Hurricane Arthur brought high winds, plenty of rain and most importantly, plenty of salmon! The rain brought our rivers up to early June levels and combined with a full moon and high tides, we received a strong run of salmon and grilse. Grilse numbers are way up this year, in fact I haven’t seen this many grilse for a long time. A good grilse year is always followed by a good salmon year, a favorable outlook for 2015.
Ottawa native and camp Bonaventure regular Peter Bennett with a nice salmon on the Petite, Nice fishing Peter!
Water levels on the Bony rose to 110 cubic meters per second and was back down to 50 by Sunday evening and clearing well. Big fly’swere on the menu the first portion of the week but back to fishing dry’s by Wednesday. The Petite received a good bump of water as well but much less than the Bonaventure. Water conditions on the Petite are perfect at the moment and fishing remains good with plenty of big salmon and a nice grilse run. The Grand Cascapedia rose substantiallyafter the storm, close to three three feet. The water was stained on Monday but was clearing well and good fishing began again on Tuesday. We landed a good number of big salmon this week on the Grand, a bump in water sure makes a diffeeance. All our rivers are fishing very well at the moment.
Pierre St-Laurent and Camp Bonaventure’s newest guide Charles Binnett release a nice fish back in the Grand Cascapedia, Congratulatioons Pierre!
Montana couple Nick and Mary Babson with a bright Bonaventure salmon, Nice fish!
The tail end of Arthur was certainly a surprise, the Gaspe peninsula received winds of over 80 MPH or 150 KMH. Salmon Lodge was untouched except for a few branches and leaves on the lawn. Camp Bonaventure was a little harder hit, thankfully the lodge wasn’t touched but we did loose a number of old trees on the property. Crews we in cleaning up and by Wednesday you never we had a storm, everything’s back to normal. The biggest problem we faced were the roads, many were blocked by fallen trees. The majority are now cleared but there are still a few closed, thankfully we can still travel by canoe to all our pools and beats.
Camp Bonaventure regular Craig Ashe with his first fish of 2014, Way to go Craig!
This was Patrice Giroux’s first trip to Camp Bonaventure, he is coming back next year!
Hot fly’s this week were the Nagli, Stone Ghost, John olin and Silvre Rat, the Green Machine and Blue Charm also counted for a few. Sizes 4, 6 and 8. With this many grilse around, reallydoesn’t matter what you throw at them, there going to take. Dry’s are always on the top of the list, Blue, Green and Dark Brown, in sizes 2, 4 and 6.
Camp Bonaventure Guide Carol Barriault, knows where they are and knows how to catch them!
Until next week…Tight Lines ,
Glenn
