Spring came early for 2012

Are we in Florida or Southern Ontario??  Crazy weather spawned by tornados from the south has created nearly three solid weeks of double digit plus days and nearly a week of mid 20 days....  wow.  Nice to outside in but it'll be a major hit for fishing migratories since most seasons don't start til late april or later.  Oh well, get your fishing kayak out and take advantage of it!  Steelhead, brown trout and juvenile salmon are within reasonable kayaking distance.  Lots of great lakes pike to be had too.

The fish have just started to come in close with the arrival of baitfish.  Should be good fishing for the next few weeks at least.

Kayak Fishing for Steelhead in Ontario

With water level staying near all time highs on Ontario rivers systems for the past spring and fall runs, us lucky steelheaders enjoyed one of the best years of fishing on record.  Catches of 30, 40, even 50 fish in one outing were not uncommon for some rivers!! We got a late start on both the spring and fall runs due to the Niagara River always having been the focus of our trips during those seasons.  The Niagara has fished poorly over the past year in comparison to recent years.  Largely due to surging pressure from anglers on the system and abnormally high fluctuation in the water levels since construction on the tunnels started in the spring.

The spring run was good but ended too early but the fall run came early and high water lasted until the extended fall season closed Dec 31st.
Kayaks were the ticket and covering the water put us into banner numbers on more than one occasion.

Let the pictures speak for themselves;

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2011 the year of the Steehead

Wow what a year for steelhead that was if you live in Southern Ontario!
Everyone raved about how great the spring run was with all the high river levels we had in April/May.  Then October rolled around and we had more water in that month than all spring levels combined.  It sure set up the rivers for phenomenal fishing from mid October right thru to the close of the extended fall season yesterday.  Huron rivers saw the largest returns of steelhead but it was up straight across the board on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie systems too.
The Saugeen was just teeming with fresh runs from early October and steady into late November before it tapered off a little.

I personally view the large returns should be attributed to the high number of baitfish that came in to spawn in the spring.  Some Huron rivers saw their first smelt run in 25 years or more, and in good numbers.
I can remember the last smelt I netted upriver was in the mid 80's, and yet I caught a large hen in early December about 30kms from the lake and she was gorged with live juvenile smelts!  So the first smelt run in years produced a brand new fall forage for roe deprived steelhead.  Sounds like a win-win for fish and anglers to me.  Not to mention that the average size steelhead was up 2-3lbs over previous years.
Mothernature is definitely smiling down on us Ontario steelheaders right now!

Lots more news on this, the Saugeen River and a year in review with pics to come!