PEI Trout
Well, after a little bit of work, I finally got my vacation time approved for last week. So I packed up my gear and made the quick (16.5hr) drive over to PEI. It would have been longer if I had stopped to fish half of the waters that I was tempted by on the way out… I’ll try and be brief here, but there is a lot to say about this destination…
On the way to the place where I was staying, I collected some insect specimens from the area just to try and get a feel for the hatch ( bugs)
ok, that was silly, but I was rather impressed by that…
So I fished two rivers primarily while I was there; the Bonshaw river (4.5days) and Morrell river (1.5days). I spent most of my time on Bonshaw as it was amazing to fish, and was only ten minutes from the cottage I was staying at (my grandparents).
I had visited bonshaw river a year before for a short while. What is interesting about it is that it has a variety of fish and fish sizes. The main target in the stretch I fished was Brookies. You can go out and catch 30+ brookies a day easily. In the same stretches of the river, you can also catch a number of rainbows. After a few days of fishing there I learned which types of rises belonged to the bows and where they held in a run compared to the brookies. But what was really impressive was the size of the fish there. The largest brookie I saw caught was between 7-8lbs being carried out by a local guy who caught it on a plug. What a massive fish. The largest fish I caught were a 22" brookie and a 25" steelhead. The steelhead was quite fresh and made me go swimming to cross some deep pools to keep up with him downriver. There are the river brookies, and there are also sea-run brookies. The sea-run fish get larger and also put up a noticeably stronger fight.
Aside from the fish I saw being caught, I also spotted a few monster cross a pool here and there. Those guys made my heart skip. The river has stretches of fast water (which was really my favourite area to fish) and then has stretches of slow, deep pools. The water stays quite cool all season.
Morrell River was quite larger and longer. Its famous for its Atlantic salmon. But its brrok trout are amazing. I got up early and spent and entire day there. The morning was phenomenal. I came into a stretch where there were a couple rising fish. After standing there motionless for a while the fish settled down and started feeding again. I had 3 hours in that one little area with constant dry-fly action. When I walked down through the pool at the end I saw the reason the fishing was good there - there were schools of 200 or more brookies in that one little spot. I caught a variety of sizes there. At one point I saw a bunch of fish scatter then shortly following that I saw a big mean trout shoot through and hide under an undercut bank. Casted to him with a little streamer and he went for it, but broke my little 7X tippet 
Actually, that was my one problem, you can be fishing one pool catching 20 smaller brookies, then you can hook onto a brute that is local, or fresh from the ocean. I had a hard time getting out of my state of shock and properly playing the large fish. I lost a number of large fish that way… Eventually I just used a larger tippet all the time to cover up my rusty big fish/light tippet skills.
uhoh, this is getting long. ok, so other highlight of morrell was helping this one guy hook an atlantic. He sort of jumped in front of my on it, so instead of getting upset, I decided to help him as he was a little bit green in the fly fishing world. (Most of Morrell is fly fishing only). So yeah, he caught the salmon, I took a picture of it on the line.
I’ll wrap this up with a few pics. I stopped carrying my camera with my after the second day as the weight of my waterproof case was getting to me. So I don’t have all the pics that I’d like, but I still have a few nice ones… If you get the chance to go out there I think you’d be pleased. Aside from great fishing, the country side is beautiful and the place is extremely visitor friendly…
Peace,
Dan J.
This is the view of one area on morrell where I had great fishing
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This is a morrell brookie. They were nice, dark fish with great colour.
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Enjoy the pics. Things I’d tell you about if I had more time: insects on the river and some of the people I met - lots of ontario people seem to move to PEI :\
