Cape Breton salmon

[left field]

Opportunity allowed me to spend a week fly fishing the Margaree River in Cape Breton, NS, a stunningly beautiful part of Canada.

We arrived on Sunday to find that the guide we booked had a heart attack that morning and we were more or less on our own. Fortunately, word spread up and down the river and people were more than helpful with advice on how to fish the Margaree.

Low water put the fish down for the majority of the week but a rain on Tuesday put some life back in them and we connected on Wednesday with four strikes for me and one salmon to hand. Also landed a large fat brown way up in the Highlands on a salmon fly of all things. I found out later that some guys fished for three years before they caught their first salmon.

We swung wet and dry flies through a variety of pools (two casts - one step downstream - two casts - repeat) and near the end of the week I thought I'd count casts. We averaged 80 casts per pool and fished each pool twice. On our busiest days we fished 6 pools. 160 x 6 = 966 casts on an 8wt.

I don't take fish pics but here we are walking into a typical pool st 6:00 am  

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by left field