both anglers fished their way through the rest of the pool with no addtional pulls or hook-ups so we headed down one pool to a faster, but more difficult run to fish. Neil went first and had a very nice hook-up and immediately lost this fish. Anthony followed behind with no results. Neil stepped back in and once again got a good solid take but the fish shook free after only a few seconds. With little light remaining I offered my 13'7" GUIDELINE LECie rod to Anthony to try out with a 55" Hardy midspey line. Casting more efficiently with this rod he layed out a very nice 85' cast and I told him to wait a bit longer for the fly to come around. No sooner did I finish saying that - and he hooked into another 12-14 pound hen fish which we promptly released just before dark.

I took the morning off and let the two of them hit the river alone with the camp guides and am awaiting news at this very moment! Will write more at the end of the season!

Screaming reels to you all!

David 

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