Quebec Season Opener

Opening day for trout in Quebec finally arrived and I was off to Magog with Dave for the day. I had high expectations for getting into some trout & salmon and planned on running fly rods and several of the recently tied, tandem streamers. With a beautiful sunny day ahead and temperatures reaching the mid 70’s, I thought the fish should be feeding near the surface for sure! Little to no wind was what we were faced with throughout the day and T-Shirts were being worn by afternoon! Most areas on the lake had water temps around 37 to 38 degrees and that was rather cool by comparison to last weekend’s high of 47 degrees. Different lakes with different altitudes will have a major part in determining when the ice leaves and Magog was only a few days gone. We trolled several areas all over the lake without any success, changing depths and flies as we went along. From deeper water to shallower bays, nay a touch! I was really beginning to wonder if we were ever going to hear the reel fire! In a last ditch effort, I even went to a tiny minnow bait on one of the rods that I do so well with on another lake, hoping to get bit. I continued looking for warmer water all throughout the troll and eventually found a bay that went almost 47 degrees in one area. Once again I was sure we were going to find them there, but was disappointed when we never had a hit. It was getting on in the afternoon and I thought I would just take a chance and run far back in a bay to see if I could find the warmest water anywhere and eventually stumbled onto 53 degrees. This area gave me the confidence to spend a little time looking around and finally, one of the reels fired. Dave was at last into something and we were pumped! Although it wasn’t really big, it was at least a fish and that was great! It hit the minnow bait and eventually came off when it neared the boat, but not before we both got a look at it. It didn’t take too long afterwards for another reel to go off and Dave was once again locked up. I had changed the fly to another minnow bait and was glad when we finally netted a nice rainbow. At last, the skunk was out of the boat! Eventually I trolled everywhere in this area just looking for water temp and any sign of life. I finally found it, but I was over 100 feet of water when another reel went off and a salmon took to the air. This one also made it to the net and joined his buddy in the livewell. One more salmon a little later, also over 100 feet of water and that was all she wrote. We had spent all day looking for fish and found some in the last 2 hours of the day. Too bad we hadn’t started here! All in all a pretty tough day, but by not giving up we were able to put a few in the boat. Tough season opener!