First day of open water fishing and we were skunked!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_fly
We were planning on fishing for Atlantic salmon this weekend but the spot we wanted to kayak looked like this.

So we decided to fish for other species, we started out at a tiny unnamed pond in Exeter where Dave has had loads of success catching golden shiners.

At least it was windy and cold, that always makes Clay smile



Dave attempts to catch shiners near a muskrat lodge

We fished there for a long time using the tiniest hooks we could find, and as you can tell from the title of this post we were skunked!

We loaded the canoe on the car and went to the Taylor River, Dave was confident that we'd catch some pickerel there.

Dave is doing some serious fishing

We braved the waterfall and canoed as far upstream as we could, we had to stop when a beaver dam thwarted our efforts to get to Dave's dream spot.

Be very quiet, we're hunting the elusive "nofish" from the beaver dam

We drifted back down stream and fished like mad men, trying all kinds of different lures and baits.

We even found this cranefly larvae swimming downstream, we discussed eating it so we'd have a story but opted to use it for bait instead, but no bites.

we weren't brave enough to eat this

It was fun to wet some lines and really fun to canoe open water for the first time this year, but we have to admit it was a real bummer not to see any fish!