Several years ago, at a pre-arranged location—a truck stop on the highway, near Bowmanville on Highway 401. I met good buddy Roger Cannon at five o’clock in the morning and after grabbing a couple of coffees we continued on in my car towards the Ganny. Previously we had fished a number of lakes, rivers and streams together and worked over several sections of the Ganny, usually with moderate success. Roger is an excellent angler, competent with both spinning and fly-fishing gear.
As we drove towards the river, I recall asking if he would like to try the Hepburn stretch? I didn’t think he had fished it before.
Pausing to contemplate the questions, he answered hesitatingly, “No. Don’t think I have. Isn’t that the spot where you’ve been trying to get that six-pound brown that you’ve been after for a while now? Yeah, I don’t mind trying something different. I think you once told me that it’s too difficult to fly fish so I guess we’d be throwing tin.3 Maybe you’ll get another shot at your big brownie.”
I warned him that it was not only a tough stretch of water to fish but just getting through the bush alongside the stream was extremely difficult. He was not deterred and although it was still early with very little daylight to assist us we were soon parked and getting ready to do battle. As is our custom when fishing most streams, we booted up, grabbed our fishing gear and headed downstream. Although with our adrenaline flowing we were eager and fresh, our tackle would remain unassembled until we reached the spot where we had decided we would begin, depending on the amount of time we had at our disposal. This would serve two purposes. One, we would be fishing in the much preferred upstream direction and two, when we finish and are obviously tired, we would emerge from the bush right at the car. This is a much better system than fishing for several hours then having to struggle back through the bush to the car with little strength left in your legs.
Find Gord making his way through the dense growth of ferns on the Hepburn stretch of the Ganaraska.
Roger, younger and stronger than I, however, took the lead in picking our way through the dense tangle of bush and underbrush. It was still rather dark and we hadn’t penetrated the bush more than a hundred yards when an unseen log beneath the profusion of ferns and grasses seemed to reach up and grab my foot, effectively poleaxing me. In an attempt to avoid the fall, I tried to throw my left leg up and over the log, but failed. With my hands protecting my face, I crashed to the ground on the other side, legs askew on top and my right foot snagged on something or another. Fortunately the dense grass cushioned the fall somewhat. But I was even more shaken up when Roger, racing back to assist me after hearing me yell and swear, pointed out that my face had just missed striking a three-inch tree stump obscured by the ferns and grasses. It had been sharpened to a point by the teeth of a beaver gnawing a tree to knock it down for its dam. After Roger had helped me to my feet, and I had partially regained my composure, I refused his suggestion that perhaps we should wait a while longer so more daylight would make it easier to see where we were going. Actually, we usually feel our way through dense cover such as this, with careful and rather slow leg movements that allow you to locate the pitfalls before they locate you. However, on that day Roger was out in front, eager to get going, and I had to move much faster than my normal pace to keep up with him.
“Let’s just keep going,” I said, “but maybe a little more slowly, okay?”
I stretched, took a step forward then discovered I had pulled the hamstring muscle in my right thigh. Lifting the leg, which suddenly seemed to weigh about two hundred pounds, became quite painful. Nevertheless, completely forgetting that the Hepburn stretch of the Ganny was fraught with many other impediments to progress through the bush, I mistakenly theorized that struggling through to our destination would provide enough exercise to work out the strain. Moving more slowly might allow my leg to loosen up, so I thought, but as a precaution I suggested that perhaps my taking the lead would allow me to set the pace.
With little strength in the sore leg I went down once more when I couldn’t force my way through a stand of willow. By the time, a good half-hour later, we reached the end of the Hepburn section where we had planned to begin fishing our way back upstream, I had stepped into a hole, slid off a grass-covered embankment dropping a couple of feet into the water, and tripped several more times over unseen logs. If my memory of that day is correct, Roger managed to remain in a vertical stance throughout the entire exercise, only having to stoop occasionally to assist me to my feet while commiserating almost continuously. Being a very busy chap, Roger was not able to get out and go fishing with us as often as he wished so I stubbornly refused to cut short the outing. We soldiered on.
What makes the recollection of that particular day exceptional was not simply my getting hurt, or catching a big trout, but the total picture of the day’s results. One might be inclined to think that after conquering such adversity that I would have had difficulty keeping fish off the hook. Lots of them and big ones, too! However it was not to be. I was completely skunked! Couldn’t even catch a tiddler, while Roger had one of his best days on the Ganny ever, landing several brown trout in the eighteen-inch class and a host of smaller ones that he released. It is most unusual to be totally fishless on the Ganny. There are always countless little fellows willing to test one’s presentation with flies or spinners. For me, that day on the Hepburn stretch is forever etched on my mind.
But there are other memories. Many others! Here are a couple of incidents on the same stretch of river. Although these are comparatively recent incidences, both having occurred in 2003, I know they will be easily recalled on any future occasion. They took place on opposite ends of the season, the opening weekend4 and the final weekend.
The first took place on opening day of the trout season, a day that my good friend and fine fisherman, Paul Kennedy, and I have traditionally shared for the past six or seven years on one stream or another. Whereas we had normally worked brook trout waters on opening day, Paul suggested that this year he would like to try a stretch of the Ganny for browns and steelhead.
“Sounds good to me,” I concurred, “but there’ll be a mob scene on the lower reaches, you know. This time of year when the big ‘bows move upriver from the lake everybody wants a go at ’em. Most of these guys will be gone once the pike and pickerel seasons open in a couple of weeks.”
I reminded him, however, that most folks stick to the more open waters rather than the tougher parts of the river like the Hepburn stretch. He agreed and off we went.
Opening day that year was April 27, and it was colder than Hades when we stepped out of the Jeep at the bridge below the village of Kendal, our starting point for the walk downstream to the upper-end of the Ed Till stretch where we would begin fishing the three miles of Ganaraska River back to the vehicle. The thermometer in the Jeep had recorded the external air temperature at minus 2 degrees Celsius.
The spring-fed water in the river, cold even in mid-summer, would have been only a degree or two warmer than the air. Although the ferns, grasses and willows had not yet emerged from their winter’s sleep, the bush was still a daunting challenge with the swamps, vines and holes providing their own tests of our agility and patience. The half-hour hike was made without any of the traumatic incidents or undue stress, the likes of which I had experienced on the Hepburn stretch many times previously.
Although we were a long way from Lake Ontario, there were a number of big rainbow trout that had already migrated that far upriver seeking their ancestral spawning grounds in order to perform their own spawning rituals. The fruits of their labours,