Sinclair Crown Reserve (part 1)

It's been a while since I've posted any updates.. mostly due to slow fishing and depressingly low salmon returns across the entire Atlantic Canadian region... The last time I was out seriously fishing was in early July when I hooked 3 and landed 1 within an hour... talk about getting your hopes up! Sadly, we just managed to pull off one of those right place, right time deals where we managed to catch a pod of passing fish. I did get to spend a few minutes of quality time with this beauty though and she was safely returned to the river to continue her mission to pass along her genes to the next generation..

Sorry for the aside, now back to the Sinclair trip!

This would have been my first time to this stretch and I made a promise to myself it won't be the last! It's yet another beautiful salmon river (North Pole) located in the rugged wilderness a long way away from pavement. The bonus --- no cell signal --- !

Bill, Paul, Steph and I packed our stuff and headed to the woods - I have to say, even though this year has been such a depressing salmon fishing season, I was extremely excited to be going on a crown reserve trip with close friends. Crown reserve is special, if you haven't been on one and you're a resident of NB do yourself a favor and book a trip. Even if there aren't many fish around the scenery makes it all worth while.

The view from the camp:

(((CLICK PANORAMA IMAGE FOR A CLOSER VIEW)))

We didn't waste any time after arriving and soon decided on a plan - we'd all head to the upper pools closest to the camp. Bill and I to one and Paul & Steph to the other. 

Things were fairly uneventful at our first stop. We didn't see any fish so we headed down river to the next pool. It wasn't long before I raised a fish on the old faithful blue bomber.. I wasn't 100% sure it was a grilse or trout as it took in fairly quick water .. I kept at it and managed to hook up solid to a nice grilse! It was a good scrap with quite a few jumps and I probably shouldn't have landed the fish but we managed to somehow:

(safely released)

There was a pretty decent rain shower and we managed to get soaked so we headed back down to the camp.

We finished up the rest of the evening uneventfully.

I just can't get over this view from the camp... what a place!

We woke up the next morning to some chilly temps, in fact we had ice formed on the vehicles both nights... Fall is definitely in the air!

0.0 degrees Celsius!

Our plan for our full day (day 2) involved heading up river ... the logging that goes on up there is depressing... why can't we protect the headwaters of our salmon rivers?
(((CLICK PANORAMA IMAGE FOR A CLOSER VIEW)))

(((CLICK PANORAMA IMAGE FOR A CLOSER VIEW)))

(((CLICK PANORAMA IMAGE FOR A CLOSER VIEW)))

Apparently they don't want fords across this bridge... thank goodness we weren't driving one!

I think I'll leave off here for now... Part 2 to follow in the coming days!