It’s about time!
It only took until late April for the weather to hold long enough for my wife and I to consider going fishing. It honestly feels like a year has passed since the last time we went. Winter feels like that in Canada at times. Like the cold weather is neverending. Well it finally did, and on a quiet Monday morning we decided to give the credit river mouth a try. Fortunately for us access to the river is conveniently reached by transit. Less than 20 minutes on the TTC, and then another 30 minutes or so by GO train, and you are only a few minutes walk from the river. There are restaurant and coffee shops nearby, and an arena with public washrooms only a short walk away. On a weekday it’s relatively quiet in the morning. Only the occasional local taking their dogs for a walk come across us fishing. In other words it’s a perfect spot to cast, and hopefully catch something on a weekday morning as the sun rises.
Pleasant company
This portion of the credit river is better known for rowing than fishing. Periodically we would take a break from casting spinners and spoons to watch the rowers zip by us. A couple of swans made their way to us out of interest but quickly moved on. For about an hour we saw another gentleman fishing from the opposite bank with worms. He had a folding lawn chair with him, and just cast out his line then settled in. There was a cool breeze coming in off the lake, but the rising sun provided just enough warmth to keep us comfortable. Early on it seemed as though our efforts weren’t going to be rewarded. For the first hour we hadn’t even got as much as a nibble on either of our lines. Normally that would be enough to sour my mood, but with this being our first time out on what was sure to be a beautiful day I didn’t mind.
Would our luck change?
There’s always that moment when you have been fishing one area long enough that you struggle with moving on. Especially when fishing from shore. You wonder if there might be a shallow rocky pool, or tree that’s fallen into the river a little further upstream where the fish could be hiding. Have you been endlessly casting into a section of the river that’s totally devoid of fish? Well in this case that seemed impossible being so close to the river mouth. There had to be fish there. Stubbornly I stood my ground, and continued to cast until my shoulders and arms hurt. Finally after about 3 hours my determination was rewarded. Unfortunately for me the reward wasn’t mine. It was my wife’s.
“I got one” she exclaimed! I was in the middle of my retrieve so I looked over my left shoulder to see her rod severely bent, a look of pure determination on her face, and the fat body of a fish splash back into the river. She had hooked a serious lunker! Now we caught some pretty nice Bass last year, but just a glimpse of what she had on the line was enough for me to realize that this beauty was going to eclipse all of those. The catch of the year might well be the first one we make! I quickly reeled my line in as she fought to bring the lunker in. To get to where my wife was I had to carefully traverse some rocks that made up the shoreline. When I was merely 6 feet from her I saw the beast jump clear out of the river once more. Almost definitely a lake trout, it’s scales reflecting the sunlight. That last jump was so close to shore that my wife could have probably reached out and caught that fish. She didn’t catch it though. That last jump proved to be just what the beast needed to shake the lure loose. One last splash and the lunker was gone. The only evidence that it was ever there was the look of astonishment on my wife’s face. In the end we didn’t land anything that day. Even so the urge to return to Port Credit and try our luck again couldn’t be greater. On a day that we actually caught nothing, I doubt that I could have been more satisfied if we did.
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