984 | Atlantic Salmon and Sea-Run Trout with Todd Karnas in Newfoundland

00:00:00 Dave: Newfoundland holds an important piece of brown trout history. Some of the first brown trout brought to North America were stocked in ponds around Saint John’s in the eighteen-hundreds, and nearly one-hundred and fifty years later, their descendants are still swimming there today. And that’s just the start of what you can find on the eastern side of the island. Today, we’re talking Atlantic salmon in small streams, big browns close to town, sea-run trout in estuaries, and a fishery where tides, rain, and even small baitfish can change everything from day to day. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast, where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, and what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Todd Karns is on the podcast today from Eastern Guides, and he spent more than fifteen years fishing these waters around Saint John’s and the Avalon Peninsula. So you’re going to hear about how Todd approaches Atlantic salmon on the small rivers around eastern Newfoundland, where a thirty-five-foot cast can put you right in the game. We’re going to find out how Todd Fishes for sea-run brown trout in the estuaries, why two hours leading into low tide can be a critical time period, and how falling water can reveal a hidden river channel, and why July is one of the better times to experience the range of fishing opportunities in Newfoundland. And we’re going to get into the arrival of the capelin, a baitfish that is changing the game out there. And we’re going to talk about how you can target this fishery and how you can work it into your fishing out there. You can check in with Todd at eastern guides dot CA. Here he is, Todd Kerns. How are you doing, Todd? 00:01:37 Todd: I’m doing well. 00:01:38 Dave: Good, good. I think today we’re going to have a good conversation about Newfoundland. We’ve been talking quite a bit about it because we made our first trip over there this year we’re hoping to get back. We’re hoping to make this a regular occurrence. Fishing out there for Atlantic salmon and brown trout. We’re going to talk about that today. You’re on the eastern side of Newfoundland, which is an area we didn’t get to. We kind of stayed on the west, but. So we’re going to get into all that today. Talk salmon trout. But before we get there, give us the heads up on on your fishing in Saint John’s in that area. Have you been fishing for salmon for a while? 00:02:15 Todd: For salmon? Yeah. I mean, I’m not originally from Newfoundland. I’m one of the transported mainlanders who arrived here about twenty five years ago to teach at the university. But I’ve been fishing these waters for fifteen, sixteen years now. Seventeen years, I guess, for a while for Atlantic salmon, it was the first Atlantic salmon fishing I’d ever done when I came here and gradually learning. And then there’s also brown trout, and there’s brook trout, and there’s rainbow trout, and there’s sea run brown and sea run brook trout here as well, all within about an hour, hour and a half drive. 00:02:49 Dave: Oh there is. Yeah. And sea run brook trout too. What is the do the brook trout get pretty big. What does that look like for Brookies and Browns? 00:02:57 Todd: Well, the Browns will get big. I mean the Browns will get big. I mean I think the biggest one I’ve ever caught around ten or twelve pounds. Um but I’ve seen them, seen them much bigger and heard stories and seen pictures of bigger ones as well. But um, you know, generally you’ll be heading out and there’ll be lots of, you know, eighteen to twenty inch silver brown trout around and smaller. And then you’re, you’re always hoping to see the two or three pounders, uh, there, but then occasionally you’ll get the, the bigger ones come by and those are a lot of fun. That’s exclusively just sort of a sort of fall and a spring thing as well. When they’re, when they’re moving in and out of the fresh water. Um, it’s a little different here than other places, but we can talk about that later. Uh, about our specific sea run brown fishery, the brook trout. Um, those are cool too. I mean, we don’t have as many sea run brook trout places on the eastern side of the island because the Browns have dominated a lot of those larger waterways. ways so that, you know, whereas where you were on the west coast of the island, that would be all exclusively brook trout. And I don’t know if he got into any sea run brook trout or not when you were there, but, um, it’s really good for it. Um we have, we’ve got some as well. But again the Browns kind of crowd them out. Um and the runs will be very specific and short and we had some and we don’t generally get as big as the other places, but you know, we’ll get, you know, two and three pound silver brook trout when they run. They just finished the run about two weeks ago here. It seems to be because they spawn in September. So they’re the first ones that kind of make that run. And they’re on all the salmon rivers a couple weeks ago. 00:04:30 Dave: Gotcha. So brook trout are the early ones. And what is going on there now? It’s as we’re talking, it’s almost September. Uh, this is probably going to go out in September. What is that fishing look like right now? August, September. 00:04:41 Todd: Uh, everything’s kind of winding down a little bit. We’re one of the odd places where, you know, our primary fishing season is the summer. Whereas in a lot of places, you know, September, October is when a lot of the. A lot of the anadromous fisheries will start up. Ours is just ending there. Um, so we have an inland complete shutdown on September seventh. So as of that day, like all the inland trout waters, um, and all the inland salmon waters are closed with a few exceptions. There are, uh, three the three main main rivers on the island, the Humber River, the exploits River and the Gander River. They open up, keep open the bottom parts of those rivers of various lengths on each of the three rivers, uh, for fall, angling up until October seventh. And so you can still go out and fish all through September on those on those rivers. And they give you quite a bit on those. I think the gander you get about eighty kilometres. The exploits are somewhere around fifty. And I think the Humber is, you know, twenty, twenty or thirty. I can’t remember specifically. So there’s lots of that. And around Saint John’s specifically they keep open our fish. Some of our fisheries until October seventh as well for sea run brown trout primarily. So there are a number of rivers where you can fish the bottoms of them, the estuaries of them. Some places will give you more. Some places give you less depending on the water system, the fish, sea run browns, and there will be Atlantic salmon in portions of those rivers as well. So you can fish those. 00:06:15 Dave: I see. And can you fish trout throughout the year once if they’re not sea run can you. Are there other opportunities just for like resident trout. 00:06:23 Todd: Uh, the resident stuff all shuts down on, on September seventh. And then it opens back up for, uh, February first. So and again, the reason being, I think is that, you know, September is, you know, ninety five percent of all the trout in Newfoundland and Labrador are brook trout and those guys are spawning in September, right? And so they just keep them away. There’s no stocking programs. There’s nothing else. You know, there are some inland trout waters for brown trout and, uh, some rainbow trout ponds around Saint John’s. But it’s really October seventh. You you take off your waders for the last time of the year and tie flies. That’s it. Yeah, exactly. 00:07:02 Dave: And in Saint John’s is by far the biggest city in Newfoundland. Right? 00:07:06 Todd: Yeah. Uh, I think there’s a about a half million people in the entire province, including Labrador, and anywhere from two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand are right here on the Avalon Peninsula. Right. You know, I think Saint John’s is somewhere around two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand, something like that. And then all the surrounding communities, which are generally larger in, you know, communities that people commute to work from and so on. So it’s everybody’s kind of here. It’s, uh, it’s a, it’s a unique place where you have five hundred thousand people in the entire province, three hundred thousand of them in one area, and then in ninety thousand Moose. Oh, yeah. Roaming everywhere. 00:07:43 Dave: Right. Oh, you got you got lots of moose. That’s right. You see lots of moose out there. 00:07:47 Todd: You do, you do. I mean, you know, you inevitably will. Yeah. If you’re out in nature, you will see them on the rivers or on the highways. Uh, specifically. 00:07:56 Dave: Yeah, in the Avalon Peninsula. That’s the, uh. I don’t know how you describe that, but it’s just the peninsula that sticks out. It’s pretty amazing. It’s got this little connection to the island, the bigger island, but it’s, um, that looks like the geology there is pretty interesting how that thing formed, but it’s you’re stuck out there in the middle of the ocean. It looks like. 00:08:14 Todd: Yeah. We’re as far out here as you can get. The little isthmus that connects the Avalon to the rest of the island is very narrow and on clear days, which aren’t very many in Newfoundland, because we’re always fogged in. When you’re driving, you’ll be able to see the ocean on either side of you. 00:08:30 Dave: Oh, wow. That’s cool. 00:08:32 Todd: Yeah. So it’s kind of neat. But yeah, and generally the, the island as a whole changes its geography quite differently. Um, as you progress from one side to the other. So the Avalon is like you said, we’re stuck out here. We’re very windswept. It’s very rocky. The trees are all kind of more sparse because of that. They don’t grow as high because there’s not as much soil. Um, it’s rocks and small coniferous trees and bogs and barrens and ponds and rivers and, uh, our, our climate’s a little bit warmer than the rest of the island because the jet stream will come up and just clips us. And so we’ll be always a little bit warmer, especially in winter from the rest of the island and end up with more rain, more freezing, uh, more ice. And then you get into central, which is, like you said, the larger part of the island, everything spreads out a bit. You know, you’re a little bit more sheltered from the winds on either side. Uh, everything just kind of gets bigger. The hills get bigger. You switch from those pine and fir forests to birch and everything goes birch. It looks very much like a traditional boreal forest. Um, and that goes the weavers get a little bit bigger, they’ll get a little bit wider. Um, the lakes get bigger And then after that you get over to the side. You are on the western side of the island, which is different again, which is, you know, beset by mountains and, and then a combination of those other two features that I was talking about. 00:09:57 Dave: That’s cool. Yeah. So, so as you’re, as you’re talking, yeah, we’re talking Saint John. So if you were to, you know, leave Saint John’s, where would be the first Atlantic salmon River that you could fish or for any anadromous fish. 00:10:10 Todd: So the first two scheduled salmon rivers. And that’s how it works here. They have one hundred and eighty seven salmon rivers, I believe that we call scheduled, meaning that they will surveil them. So these are ones that they’re trying to protect and regulate your behavior on those rivers. Meaning fly only floating lines, single barbless hook, no bait, all the kind of traditional, uh, those, those rules, those. I guess there’s one about half an hour from here that is a smaller one, but it has a combination of, of ponds on it. goes fairly, fairly decently into the back country. And it’s noted for big fish in it actually. Um relatively so. And then after that it’s forty five minutes. And then it’ll be like, you know, a string of three or four in a row. And then, you know, each river kind of, uh, spaces itself out differently across the, across the Avalon. But yeah, like I said, there’s about a dozen fourteen that we can access all within a hour and a half drive. 00:11:08 Dave: Hour and a half. And are you with your company? You work with Eastern guides now. Is that are you covering all of are you getting all around Newfoundland or is it more focused on the east side? 00:11:18 Todd: No, we just we just do what’s here. Like, like I said, we’ll guide for salmon within. I don’t know, I’ve gone out to about two hours of just off the Avalon Peninsula. Say if water conditions were poor or the salmon weren’t in the rivers here yet, but the person wanted to go salmon fishing. And a little bit further, I don’t mind too much in that early in the season they might come a little bit more westerly to us, but other than that, we do the entire Avalon, which is, you know, like I said, I drove Monday an hour and a hour and a half, I think, and then walked a good distance from there. So we’re willing to go out there and do it if people want to do it. We do a little bit of guiding else. Other than that, I’ve made myself available to guide on the Gander River, which is about three and a half hours away. But mostly we’re just we’re just here. We’re busy enough here as it is to. 00:12:06 Dave: Yeah. Is are all the rivers, whether you’re on the gander or kind of. They’re closer to Saint John’s. Are all this Atlantic salmon kind of fishing what you’re doing. They’re pretty similar, like gear wise gear and technique. 00:12:20 Todd: The technique is very similar, although it does change a lot. Now, I’d be interested to hear, and at some point I got to hear how you how you made out in Newfoundland. I want to hear what your experiences were because you know, the rivers that you talk about, I’ll be able to compare to other things as well where you were. But yeah, it’s it’s fairly straightforward. The fishing doesn’t change a lot. It becomes tighter and more pocket y on the on the eastern side, because the rivers are smaller. Consequently, we often use lighter gear. Just because you’re not making long casts, you have to present in kind of tighter angles, not have as much fly line in the water and you’ll do weird things about holding your hands differently and fish left handed a lot that you wouldn’t have to on, say, a bigger river. But other than that, it’s like it’s Newfoundland salmon fishing. It’s it’s easy to overthink it. You know, the salmon, the salmon are pretty, pretty aggressive. They’re aggressive and they’re predictable in their unpredictability. It seems. It’s like they will come to a certain presentation and you got to learn that presentation or, you know, try it as best you can. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. 00:13:25 Dave: Yeah. It seems like what we are doing, we are fishing the riffle hitch, you know, the Portland hitch, you know, pretty much, you know, I think almost exclusively. Right. And so it was cool because we were seeing fish coming up, you know, above the water. Is that something? Are you fishing the hitch most of the time or are you mixing that up? 00:13:42 Todd: We don’t really fish the hitch a lot on this side because our rivers are smaller. I mean, some guys do, but it’s like if you’re making our casts are just shorter, right? So it’s like you can throw it out there and hitch it with that half hitch behind the eye, or you can just hold your hand a little bit higher and then it’ll hitch the same way. 00:14:01 Dave: Oh really? Oh, you can hitch it. So you can take a wet fly. Just a normal tide on a normal, normal wet fly swinging it and you can lift it up and hitch it yourself. Make it because what it does is make the hitch gives it a v wake. You can actually see this V trailing behind your fly. 00:14:15 Todd: Yeah, it’s not quite high, but it’s close to it. It’s like, you know, you can, you can lift it up and make it make it V if you want to. And the fish are interested in it. But again, since it’s so pocket y, you don’t necessarily have the room to kind of have the cast tidy it up and then get it to, you know, wait for that half hitch to swing across and do it. It’s like, no, you just put it in the water immediately stack men to whatever side it is, whether it’s the right hand or left hand pool, and get that fly swinging. And it works. 00:14:43 Dave: Yeah, yeah. The rivers, we fish a lot. At least the bigger ones. The well, Portland was the biggest Portland Creek, but there’s also the Humber up there. There’s some big ones. So so kind of on the east side. It sounds like there the rivers are a little bit smaller. Are there any big larger rivers on that other side? 00:14:58 Todd: No there’s not. I mean, everything here is a lot smaller. You know, if you come and it’s the nice thing about Saint John’s too, is that if you come here, you know, and you’re not sure I have a lot of people say like, look, I want to go salmon fishing, but I don’t want to stand waist deep in water and have to throw seventy feet of line into the wind. Right. And it’s intimidating for a lot of people because they’re just not used to doing it. And so I was like, look, if you can stand in water up to your ankles and make a, you know, a thirty five foot cast and present nicely, it’ll work. You know, it really will. You don’t have to. It’s like I always often call it like, you know, fishing in a trout stream for anadromous, you know, three to ten pound salmon. Uh, it’s, uh, it’s really what it is, right? 00:15:42 Dave: Yeah. There they are. The same species, right? These are all basically trout, sea run trout, or I guess they’re not all, I guess. Atlantic. I think of steelhead, steelhead, RC run trout. Atlantic salmon is a salmon, but it acts like a trout. It acts a lot more like a trout than a steelhead does. Yeah, I guess I guess maybe not. 00:15:59 Todd: I was just talking about the environment. When you I’ll show a person a river and they’re like, oh, wow. You know, and it’s like, yeah, this is full of salmon. And they’re like, oh, this looks like a trout stream back home. So yeah, it’s just there’s salmon here. And then oddly, there’s no trout in that river. And that’s the weird thing about it right there. Trout are always in the ponds. Uh, the sea run trout will use the rivers as highways between the user river as a highway, between the pond and the ocean, or between two different ponds, but they generally don’t live in it. Right. You’ll catch the odd one there. But I mean, when you’re in Portland Creek, you’re in that instance where you have that huge pond and only a mile to the ocean. And so you’ll get residents will probably drop back, but it’s probably just a lot of trout going back and forth. 00:16:41 Dave: When it comes to high quality flies that truly elevate your fly fishing game. Drift hook dot com is the trusted source you need. I’ve been using drift hooks expertly selected flies for a while now, and they never disappoint. Plus, they stand behind their products with a money back guarantee. Are you ready to upgrade your fly box? Head over to Drift Hook dot com today and use the code swing at checkout to get fifteen percent off your first order. That’s drift hook d r I f t h o o k dot com. Don’t miss out. Trout Roots by Onyx is built for fly anglers who want better Intel without spending hours digging for the information. You’ll get access to public land maps, stream access points, regulations, and even road and trail maps all in one place. It’s become my go to app for scouting new trips. You can check them out right now. Go to Trout routes and download the app today. And buy trout. Are you talking about brown trout and brook trout? 00:17:39 Todd: Uh, both of them on the Avalon. Yeah. They just don’t. It’s like they prefer the ponds. I guess the food is better. The protection’s better. You know, the rivers are fairly shallow and rocky and not a lot of bug life. I mean, there’s some, but it doesn’t seem to be where they want to be. They. If you would never say, I’m going trouting and then go to a salmon river. Oh yeah. You see, I’m going trouting. And then you go to these ponds because in the ponds you’re going to be over top of, you know, five to seven pound resident brown trout or the bigger brook trout. They’re just, you know, unless it’s a C run time. 00:18:13 Dave: They’re just there. 00:18:14 Todd: Yeah. Unless it’s C run time. And then you’ll catch them going back and forth, which is fun. 00:18:18 Dave: Gotcha. And when is C run time. 00:18:20 Todd: Uh C run kind of generally falls, like I said, for brown trout in the spring and in the fall and in spring, you’ll get a lot of kelts, going out or transitioning. So they’ve overwintered in the, uh, in the fresh water. So now they, they’re going to head back out to the ocean, uh, for the summer because all the bait’s showing up and they know the food’s there, but they have to kind of, you know, get themselves sorted up, build up some more strength because it can’t be weak going to the ocean. They got to chrome up, they got to get their, uh, you know, be able to take salt water again. So they’ll do this sort of staging and transitioning in the brackish water between the fresh and the, and the salt water and kind of go back and forth a bit in the spring and you’ll see you’ll find a lot of big, well mended Celts kind of going out at that time. And then in the summer, when all the bait shows up like the capelin shows up, the sand lances show up, the squid shows up, the mackerel shows up, the herring shows up. A lot of the trout will just kind of go into the bays. They don’t go far. They might go a couple miles or five miles, I guess is what I’ve heard is the kind of extent of their guess of their range and but occasionally nip back in on the tides depending on water, temperatures and climate, because they always know they can get a meal of bugs in the brackish water. But by, you know, June, we don’t do a lot of it by the end of June. We’re not really doing a lot of it because, you know, the ones that are out are kind of staying out there. You could do it at night. I think, you know, there’s a lot more of those fish that will come in, uh, come in under the cover of darkness. Um, but we’re just not doing that in the, at the nighttime. But if you go to Scotland and Ireland, that’s when they’re doing it, right. Um, the sea trout will be, you know, at midnight or one o’clock. 00:19:59 Dave: Right. So is that, is it open up there on April fifteenth or when is the when can you start fishing the. 00:20:04 Todd: We can start fishing on February first. And so I mean, but at that time there’s a lot of things are frozen over and, and ice. But, uh, the sea run stuff, depending on what kind of spring you’re having, if you’re lucky, you might have a few days in March, but generally it’s in April when the ice starts to get off the pond and the fish start moving, because that’s when you start to get the most success and there’s got to be bugs around If it’s freezing cold, there’s not a lot of bugs. And so our hatches might take a little while to get going. But yeah, it’s we always give the, you know, typically give the, the rule of thumb is that you should be right around when the Stanley Cup playoffs start. That’s usually when the sea trotting starts to pick up. 00:20:41 Dave: That’s right. And when is that typically the playoffs. When does that start? 00:20:45 Todd: I don’t know, they’ve gotten so long now. I don’t know how long it is. But usually it’s towards the end of April or mid to third week of April is usually when it starts. 00:20:53 Dave: April, May and then and then by June you’re kind of wrapping up the trout. And is the trout like, how are you fishing them in the lake. 00:21:00 Todd: In terms of sea run? 00:21:00 Dave: You mean, I guess, yeah, I mean, both like if you’re it sounds like we were talking about sea run there, but can you see run or resident? How are you catching the trout? 00:21:09 Todd: Okay, so the sea run brown stuff. I’ll go back to that. Like I said, it picks up in late April and then usually is good in in May. And then you’ll, you’ll notice a point when you start to catch, you’ll find more smolts. You’ll find more trout smolts and salmon smolts in the down in the pools by the ocean. And that’s usually the sign that it’s kind of over, that all the other fish have moved on. And now the smolts are kind of making their way out. And it’s kind of like the unofficial end of it. And that’s sometime usually in June or every river is different, obviously, but that’s what you do. And then in those, it depends on where you’re at, the type of gear you can use. If we’re just talking about fly fishing, uh, nymphs work very well. Standard nymphs, you can go under indicators. Some streamers work really well. Uh, they will follow stuff in the spring. They’re more, more aggressive in the spring because they’re more hungry. 00:22:00 Dave: And this is just in the lake. This is actually out in the lake fishing. Are you fishing? Like the streams? 00:22:05 Todd: This is the sea run stuff is kind of right where the ocean and the freshwater start. So there’s kind of these estuaries. 00:22:11 Dave: Oh, I see. So to catch the so getting into the browns or the brook trout, you’re you’re not fishing up in a freshwater lake. You’re down to where the river is flowing into the ocean, the estuary. 00:22:21 Todd: That’s where it’s all going on down there? Yeah, they’re making their way out and that’s where they’re hanging out. And like I said, they’re in that that brackish water so that they can kind of negotiate that salt and fresh water mix a little better, I guess. And you will notice after rains or on high tides, you know, their behavior will change a lot based on the salinity of the water. And they’ll disappear for a bit and come back and hang around better if it’s more consistent. But yeah, it’s and at that point down there, you’re just using, you know, like I said, all your kind of subsurface trout things, uh, that work some patterns work better than others, I guess. But, uh, we use a lot of small trout Spey rods for them as well. So you get a little bit longer cast because you’re in these estuaries, these quasi, uh, Stillwater situations. 00:23:07 Dave: How do you know when you’re in the estuary versus the river? 00:23:10 Todd: You’ll see it. I mean, it’s just, it’ll just be a big pool, right? It’s, it’s kind of funny because most every Newfoundland Oak Park community, small fishing village that was built around a river historically will have a river going through it, and then either a small war or something where people would have tied up their boats and. But just a harbor. Um, sometimes, sometimes it’s just a big pond, inevitably referred to it as the gut, which is an old sort of term for referring to these waters of the, you know, right where the, uh, the ocean and the, and the salt and the fresh water meet around the harbor. Um, and that’s where a lot of it is done. That’s where you’ll find all the trout, uh, the sea run trout. And, uh, it’s, you know, and if you get onto salmon rivers that don’t have that and they’re not based around a town, there will be signs that are up there and it’s pretty easy to see. Um, it’s all based on tide marks and other geographical features. 00:24:02 Dave: Right. Are you trying to hit those? So do you have to play the tides and get the tides just right to get good conditions? 00:24:08 Todd: Tides are tides are very essential. Yes. And it, it, you know, you can go there one day and think that you’ve got it figured out. And if you don’t know what the tides are, you might go there the next day and not see a thing. So, uh, I think the CNN Browns are by far the most difficult species to catch. You’ll see them, but you’ll be go there a lot of days when you just don’t see them or, um, you don’t know why they’re not there. And then you think when you see them, you’re like, oh, they’re here, I’m going to get them. And then you start casting at them. You’re like, oh yeah, these are brown trout. And he’s like. 00:24:39 Dave: Oh, they’re not as easy. 00:24:41 Todd: No they’re not. 00:24:42 Dave: They don’t bite as readily as a brook trout. 00:24:44 Todd: Oh yeah. The sea run brook trout will come and, you know, come pretty willingly. But the browns are a bit more circumspect. Yeah. 00:24:50 Dave: Oh wow. And so when you’re fishing so you’re swinging flies in these estuaries. Is that still what you’re doing or and is it like an outgoing tide or what’s the tide you’re looking for? 00:25:00 Todd: We’re always looking for kind of the two hours leading up to dead low. That seems to be when the best fishing will be. Um, just because, you know, it’s the best that we can figure out. Is it like, you know, the estuary which you look at, it looks still, but there is there is a current under there, which is the river, the stream or whatever it is, and you’ll see it occasionally. And the fish will come in on the on the incoming tide. But they don’t sit really well like the trout will just they’ll kind of move around. You’ll see them in different places. You’ll see them jump out of the water and they’re just not comfortable. And you can throw your fly at them, but then they just won’t be there or they won’t take it. And then you realize again, okay, I know these are these are trout, and they need to be comfortable in order to take a fly and feed when they’re feeding. And so when the tide starts going out that Stillwater, you’ll be able to see the flow more consistently. And you’ll be able to see the kind of the river within the Stillwater. And you’re like, ah, there’s a bend there. There’s a corner there. That’s where the fish are sitting off that, and they’re darting into the flow to get that. And yeah, it’s just, it’s just a trick in every little place is different. It’s like you usually just like where the fish sitting. Uh, when are they feeling most comfortable to actively start feeding? And that’s when you usually have the most success. 00:26:11 Dave: That’s it. So you’re waiting for it to, to kind of that low tide. Now you’re seeing the fish are in these runs and you can kind of target them. Are you when you look at the run, are you you know, how do you find the water where they’re holding? Do you just cover a bunch of water? If you didn’t know the area or how would you find these little slots? 00:26:26 Todd: You waste a lot of gas money. Yeah, it’s it’s like you do. It’s really like you just got to go there. The people who catch the most seatrout are people who live right beside it because they see they see it every day. Yeah. You put your time in and, you know, you freeze a lot because if you’re rowing in the spring, it is very cold usually. So yeah, you’ll go a lot of days and, and not see a thing and you know, but then you’ll have the days that it makes, it makes it work. 00:26:53 Dave: Gotcha. So that’s it. So yes. So so these let’s just take the brook trout for those fish. They’re there in the estuary. So they’re well you got sea run brook trout, right. So they’re heading out and then eventually they’re going to be coming back in. I’m guessing they’re staying out there for what, a year or something like that. And then they turn around and come back. 00:27:10 Todd: I don’t think so. I think they’re just kind of going out. And a lot of them will just go out for the summer. 00:27:15 Dave: Oh, right. Just not even. Yeah. Just. 00:27:17 Todd: Yeah. And that’s in general. That’s the see, that’s the Browns too is they go out in the spring summer, maybe winter over winter. But you know it’s tough out there. So, uh, you know, most of them will come in. Uh, the brook trout especially, they’ll go out in the spring. You’ll get kind of an early one in May when you’ll be able to catch them around the moon. And the moons are very crucial on this, too. You know, a late moon in May or an early moon in June, you’ll find a lot of fish moving, a lot of brook trout moving in these places, and then they won’t be there anymore until the end of July or the beginning of August. When they start to come in. 00:27:51 Dave: They’re coming back in. 00:27:52 Todd: Yeah. 00:27:52 Dave: Right. That’s cool. Yeah. So that’s essentially what they’re doing. So they’re just going out to feed and grow and get big for that short period. They’re coming back. And then and then you got the Atlantic salmon, of course, which are I guess some of those aren’t staying out there that long either, right? Because you’ve got the grilse, which are, you know, what? Three what is the size range for Grilse? When does it become not a grilse on the larger end? 00:28:13 Todd: The easy answer to that is one winter. One winter at sea is a grilse. But there is. We’ve talked to biologists and they say like, no, it’s like the biggest they can grow in a year at the ocean is sixty three centimeters. And so that’s kind of like it as big as a grilse will get now they’ll get fatter. We’ll have, you know, six and a half or seven pound grills, depending on how the feeding has been in the ocean. But they’re generally going to be, you know, that sort of fifty five to sixty three centimeters. Yeah. 00:28:40 Dave: That’s right. I’ve heard that before. Yeah. So like twenty, that’s roughly twenty five inches, which is still a pretty good fish. That’s still like a six seven pound fish, something like that. Right? 00:28:50 Todd: Yeah, it can be for sure. Yeah. It really can be the and it all depends really how the, how good the feeding was out out in the oceans because you know, our, our salmon aren’t going as far as they are in a lot of other places, right? Like, so the ones in Quebec and New Brunswick and some of the more famous maritime provinces with salmon, those salmon are going up to Greenland, um, along with a lot of the European ones, cars aren’t really doing that. And, you know, depending on where you are on the island, you know, this is why we have so many more grills. We have ninety three percent of all grills in North America. The province does. Yeah. So we’re absolutely crucial to the survival of the species. And I forget, I think we get like ninety three percent of all grills and somewhere around eighty percent of all large salmon, I think it is. But, um, they’re just not going as far because we’re already way out here. So, you know, a lot of, you know, fish in the Gander River or something like that, they’re just going to the Labrador Sea. Um, which is relatively close in the scheme of salmon migrations. And a lot of the rivers are doing that. Now. Some of the big Humber fish will go up to Greenland, and those are the ones coming back in the fall at like thirty five pounds. Right. Our fish on this side of the island are mostly going down to the Grand Banks. They’re going the other way. They’re going down there to feed. So that’s only a couple hundred miles really for them to go. And so that’s why they go out, they eat for a year and they’re like, oh, I’ll come back and get back in the rivers and reproduce. 00:30:17 Dave: That’s it. So you have yeah, there’s a little bit of diversity there. The we talked about the sea run trout, Atlantic salmon. And then what about the resident fish? When are you what does that look like? Or is that a different deal where you’re catching those those guys? 00:30:30 Todd: Yeah, the resident stuff. Like I said, it does happen mostly in the ponds. Uh, there are there’s only about four or five lakes in Newfoundland. The rest are ponds, apparently. Well, it just goes back to some, you know, naming quirk from English cartographers or something, but so they’re all ponds. They call them all ponds here, which is odd to me coming from like Midwestern farming country. That’s not a pond, you know. 00:30:51 Dave: Oh, yeah. Right. It’s big. It’s bigger than a pond. 00:30:54 Todd: Yeah. There’s no frogs in it. There’s no cows or, you know, irrigation pumps coming out of it. But, um, so yeah, so they’re there. And what’s cool about the brown trout is that these are historically the first brown trout introduced into North America around Saint John’s. You know, they’re European fish, as you know. Um, but they were first brought here in the late eighteen seventies, and those were the first brown trout introduced to North America and a series of ponds right around Saint John’s. And they stocked them for, you know, not long, twenty or thirty years. And I think the stocking program ran out in the early nineteen hundreds. And their their legacy is still here, though, really there. 00:31:36 Dave: Wow. So they’re just wild fish. They’re just on their own. 00:31:39 Todd: Yeah. They’re on their own. Uh, they’ve been here for like, you know, like I said, one hundred and almost one hundred and fifty years and, uh. 00:31:45 Dave: Wow, that’d be pretty cool to be able to go catch one of the oldest, uh, brown trout basically in North America. 00:31:52 Todd: Yeah, some of the lineages anyway. Right. And so they just spread throughout. Um, I’m not sure how many ponds are introduced to initially. I think the first pond they introduced was now our water reservoir. Um, so we’re not allowed to fish there, but you see big fish jumping. 00:32:05 Dave: Oh right. What’s the biggest named the pond or the lake? That would be named that, you know, would be the most famous one out there. 00:32:12 Todd: I don’t know if there’s anything too famous. It’s, you know, it’s, uh, you know, the locals, you know, love places. There’s I mean, there’s ponds, right in town with twenty two inch brown trout. 00:32:23 Dave: Oh, there are like, right in the city. 00:32:26 Todd: Right in between the hospital and the university. You know, you can go and fish there on your lunch hour. There’s sea run. There’s a sea run river that comes in, uh, in right directly into Saint John’s in captivity, a little subsection of Saint John’s that right now there’s probably, you know, a few, there’s always a few ten to thirteen pounds sea run brown trout hanging out right around the wharfs where every all the tourists are standing, they don’t know they’re there, but they’re, they’re there. But all the ponds around are very good, too. Like there’s, you know, one of the more popular ones amongst locals is Paddy’s Pond. It’s about the Irish way. P a d d y, which is just a big pond. It’s not particularly deep. These aren’t deep ponds. There’ll be holes of twenty or thirty feet, maybe occasionally, but for the most part they’re very shallow because there’s these glacial scraped, you know, little ponds and, uh, you know, every year, you know, you’ll, you’re more than likely to catch a few, you know, twenty to twenty five inches. And there’s, there’s ones I’ve seen, you know, seven, eight pounds in there. Wow. They’re always, they’re, they’re remarkably resilient. Yeah. And anywhere in these ponds, they can get out to the ocean, you know, some of them will go and then you get the chances for the really big trout. 00:33:35 Dave: Oh so right. So some of these ponds like Paddy’s, does that have a connection to the ocean? 00:33:40 Todd: Historically it would have although it’s under a series of dams now to control flooding I think. So again we’ve we’ve interceded there. So uh. 00:33:48 Dave: Yeah, we’ve changed. We’ve changed the fish passage, right? Isn’t the same as it used to be with, with high you got highway. What’s the highway? There’s a main highway running right next to it. Right. 00:33:56 Todd: We got one highway. Yeah, it’s the Trans-Canada highway number. 00:34:00 Dave: Oh, right. That’s the only one. Yeah, you got one. And then you got highway two right up above it. 00:34:04 Todd: Uh, I don’t know about that. There’s some other ones. I don’t know how it is, but yeah, there’s some other ones. 00:34:09 Dave: God, this is great. So you’ve got a lot of opportunities really starting in February, if the weather cooperates. And can you fish trout as that close up in September seventh as well? 00:34:19 Todd: Yeah. Trout’s close September seventh. Now, February is not a good time for trout really, because you’re it’s not at all unless you’re going to ice trout again. The way that works is that, you know, May fifteenth would be the start of, of, uh, resident trout fishery. And then you’re just waiting for the fish to get off the bottom because it’s still very cold here, like spring. I don’t know, the joke here is that we don’t really have a spring. We’ll have, you know, a number of months of winter, and then one day summer will happen because, you know, the leaves won’t get on the trees here until June. It stays quite cold in May. Um, so, uh, you don’t have prolific bug activity all the time, but if you get out and it is working, it is a nice day. You will. You’ll find a lot of very hungry trout and so. Some of the best days fishing trout fishing have had has been, you know, in late May, mid May, um depending on the temperature. 00:35:12 Dave: What is the um eastern guides dot CA. Is that a group. Describe that a little bit that program. 00:35:19 Todd: Yeah. So we’re east coast Gillies. Yeah it was, it was a few of us we used to guide for a friend who had a shop in town, there was a few of us who had our summers off on a university, uh, instructor, um, and crab fisherman. And so we’d have time during the summer. Uh, another friend was in the Coast Guard, another person was a youth pastor. And so we had a friend who owned a fly shop in town, and he didn’t want to do any guiding because he was working at his shop and wanted to fish when he wasn’t working at the shop. So we said, yeah, we’d do it. So we got it for him for a couple of years. Uh, his shop closed down and, uh, I just asked the guys if they wanted to keep doing it, and they all said yes. And, uh, that’s, we’ve been doing that for a while now, although they’ve sort of, you know, moved on and, uh, one guy had to leave the province on that, but it’s, uh, um, been remarkably, remarkably busy. 00:36:09 Dave: Yeah. You still got it going. So it’s you and still a few other guides, uh, covering the area. 00:36:15 Todd: I’m still going. I have one day off in June, and I might have two or three in July. Um, August is slowing down a little bit, but that’s good. There’s lots going on. Uh, but yeah, it’s been a very good success. 00:36:27 Dave: Yeah. That’s right. And it fits kind of nice. Probably. Right. Because the, the well, I guess springtime, it starts in the spring goes to the summer, like you said, you fish for. I mean, do you fish for trout? Like out of everything we’ve talked about, do you focus on one more than the others of the species or life histories? Or what does that look like for you? 00:36:45 Todd: Well, I mean, personally, it’s like, if I’m I’m a river guy, I want to swing a fly. I want to get a salmon on dry flies. That’s what I want to do. So once the end of June comes around, this is really when the salmon start to enter the rivers, you kind of focus to that, although it is so, you know, trouting is so convenient. You can pack up, get on a boat at, you know, get put your boat in the pond at like six o’clock, seven o’clock on an evening, five minutes outside of the city and you’re over top of very nice fish, you know, and, and you can pack it back up and be home, be home really, really quickly. So. 00:37:21 Dave: Yeah. Are you fishing on those guys in the pond? How are you? Remind us again how you’re fishing for those trout and like the resident fish. 00:37:28 Todd: Yeah, it depends on what we’re doing. You know, brook trout. You don’t do a lot of fancy things, but again, it’s like trout everywhere. You’re just following, following the bugs, following what? The trout are eating. The trout here, we always like to say are not very picky and very opportunistic for the most part. All the Browns do get much more koi. There are a number of decent hatches on the ponds around Saint John’s, although they’re quite later. Like for instance, we’ll have a. We have a very good hexagenia hatch on a member of the of the brown and rainbow trout ponds. And that doesn’t happen for us until like the end of July. Um, which is quite, quite fast when, when most of you guys are doing it. 00:38:08 Dave: So you’re catching some of these on dry flies or are you mostly fishing dry flies or. 00:38:12 Todd: Oh it depends. I mean you gotta do it works. But it’s very much like loch style fishing, like we’ll do in Ireland and Scotland where you’re out, try and get out in a pond, a boat in the pond and see what the trout are eating. We use a lot of traditional sort of, uh, Irish and Scottish loch flies, things like small black pencil, small midge flies, you know, and then if the hatches are on, then we’ll use those things and they do work, you know? 00:38:37 Dave: Yeah. So when you say loch style, do you mean you’re, you’re drifting with the wind using a drogue, like a sea anchor sort of thing or. 00:38:44 Todd: No, not so much a drogue. But you know, we will drift. Yeah. For sure. And, uh, you know, have you can have two on it. Uh, you know, a couple flies on it if you want. Sometimes it’s a little more windy here. It seems to be so. It’s like you. You do have to pick your days in that regard. But yeah, I mean, just the same thing. Yeah. Just find your spots and you drift over those spots and, and go back and it’s. 00:39:07 Dave: Casting and stripping or you’re not really using an indicator. Doesn’t sound like you’re just fishing just with the line, like a floating line sinking line or just kind of there’s a little mix of things you guys are doing. 00:39:18 Todd: The whole mix of things too. You know, it all depends on how much gear you want to bring on the boat, I guess. Um, you know, uh, you know, you’ll use some weighted flies for sure. Um, but intermediate lines are small, you know, lighter sinking lines. I don’t mind, uh, the, the bigger ones. I just don’t know. And plus two, if the hatch comes on, you always got to have that, that floating line there. It’s handy as well. 00:39:40 Dave: So wow. And are you catching out there? Is it just as good of a chance to catch a brook trout as a brown trout resonant fish? Or is it mostly brooks out there? 00:39:49 Todd: No. The ponds again are brown trout around Saint John’s. Um, so that’s for about a twenty five mile radius or twenty five minute radius around Saint Johns. That’s you’re going to run in primarily into brown trout. Once you get beyond that, it does sort of turn back over to brook trout. And then your fishing will change at that point too. You’re not going to do necessarily the lock style stuff for brook trout, because they just don’t just don’t really need it. The Browns are more coy, and they do respond a little bit better to those types of techniques. The brook trout, you know, are brook trout and you can get them on. Uh, yeah, on your stand. I won’t call them easier, but they’re, they’re more, you know, uh, more willing. 00:40:26 Dave: We’ll say today’s episode is sponsored by Noseeum Lodge and Alaskan Fly Fishing Lodge, specializing in wild rainbow trout since nineteen seventy five. Small by design and built for fly anglers. Book your trip right now. That’s Noseeum. Lodge dot com. N o s e. You know seom lodge dot com. Get started today. Experience the waters of Bristol Bay at Togiak River Lodge, where fly fishing meets Alaska’s rugged beauty. This is the place to complete the Alaska Grand Slam with all five salmon species rainbow trout, Arctic char and more. Where each day offers a new Alaskan adventure, you can visit Togiak lodge dot com right now to start planning your Bristol Bay experience with Togiak River Lodge. So if you want to go there and catch, try to catch all everything we’ve been talking about, get a chance for Atlantic salmon, resident fish, a sea. Is there a time where you could maybe have a chance at doing all that? 00:41:26 Todd: Realize your best time for sure, you know, because the salmon will be in the rivers. Um, we’ll actually will have something that resembles summer at that point. Um the brown trout um will be usually good by then, you know, you know, starts really getting going. You end of May and throughout June depending on the weather. And then June will sorry, July will start to bring a lot of the hatches, the evening hatches. Uh, the brook trout are around always and the sea around the sea. Run stuff will subside in July because those fish are mostly out in the bay because again, that. Well, again, that’s when all the. All the bait is out in the bay, right? Like I said, all the. The reason that Newfoundland works is because we have all this bait come here. And mostly capelin. This small kind of smell like fish that spawns on the shores on the shores of the island, and everything follows it. So that’s why the puffins are here. That’s why the whales are here. That’s why the salmon are here. Everything follows this fish and the trout aren’t stupid. They know. Okay? 00:42:26 Dave: They know what’s the name of the fish that they’re all following? 00:42:29 Todd: It’s a capelin. It’s a c a p e l I n. It’s in the rainbow. Smelt family, I guess. So it’s. 00:42:36 Dave: Okay. 00:42:37 Todd: It’s a, you know, a small little smelt. 00:42:39 Dave: And everything eats it. It’s a small smell and everything. Everything’s eating it. 00:42:42 Todd: Everything eats it. I said it worked out on a crab boat and you’ll see it. You’ll start to pick it up offshore on the sound or you’ll see these big globs of bait, and you’ll see the birds, and you’ll see the seals, and you’ll see the whales just following this caravan of of capelin as it moves from the deep into the shores, because it actually comes up and spawns on the shores. The females deposit their eggs on the gravel, the beaches and the males come in behind it. So you go to these beaches and there’ll be just, you know, the water be black with capelin. And then, you know, the, the wave will come in and roll and the roll will be all silver. And so they’ll say the katelyn’s rolling. This is what it is. And in some places the whales will come up very close behind it. Uh, there’s always birds around. But yeah, that’s why everybody’s coming here to, to eat those things, including salmon. Capelin was, was a very large part of the traditional part of the salmon diet. We’ve been overfishing them a bit. Um, so there hasn’t been as much capelin around historically. There was. And the salmon consequently just are having a change of food source. Go a little bit further, change what they’re eating to less nutritious things. And that’s part of the whole story. One of the issues, many issues that face Atlantic salmon now. 00:43:54 Dave: Yeah. Right. Right. That’s a big part. There’s a number of things going on. Yeah. You hear about that with the downturn, although it sounds like Newfoundland. And maybe that’s because for some of the reasons you mentioned that it’s still fairly, um, I don’t know, maybe a little bit healthier than other areas of the world. I mean, I guess this year, have you got, did you guys, what did you guys see up there on, on the east side? Did you like as far as the runs and stuff like that? 00:44:16 Todd: Uh, it was an odd summer. We started out very dry. Um, we just didn’t get any rain in June. And so the salmon got to come in with rain with, with, uh, water levels. And so we, we had a cool, but very dry June where we just had a kind of light northern breeze and breezes and winds, winds were everything on the island. And the winds that come from the north are generally more dry. And so we just didn’t get a lot of water, even though we had a good, uh, winter of snow snowpack. 00:44:44 Dave: Yeah. Lots of snow. 00:44:45 Todd: Yeah. We did. And but, you know, we just didn’t get any this side of the island just didn’t get really any rain. I’m not sure what it was like. The water levels were like on the West coast for you. 00:44:55 Dave: Yeah, it was high. It was the opposite. Oh, it was the opposite. It was too high. Actually, the water was where we couldn’t even find the fish. There was so much water that we couldn’t find. You know, they were everywhere. 00:45:03 Todd: Yeah, that was a definite thing. You’d hear people going over, you know, in the early part of the summer saying just everything is water everywhere. Can’t get on this ship, can’t get on this river just because of so much. And we were the exact opposite. 00:45:15 Dave: Wow. So the exact opposite. Yeah. Low flows. Which makes it what? Harder. Well, they just don’t come in as much. Well, eventually they come in, but there’s just. Is it different with the timing? 00:45:24 Todd: Exactly. Like you just go there at normal dates when you think they should be there and you’re like, you look at the water, it’s like, wow, there’s going to be nothing here and there aren’t. And then you get a rain and then they’ll show up. And so this year, our kind of runs, uh, for the most part, arrive much later on a lot of the rivers around us. Uh, and we did get a little bit of rain at the end of July. And so, you know, the fishing was, you know, picked up for those bits and, and, you know, I’ve been out kind of some of the more backcountry stuff because there are things where, you know, you’ll walk back, you know, the salmon by the end of August should be well spread out throughout the system. And you can walk back miles into the system to find out, you know, have salmon made it up here. And the case is yes, they’re there now. I’ve been going to these places for the last two weeks and the signs are pretty good back in there. 00:46:11 Dave: Oh yeah. Yeah. Because it’s open. You still got a couple of weeks left of the season. 00:46:14 Todd: Yeah. We got another, uh, yeah, September seventh. So we got a little bit of time left, but yeah, they’re, they’re remarkable creatures. They make their way up there despite everything. Now, as far as overall numbers, it sounds like you’re a little bit down, but it’s hard to say. 00:46:29 Dave: Um, you have some test waters, right? You have some test waters there that you can track runs on the island. 00:46:35 Todd: Yeah. Counters. Yeah. There are some of those. They seem to be, you know, generally down in the places that you would think they would be down where we had low water. Say, you can see those numbers are down now, whether those fish come in later, which is something they may do. Uh, hopefully that’s what they do. You know? 00:46:51 Dave: Yeah, it’s not not on a perfect system, right. Topher Brown was talking about Fish and Labrador, a couple on the podcast, and he was saying that I think it was Topher. He had this one trip where they were out there for like sixteen days and zero fish, like the whole, I mean, they just weren’t there. Like you said, there was just no. And they literally were at this remote thing. No fish. Right. And it was unbelievable. And then the next year, they had the largest run ever that they well, not maybe not the largest ever, but they had the best fishing ever that he’s ever had out there. Right. So it’s like night and day. Is that kind of what you see out there in your area too? 00:47:26 Todd: Yeah. I mean, ultimately with any sort of fishery, all you really hope for is consistency. You know, I mean, Atlantic salmon especially is like, it seems like the most you can hope for is how good it was last year. You know, it’s like, no matter how that last year was, you know, it’s like, well, at least I hope it’s as good as last year. But yeah, for sure. I mean, conditions have everything to do with it. Um, they really do. Um, and it is changing a lot on the island. It is changing a lot and everywhere. Um, and Labrador. 00:47:54 Dave: Is and all that stuff. 00:47:55 Todd: Exactly. You know, it’s just, you know, like I said in Fisher having go further. So now they come back, there might be a little bit later, they might be a little bit smaller because they have to eat different things. And yeah, the ocean, there’s a lot going on out there. And, uh, and they’re kind of one of the species. You can really see it going on and. 00:48:11 Dave: Yeah, see a change, but there’s still a chance. That’s the thing about that we love about, you know, fishing and fly fishing is that, you know, it only takes one, you know, and for us, when we went out there, that’s all it was for me. I was like, man, I’ve never I had never caught Atlantic salmon. And just, I just wanted to see one. And, um, definitely it was hard. It was challenging. But I mean, we and we actually fished another river. We went over to the torrent, the torrent river, which has um, I mean, God, that was, that was actually my best day. I had a little section there where I had I mean, geez, I think I had like eight different fish come to the fly. Yeah, on the same, on the same. Like I just, they kept coming up right in this little slot. Do you know the torrent is that similar size to the rivers you’re talking about on the Saint Johns area? 00:48:52 Todd: Uh, yeah, it’s pretty close. I mean, the torrents, uh, kind of really a really nice river. And it did. I did hear a lot of people, uh, mention that they did have good days out on the torrent this year. I think I was up there just a, I was up there for a weekend just a little bit after maybe, perhaps when you were there, I had the run had just gone through kind of thing. But there’s still lots of fish there. And it’s a, it’s a weird one because, you know, you have a historic part of the river and then you have another part of the river, the watershed above that was opened up when they put in ladders and so on. So you get a different mix of fish. But yeah, it’s very pretty river for sure. Uh, we’re not as much sort of, you know, there’s not as many rivers like that on this side of the island, just kind of set in the hills like that. Um, but it is a pretty thing and yeah. So you had you had you had that fish come eight times to your fly. You said. 00:49:39 Dave: Well, we, I was in this little slot. It was cool because I mean, the taunt is, is totally different than Portland Creek. You know, Portland Creek, we’re sitting back there on the bank. We’re just all kicking back. And you know, it’s just it’s a different thing. It’s big. It’s wide. You got Calvin out there fishing with the spey rod and blasting out casts across the river. The torrent’s tiny, right. But it’s super high grade. And you walk this boardwalk down below the fish ladder, and you walk this boardwalk all the way down. There’s these little spots in there, you know, these little slots or whatever. And we just popped into one where it was just, I was like, right at the tail out of kind of a, I call it a run. And then it dropped down into kind of a rapid. And they would just come up above this rapid and sitting in this slot. I mean, I probably had because I was fishing different spots. So I think I might have had, you know, probably at least four or five different fish, right. That came up in this one little probably, you know what I mean? Fifty fifty. I don’t know, even fifty meters. Right. It was just a small little section. 00:50:33 Todd: Yeah. For sure. I mean, it’s it’s it’s kind of nice because, I mean, the torrent is good too, because all the pools got names on them. And, and like you said, you have the boardwalk access and every year the fish are in the same spot. Like they really are, you know, and yeah, it’s always, it’s always strange because I’ll get a, I’ll always get a lot of trout come from, from wherever, from United States or from Canada. And we’ll get on the salmon River. And, and I always tell them it’s like, okay, you know, trout sits where it spends the least amount of activity to get the most amount of food. And those are certain places on a pool. And then I’ll tell them the salmon maximum is now it’s you have to think, where would where could it, what a salmon sit. That’s been the least amount of activity or energy to get the most amount of oxygen. And it’s different. Like I said, it’s probably just right over that berm. They’re getting an upswell where you’re fishing, and they’ll just gather there beside a rock or in front of a rock, right? 00:51:23 Dave: Just resting. Yeah. Resting to make their way up. Right. 00:51:26 Todd: That’s it. And you get any on dry fly? 00:51:28 Dave: Yeah, yeah. That’s all we did was fishing. It was, it was the riffle hitch the whole time. I mean, I don’t think I fished, I didn’t fish a non riffle hitch. 00:51:36 Todd: You didn’t fish a bomber or a bug or anything. 00:51:38 Dave: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we did fish. Yeah. We fished some bombers too. Yeah. Fish bombers. So we. Yeah, we tried that. But yeah, it was cool just watching the fish come up because you had this thing where and I missed a lot of these fish, right? Because they would, you know, you’re not setting the hook. Well, you do set the hook, but you got to wait a little bit, right? These fish come up and there’s this weird like one time I remember this fish came up and I just saw a flash and I just set the hook and it, I don’t know. So I don’t know if it, I guess it took it and then flat. But you know, you give it that second. Right. That was one thing we learned that it’s different than steelhead. Steelhead fishing is just swinging the fly and the fish pulls and tugs and it’s gone. You know, Atlantic salmon is more like trout in some ways. 00:52:14 Todd: Sometimes, especially off the surface. They do. Right. They’ll kind of, you know, whether it is the hitch or a bomber, you know, they’ll, they’ll just come up and sip it, you know, and be like, is that, was that a trout? And then all of a sudden be like a ten pound fish. 00:52:28 Dave: Exactly. 00:52:29 Todd: And you wouldn’t know until you get a chance to see it jump. Right? 00:52:33 Dave: Right. 00:52:33 Todd: And it swings a little bit different. The swing is more, much more like a steelhead where it basically hooks itself, right? Yeah. If you’re swinging, swinging, uh, you’ll just sort of see a boil and feel that. 00:52:45 Dave: Gotcha. That’s interesting. Yeah. Because we’re swinging the riffle hitch too, but it’s swinging on top. So it’s, it’s, yeah, you’re up on the top. It’s not, it’s not like a cast, but no, it was great. I mean, again, it’s really nice to sit here and be able to talk to you now because again, for years I was sitting here just listening to people. But now that I’ve experienced it and again, I mean, we’re like, yeah, we’re going back. I mean, this is, you know, I see why Atlantic salmon is so addictive. It’s a thing for steelhead because it doesn’t take many really. It only takes one to just get that chance to be to, you know, have that moment. Right. 00:53:16 Todd: Yeah. No, it’s you’re you’re, you’re not going to be in it. I mean, people, you know, will talk numbers all the time, right. I’ll do that too. 00:53:23 Dave: But it’s like. 00:53:24 Todd: You can’t be in it for numbers. It’s like, no, I was telling them the guy yesterday. It’s like, you know, if you succeed three times out of ten. When you’re playing baseball, you know you’re a star, right? You’re three hundred. 00:53:34 Dave: You’re a star. 00:53:35 Todd: If you if you succeed once in every five hundred cast for salmon, you’ve done well. Like, you know, it’s like. 00:53:42 Dave: Over the course. 00:53:42 Todd: Of the day, you know, it’s like you’re gonna, you gotta. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Right. 00:53:48 Dave: Yeah, I love that. That’s so good. Yeah. I love the, the, uh, the baseball. What was the, I think of that. That’s like a famous quote, the, you know, the difference between two out of ten, three out of ten, four out of ten, right. In baseball, it’s like. 00:54:01 Todd: Yeah, exactly. 00:54:02 Dave: It’s the two out of ten. You’re like, not even going to stay in the league. Three hundred hitters in All Star. If you’re a four hundred hitter, you’re like the greatest of all time. 00:54:10 Todd: Yeah. Hall of Fame. Yeah. 00:54:11 Dave: Hall of fame. Right. And we’re talking four out of ten. And and similar to to like you’re saying similar. That’s similar to salmon fishing. 00:54:18 Todd: Yeah. I mean, yesterday I had a young guy and his father out and, uh, he caught a, he caught one on his third cast. And so it was like, oh, this is going to be a good day. And then we let that one go. And then he got back in the water. And about ten casts later he rose another. And I think he just thought, okay, well, this is this is how it’s going to be all day. You know, I think the dad was definitely thinking that. And, uh, and then it just shut right down like the water had risen a bit and the sun came out and, and then you just cast the rest of the day. It rose one more, I think. But it’s just the way it is, you know, the fish, you do your job, but the fish has got to do its job too. And, you know, some days you just aren’t going to do it. 00:55:00 Dave: Yeah. It’s great. I’m looking up a stat here. I’m a big baseball just sports fan. I have a good some a couple random ones. We’re asking you here in a bit, but as we get into our sports segment, but, uh, four hundred and six Ted Williams in nineteen forty one was the last person to achieve four hundred over four hundred, right? Yeah. And he barely made it four hundred. So most people are hitting two forty four to two seventy, right? I mean, like that’s, isn’t that crazy? Like two? Like you’re literally in that two and a half out of ten of every time you’re at bat. 00:55:29 Todd: Yeah. No, it’s, uh, I was a college baseball player, so I know, I know the Mendoza line very well. 00:55:35 Dave: The Mendoza, the Mendoza. Yeah. You don’t want to be below two hundred, right? No. You want me down there? 00:55:40 Todd: No. So, you know, I think I finished somewhere around. 00:55:42 Dave: That’s cool. So you play college ball? 00:55:44 Todd: Yeah, I did. I went to a small university in Tennessee back a lifetime ago in early nineties. Yeah. 00:55:48 Dave: That’s right. So I’m getting back. So back to your history now. So you didn’t grow up. And you can tell obviously from your accent because Newfoundlanders have an amazing, uh, really strong accent. But so now where did you grow up? 00:55:58 Todd: I grew up in southwestern Ontario, probably only about, you know, probably forty miles east of Detroit. 00:56:07 Dave: Oh, right. 00:56:08 Todd: Wow. Forty miles across the lake to Cleveland, just in the small farming town on Lake Erie. 00:56:13 Dave: Right. 00:56:13 Todd: So I grew up down in that little corner. Yeah. 00:56:15 Dave: That’s cool. Yeah. We fished, uh, the south shore of Lake Erie for steelhead with Jeff Lisk a while back and. 00:56:20 Todd: Okay. 00:56:20 Dave: Yeah, it’s a cool country. Um, so wow. So and then you played ball down there as well. What was your position? 00:56:26 Todd: I was a catcher. 00:56:27 Dave: Oh, wow. That’s a tough position. 00:56:29 Todd: It’s the one. You get to tell everybody else what to do. So that was a good position. 00:56:32 Dave: Yeah. You’re a catcher. Were you a and you’re hitting wise. Were you like a big home run hitter or average or what was your your style? 00:56:39 Todd: No, I’d say I was born to the managing the game aspect of things, I guess. Yeah. Defensive probably more. 00:56:46 Dave: But you hit though, right. You had to hit right. You were hit or two. 00:56:49 Todd: Oh yeah. I know you hit you hit him. But I mean I went down there it was you know after a year or two you realize there’s a lot of people better than me. Um, I should probably stick to the books, you know? 00:56:59 Dave: Right. 00:57:00 Todd: And I really enjoyed that. So it was good. 00:57:02 Dave: Yeah. And then do you also play any other sports or was it mainly baseball? 00:57:06 Todd: Oh, I was you know, I was kind of a typical high school, high school jock where I played American football and hockey and baseball. And there were probably opportunities in many in all three of those. But, um, I wanted to play baseball. And so it worked out pretty well. 00:57:22 Dave: That’s right. And in college are you. Do you teach? Are you an English or what was it the. 00:57:27 Todd: Yeah, I teach English. I teach English literature at the local university here. Yeah. 00:57:31 Dave: That’s cool. What is your. I’m not sure if you’re a big outdoor writer fan. I, I, I was going to mention Stephen Brunt. We had Stephen on the podcast and he, man, what an epic producer, that guy of content. But he reminded me of this just about, you know, the content out there and stuff. But do you have a, an outdoor writer that you really love or is that part of your, the niche you follow? 00:57:51 Todd: I don’t know, I mean, since I went through academically trained, I’m always a little bit sort of, I won’t say snobbish, but I kind of like, I’ll see, I’ll tend to pick up on things that I don’t like quicker than things I do, although I. Although there are some real writers I do like, and you can engage and engage with them, you know, philosophically and artistically as well, ones I do like. Um, but I mean, there’s nothing really that. 00:58:15 Dave: Who would be one writer just in any genre that you like. 00:58:19 Todd: You know, in terms of like fishing, you mean? 00:58:22 Dave: No. Just anything. Any topic? 00:58:24 Todd: Oh, jeez. Any topic? 00:58:26 Dave: I mean, we hear about. We hear a lot about. Yeah. I mean, there’s all sorts of. I just had, uh, Tom McGuane. He’s more outdoor and, you know, outdoor writer, but, you know. 00:58:33 Todd: Yeah. McGee is great. I mean, like I said, I grew I was, you know, really trained in like philosophy and critical theory and literature. So I like kind of a lot of the typical, uh, you know, more complex academic, artistic, literary guys, um, and women. 00:58:51 Dave: What would be one in the, in the philosophical, the, the words that I can’t even really totally, you know, say like, who would be one writer that we could just look up. 00:59:00 Todd: Some of the interesting ones or, you know, that are similar, you know, that I’ll kind of look at and be like, man, that guy’s, you know, how close am I to that guy, you know? Uh, Kurczynski, um, where he’s just kind of. Yeah. Uh, out of Ann Arbor. I might be pronouncing his mispronouncing his name, but Krasinski. So anyway, he’s a, he was a novelist and taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And, uh, you know, basically realized he was his fishing was getting in on his writing. 00:59:31 Dave: Oh, right. 00:59:31 Todd: And he was also using his fishing to get away from the fact that he was having trouble writing. Uh, and so consequently thought to I’ll just do the both of them together around fishing. Um, which presents a whole bunch of kind of neat, you know, authorial questions, uh, and you know, how language works and how narrative works in terms of why fly fishing literature, which there’s so much of is such a rich field, right? Um, and you and you can, like I said, you can read people like Megan and just see how he’s really, you know, certain essays of his or certain essays of his are really dominated by basic kind of artistic questions of irony, you know, and, uh, it’ll compose entire essays around it. And so for me, that’s cool. I mean, because it’s what I grew up learning and teaching and I’ll see it in guys and, and, uh, yeah, so there’s a number of them like that. And then the classic guys, I’ve read a lot of them as well. So it’s all fun. 01:00:30 Dave: Yeah. Right. 01:00:32 Todd: I grew up, I grew up reading in the all star, I believe. 01:00:35 Dave: Oh, read it. So you know, you know Stephen. 01:00:37 Todd: Well I don’t know him at all, but I mean, I grew up, you know, near Toronto or a couple hours outside of Toronto so that you’d see his I’d read a sports column, you know, if I was going to follow the Blue Jays or see what he was saying about whatever is, you know, his his byline was always, always there. 01:00:50 Dave: Yeah. Stephen. Yeah. He was we did a great episode and we talked about Newfoundland because he, he, I can’t remember where he, I think he was from Ontario, but he basically came to Newfoundland for some random thing and ended up. Now he goes back every year. He’s been doing it for many years just to fish. 01:01:07 Todd: It’ll do that to you. It really will. I mean, I, I came here for one year in two thousand and three and now it’s, you know, twenty twenty six and I’m still here. Um, so, uh, it will do that to you. 01:01:19 Dave: It will do that. Yeah. Well, just one shout out to Stephen as we get out of here. Um, he sent me a couple of movies that he produced. One was about called Facing Ali and it was really good. It was about the fighters, not about Ali necessarily himself, about the fighters who faced. All right. Really a really great movie. And then he also Carvalho right, is a is a famous boxer who fought Ali who’s up from in Canada, who was one of the back in the day, was the Canadians number one boxer of all Canada. And just a just a great story. But he’s also getting me he’s sending me some Blue Jays stuff. He’s working on a piece on the Blue Jays now. Like, you know, just their history and how amazing that was, right. I’m sure you followed a little bit of the Toronto. 01:01:58 Todd: Uh, a little bit. I mean, not so much. I mean, the World Series run was fun last year. I guess I watched that, but, uh, uh, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s, it seems like a lifetime ago. I was doing stuff like that. So it’s always, always fun to look back on it. But I did listen to the, to the podcast with Steve. I found it very interesting because he said a lot of good things that I think and have noticed and observed for sure. And he’s just on the other side of the island over in Bombay. Um, but it was interesting again. And you mentioned a writer, um, he was talking about, uh, Bush pilot angler and Lee Wolf. 01:02:31 Dave: Oh yeah. 01:02:32 Todd: Which is a very, it’s a very interesting book, and it would be one I’d recommend to you to pick up, because it does give you a lot of insight into, uh, you know, the fishing will be whatever, but, um, uh, it’s told remarkably well because Wolf was a, he was an ad man and a filmmaker before he started doing all this. And so there are kind of neat little, you know, artistic collage techniques and storytelling at times that are fun that I can pick up and enjoy. But at other times it’s just talking about, you know, you know, rural Newfoundland and the forties, which is just a kind of, you know, exciting place. And it’s a. 01:03:11 Dave: Oh, yeah. Well, he said, right. It changed a lot since then. I mean, how do you think Lee Wolf was as a writer in that book? 01:03:18 Todd: I do, I do like that book. I think that’s good. I mean, it’s like he he tells a story well and has his technique of doing it and seems to always have a point for what he’s saying, which is always good in a writer, is that they have a reason and they think they have something to say as they’re saying it. And it’s just it is a really interesting history on this small little place a number of years ago. And it’s, it’s, uh, prescient in a lot of ways in terms of like the things that he predicted would happen kind of did you know, he saw that occurring in the fifties, right? He, he saw the downfall and the, the threat to Atlantic salmon stocks. You know, seventy years ago, he. 01:03:55 Dave: Was fighting for it. 01:03:56 Todd: Yeah. 01:03:57 Dave: He was fighting. Right. He was the one guy he was fighting the, you know, really the Canadian government trying to get them to put these protections in place. Right? 01:04:04 Todd: Yeah. In the Newfoundland government as well, he went from being a friend. You know, there’s, you know, good episodes or good sequences where he’ll they’ll invite him to give a talk and he’ll just lay into the guys with, what are you doing? You know you’re going to ruin this. 01:04:17 Dave: God, that’s so good. It’s you know, it’s so he was ahead of his time, you know, like a lot of the great people anglers were, right. They were doing stuff. When back then. That was crazy. Right? Many people, I’m sure in Newfoundland around the world were like, what? Catch and release or whatever, like you’re crazy. 01:04:32 Todd: You know? Yeah, that that was a big thing too, right? And, and you, you did that. And he’s also, you know, in the place you, you know, all about the, the riffle hitch and how it was invented there in Portland Creek. And, you know, all the people who were, you know, coming in to fish the camps. And they were fishing blind eye hooks, which meant you had catgut to tie it on. And so after those broke off, the sports would break, you know, break off the their eye. And so they’d just take the fly and throw it on the ground because it wasn’t of use anymore to them. And so you had the locals who would go along and pick up all of those discarded flies and then snel a snel a a new. 01:05:09 Dave: Uh, oh man, that’s it. 01:05:10 Todd: It’s another line on it. And then that’s the hitch is invented, right? And and now it’s you see people in Iceland and you know, you know. Right. Scandinavia saying, this is how you gotta do it. 01:05:19 Dave: This is good. You got to do it this way. 01:05:21 Todd: Wolf is an interesting guy because you do have this sort of, you know, it’s like these kind of people that seem to exist a lot in the early half of the twentieth century. They were part adventurer. 01:05:31 Dave: Yeah. Like like Hemingway. 01:05:32 Todd: Yeah. There’s a lot of guys like that. You know, they, they were just sort of as much in the field as they were in front of a typewriter. Um, but knew how to operate a camera as well as they did a fly rod, you know, and so that’s cool. 01:05:43 Dave: And a, and a gun, right? 01:05:45 Todd: A gun and a plane and a, you know, and could survive for days on end. 01:05:49 Dave: Right in a plane. Yeah. He literally, he literally got a plane and taught himself how to fly. It’s yeah, I feel like those, those guys back in the day were just, you know what I mean? We’re not quite at the level of them. Do you think that’s true? 01:06:01 Todd: I don’t know. I think those guys are still around. I think just the opportunities look different. You know. 01:06:06 Dave: It’s right. 01:06:06 Todd: You know if you get a lot of people you know can’t seem to fish unless they have a helicopter or, you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, uh. 01:06:16 Dave: Right. 01:06:16 Todd: And, and those are the ones you read about or you see all the time. It’s the not so often the guys who are slugging it out on the trout streams or in the, you know. 01:06:25 Dave: Which are some of the best anglers, right? Some of those guys you never hear about who are in your local water or wherever, or probably the best anglers out there. 01:06:33 Todd: Oh yeah. The guys and, you know, you know, in the middle of winter catching steelhead, you know, on swinging flies, you know, there’s, there’s real talent there. 01:06:41 Dave: Like, yeah, there is. This is awesome. Cool. Todd Well, uh, yeah, man, this has been a fun conversation. Um, definitely. We’ll have to keep in touch with you, maybe check in with you next year, see how, how fishing’s looking and all that stuff. But we can, uh, we’ll send everybody out. We mentioned it before eastern guides dot CA if they want to connect with you and learn more about trips. And yeah, man, if we’re heading out there, if anybody’s heading up there, we’ll definitely direct them your way. And thanks for all your time today. 01:07:06 Todd: Yeah. And, uh, like I said, you know, Saint John’s isn’t necessarily a fishing destination. It’s a gateway to a lot of great fishing. Um, and a lot of times you have to fly into Saint John’s. And so there’ll be a lot of people, uh, say they’re heading up to Labrador, they’ll fly into Saint John’s. Hey, I want to try some, you know, some of this small stream Atlantic salmon stuff before I go up to a big river like the eagle or something. And and so we’ll go up for a day and they’ll get a completely different experience because, you know, when you, the, you know, lodges are great. Newfoundland is really known for lodges and, uh, but you only see certain bits, right? 01:07:39 Dave: You can cover more like if they, if they check in with you, you could cover multiple rivers around. 01:07:44 Todd: Well, I don’t know, it’s in terms of that, but it’s just you just get to see more. And it is such a kind of diverse and beautiful place with all kinds of different things going on. And the people too, you know, you get to, uh, you know, with independent guides and DIY, you know, fishing, you get to meet a lot more people than just your guides or your lodge owners. And, uh, there are some interesting people, I tell you that, you know, uh, in all, all very well steeped in how to catch a sea trout on a nail or how to use a chip bag to tie a fly and stuff, there’s all kinds of crazy innovative stuff, right? 01:08:20 Dave: And you have to be guided right on Newfoundland if you’re fishing anywhere or just scheduled waters. 01:08:25 Todd: No, it gets confusing. It’s not. It’s just on scheduled waters. You need to have a guide if you’re a non-resident. 01:08:32 Dave: That’s right. Just scheduled. So you can fish for trout all day. 01:08:35 Todd: Trout all day. They want you to keep within a certain distance of the road just because, uh. 01:08:40 Dave: Oh. 01:08:41 Dave: Yeah. What is that distance? 01:08:42 Todd: They say it’s a kilometre either side of the road. 01:08:45 Dave: That’s a decent amount. Thousand meters. 01:08:47 Todd: There’s water everywhere here, and you can have lots of fun doing things. And if you go into any of these towns, these smaller towns with unscheduled rivers that will have all along that western coast of Europe, all these little rivers that are, you know, will have sea run brook trout populations come in them. And then the ponds too, are there. And then there are, there are there is a river, a couple rivers in the federal park that doesn’t follow the guided regulations. So gross more, which I don’t know if you guys are through there or not. 01:09:15 Dave: Oh yeah. Gross. More. Yeah. We drove through gross. More. 01:09:17 Todd: Yeah. Beautiful. Gross. More. And so that’s a federal park. So you don’t need to follow. Oh, you don’t kind of provincial guide regulations there. 01:09:23 Dave: Yeah. 01:09:23 Dave: So there’s schedule. Ah, there’s Atlantic salmon and gross more that you could fish without a guide. 01:09:27 Todd: Yeah. Um for sure. And I imagine that’s where. 01:09:30 Dave: Stevens. 01:09:30 Todd: Brown’s doing most of his fishing on the river. 01:09:33 Dave: Oh, that’s what he was doing, right. That’s what he was talking about. Right. 01:09:36 Todd: Yeah. And because there are sections, as long as you’re inside the park, you know, you need to have your license, but you don’t have to obey that guide regulation. There are different stipulations too. 01:09:45 Dave: But that’s what Steven was doing. Steven was he was working with rod. Well, he called rod and he’d say, rod, I’m going to be fishing. You let me know when things start happening. And then then he’d go up and fish the Portland Or wherever with rod, I think is how they did it. 01:09:56 Todd: Yeah. And like I said, the more north you go just keeps getting better. Like you got that string of Portland Creek, you got you got Portland Creek River ponds. You can’t go out on that one. 01:10:05 Dave: Yeah. River ponds. Yeah. We talked about it. Yeah. 01:10:08 Todd: Really good one. And there’s phenomenal brook trout fishing back in on there on these sort of really famous ponds like big blue and western blue and things like that, where you’re going to. 01:10:17 Dave: Get. 01:10:18 Todd: Really nice brook trout. Um, but yeah, Big East Torrens and Genevieve, they just go one after the casters and it’s all very accessible, all very accessible. 01:10:29 Dave: It is. That’s cool. That’s good to know. No, I mean that’s cool. So people can, you know, you don’t have to necessarily have a guide. There’s different ways to do it. And like you said, all this trout fishing is, is pretty awesome too. So, um, so lots of opportunities, but, but awesome. Todd. Well, yeah, thanks again and we’ll keep in touch with you moving ahead. 01:10:46 Todd: All right. Thanks a lot, Dave. 01:10:49 Dave: Quick takeaway from today. Don’t overlook small water when you’re thinking about Atlantic salmon. Todd described the rivers where you can stand ankle deep and thirty feet and get it done. I want to let you know we’ve got a big fly fishing boot camp coming up here. You can go to fly fishing bootcamp dot com, and if you go to wet fly dot com slash bootcamp, you can sign up there and you can get some information on the best place to save your spot for the boot camp. You can do that right now. Wet fly dot com slash bootcamp. Give it a shot. It’s going to be our biggest boot camp ever. We’ve got twenty speakers this year, some of the best out there in the business. Excited to share this one with you. Check out the fly Fishing boot camp now. All right, we’re out of here. We’ve got all sorts of good stuff coming up here. We’re trying to catch up as we’re moving into the fall, and I just want to wish you a good evening. A good morning or good afternoon, wherever you are in the world. Appreciate you for stopping in today. 01:11:42 Speaker 5: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing Show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wet Fly swing dot com.