Trail Tales

Top 5 Fall Hikes In The H.R.M.

Last week I headed out to a river in Sackville with my brother, for lucky? visit #3. My sister in-law had done what has taken us a month to do, which is to locate all kinds of fish. Earlier that day she had gone for a walk and noticed fish jumping all over the place in the river. When we hear that fish have been spotted, we quickly move in to disperse them.

As we pulled into a parking lot near our spot, another car pulled up to us and asked us if we had fished that particular spot before. We said we hadn’t and the guy said that he had, and that there is some good fishing to be had in there. We contained our enthusiasm and thanked him for telling us. As we started to walk in, a car pulled out and the guy stopped to tell us that there were tons of fish in there, and he pulled out a bag full of ones he had just caught. We could hardly wait another minute to get to the river, and refrained from a full out sprint. Today was definitely the day, and we were sure we would soon be pulling fish out of the river within the first cast or two.

I suddenly thought of something I had never even considered before: do we have a container to put in all the fish we catch? I asked my brother, he looked at me, smiled, and said he also hadn’t even considered this. It was a problem to be addressed later, for now we were concerned about getting our hooks in the water as quickly as possible. The spot looked ideal. I couldn’t wait see what happened when I did my first cast of the evening. It turns out I could wait. I waited a lot. I waited until it got dark, and cold.

A few desperation casts were all that was left of my evening, but with one of them, something I had never seen before. A fish chasing after my hook, nibbling on it, glancing up at me, laughing, and then swimming away. I couldn’t believe my almost luck. As it turns out, this was just another insult to injury. I packed up my stuff, told my brother I was going to go get the car, while he fished for a few more minutes. I walked off slowly, pondering the reasons for my latest failure. A while later my brother emerges, fish in hand. I thought it was surely a gag. It wasn’t. He had caught a fish, just shortly after I left. Schools of fish were jumping around everywhere immediately after I left. What does this mean? It is obviously an omen.

Beware the day I do catch a fish, as it sure to signal the coming of the next anti-christ.

Today's freakish 30 degree, end of April heat awoke the city. The weather was like mid August rather than the end of April. The heat caught people by surprise, by calling for the summer wardrobe without even having a preparatory month of self loathing at the gym. I thought the fish too would be caught by surprise and be ready to jump onto some hooks.
They weren't. In fact I saw none. The black flies and mosquitoes wasted no time in resuming where they left off last summer, any fish in their right mind would have been having a feeding frenzy on the fly congregation on the calm waters of the Herbert River. The only thing we caught were some grass fish, stick fish, dirt fish and t-shirt sleeve fish.
The highlight of the evening (other than the mid-august feeling temperature) was when we had our backs turned to the water rigging up our rods, when we heard a very loud splash, and looked to see large ripples in the water. Frightened, my brother assumed someone was playing a joke on us and threw a big rock into the water, and I assumed a small shark must have jumped out of the shallow river. Oddly enough it turned out to be neither. A minute later, a beaver surfaces, and slaps the water with his tail. I'm not sure what it means when they do that, but we assumed it was mockery. It has gotten to the point now that beavers are coming out to see the guy who has caught one fish in his entire life.
Though unsuccessful, and my streak still intact, I am still determined to catch a fish this year. I may have to eventually buy one at the grocery store, hide it in my bag, and attach it to my hook when no one is looking. I may even get a live lobster before going fishing in a river somewhere with some friends, attach it to a hook when no one's looking, put my camera on video mode, and record the reactions when I pull a canner out of the river! You can come up with some really good ides when you're unsuccessfully fishing.

On Saturday (April 4) I went out on my first fishing trip of the season with my brother and my 2 year old nephew. I spent a while rigging up the rod which I had bought not too long ago, in anticipation of a productive upcomming season. With the rod and tackle box all geared up, I headed out to purchase a license (25 dollars)from a local store, and the fish could now officially tremble in terror. As my brother and I pulled up to a spot on the side of the road in Beaverbank, we got on our rubber boots and headed into the woods towards the Beaverbank River. It was a spot we hadn't been before, and immediately we saw something that was a very unfamiliar sight... to Nova Scotia in general. As we walked a few minutes into the woods, we began to see water, this water, however, was IN the woods. Seeing as how we were in Nova Scotia and not the Florida Everglades, this was a very strange sight. We looked around, puzzled, with my nephew wondering if we were being watched by crocodiles. I looked around, and quickly realized the river had taken over the woods, and there was no way we could even get near the river in our knee high rubber boots. I glanced around, maybe I could just grab a fish that was laying around in the woods! That would be a great first catch. After a few minutes of "fishing" we were unsuccessful, and we turned back in disapointment. To say that we were surprised that we didn't catch any fish would be a lie, but to say we were surprised we didn't catch any fish because we were confronted by the Beaverbank Everglades, was definately true. The trip allowed me to put a new contributing factor to my list of why my fishing expeditions always end up in complete failure.