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!

Kayak fishing for steelhead in Ontario

The snow piles are dropping, days getting longer and sunnier, and the rivers have started to open up here in Southern Ontario, as winter slowly loses its grip on this part of the province. I've been seeing early winter black hatches on my last several trips to the Niagara and my thoughts quickly turn to the impending spring run of steelhead!!

Will there be enough water to run the rivers? Will the fish have dropped back by then? Will it be a strong group of year classes running..... and all kind of such thoughts start rattling around in my brain.

What is for sure is that the fish will run and there will be fishable water to hit somewhere. It's up to us to monitor the conditions and be ready to take the time off if necessary when it does happen.
Steelheading is like sacrilege in Southern Ontario, and anyone exploiting these tightly guarded waters with anything more than the bare basics is heavily frowned upon. And no, a kayak is not considered a basic.... that is except by us here at Nomad Adventures. A kayak is an essential tool to success for spring and fall steelheading!
If you aren't implementing all tools at hand, then what exactly are you doing?
All rivers are fair game, and we all know there's a lot of rivers coursing thru the Southern Ontario peninsula, surrounded by 3 Great Lakes plus Georgian Bay.

Our steelhead kayak fishing trips run from Spring: late April - late May, Fall: late October - end December.
Opportunities for Brook, Brown and Lake Trout exist on these trips. Fishing methods are float fishing, fly fishing, bottom bouncing and spincasting.
Beginners to seasoned anglers will all enjoy these trips.

Inquire at Nomad Adventures for your 2011 Steelhead Kayak Fishing trip in Ontario; we look forward to hearing from you!!

2010 recap plus what's new at Nomad Adventures in 2011

So it’s been since August since we reported, yikes.


Don’t really know what to say about that except 2010 was a great year for the growth of kayak fishing in Ontario. Thanks to everyone who came out and participated or supported our events in any way, and we look forward to seeing you again in 2011!!


The arrival of our young one pretty much kept my off the rivers until November, but we sure made up for it in the final two months of the year.
Browns, browns and more browns were the order of the Niagara for seasons end, along with a few steelhead and lake trout interspersed. Three times in that span we hit fresh runs of chrome moving thru the system and they destroyed us on all occasions. 1 for 10, 4 for 12 and 2 for 9 was the score, and that included a lot of bent hooks/broken leaders.
A detailed pictorial shall follow!


2011 will go down as the “yaksteel” year for Nomad Adventures with heavy focus on implementing kayaks into our Southern Ontario steelhead fishing trips. There will also be a lot more Niagara region trips that include the Upper Niagara River and Lake Erie smallmouth.


Another new venture for us, but may not happen until late 2011 is “Drifters” our online pro-shop that will be dedicated to float-fly-kayak fishing.


Please stay tuned since we promise to update you regularly on all things stated above!