Summer seems to have dragged on a lot longer than normal this year. Water temp is still a good 10 degrees fahrenheit warmer than what it normally is at the start of fall, so fish are still in their mid summer patterns for the most part.
While I was hoping to hit some decent September trout fishing, the warm water worked against us in both instances. For my first outing, I headed South to the Adirondack region to fish the normally cooler rivers for brown and rainbow trout. The high heat combined with extremely low water levels have pushed the water temp warm enough for me to be able to wade the rivers in shots instead of the neoprene waders I normally use there. Fishing was dismal to say the least, but I still managed to hook a couple small brown trout:
For our summer's last outing, I took my 3 younger children up North to fish for rainbow and brook trout. With night time temps reaching close to the freezing mark, I was hoping the water would have cooled off a bit. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, with the water still at 68 degrees up there, when it should normally by closer to 55 this time of year. Surprisingly, the bite was better than I thought, took us only a few hours to fill a 10 trout bag limit, but they were smaller than average for that lake. Still plenty of fun for the kids, my 3 year old Zev caught his first few trout with the help of his older brother.
Moving up in size on the fish scale, I did manage to land some slightly larger bass while topwater fishing near downtown Montreal by bike. Nothing huge, but topwater action is always great, especially under tough conditions. Having to bike over Mount Royal and back to access the water makes it all the more rewarding.
Moving up to the top of the food chain, I didn't bother with pike or walleye, but did get a chance to fish for some muskies with my friend Mike. Numbers beat size on our outing, I landed 3 or 4 muskies, up to 42 inches (roughly 20+ lbs).
Again, not the monster I had hoped for, but definitely lot's of fun, they all put up really tough battles before being landed.
Last but not least, were the goold old reliable carp. Still in summer patterns, they were about as predictable as they get. Landed a couple dozen or so in the past couple weeks, most were average sized.
Notable fish were:
A nice muddler just shy of 20 lbs landed by my 9 year old son Eli:
And a nice 25+ lbs common carp that I landed on my last carp outing for the summer. It came on a new boilie flavour I was testing, and on a brand new rod as well. Gotta love it when that happens:
Now that summer has ended, the water should start cooling off with some colder night in the forecast. Fish will be moving into their fall time patterns soon, and in general, fall is a great time to catch the biggest ones of the year.
Though cold weather makes for less comfortable fishing, adjusting your clothing to match the conditions will allow you to keep on fishing until first ice, and hopefully land some of those fatties while they are in there pre winter feeding frenzy.
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