The next two competitions we had were for Teams only. A team in SFFC is made up of two competitors. These team only events were from the boat on the lake & river.

Island lake was the venue used for the second year now in the lake boat comp. Target fish here was Northern pike.

The lake is mainly shallow with an average depth of 4-5 ft and has many pikes like this. So it is lot of fun to fish on the fly for them.

A delicious plate at the end of the event is always welcome 🙂

The Grand River Lower was the second team only event for 2017 but the first of it’s kind. Fishing from the boats on a 10 km river stretch from Paris, Ontario to Brantford.

 This event was a ton of fun and lots of fish were caught.

We should add that in order to be able to organize this event on this river stretch that has special fishing regulations in place, we worked together with County of Brant’s Facilities and Parks Operations Department. Great people there and really thoughtful about the natural resources of the river. 

Kayaks, canoes, pontoons and inflatable drift boats were used in this event. The small mouth bass are really strong on this river, fighting them on a fly rod is amazing.

The “Green Team” know what recycling means 😀 The Nu-Canoe was the most used watercraft…and for a good reason, they are really good.

The event was a blast and we will definitely continue more tournaments like this next year.

In fact everyone was so excited about this kind of fishing tournament that we opened the opportunity in the next event on Thames River. But about that and the Charity we developed there we will talk in the next article.

Stay tuned!

The second competition was the Grand River Comp on the upper section for brown trout. This section is very well known for the beautiful scenery and clear fast flowing waters.

Despite all these attributes,  this river has a major deficiency… all the brown trout are stocked. Almost nothing survives from one year to another so  all the fish you can catch  were freshly stocked that season. Nothing wrong with that when fishing for fun, but when a competition has to be organized on this river you face a big problem…these fish are not evenly spread on the river as the naturalized ones. They are used to hanging together and they don’t move from the spot they are put in. In the end you’ll have almost no fish on a 2-3km section,  then a pool with 200 browns in it followed by another 2-3km of almost no fish section and another 200 browns pool and so on.

With these conditions in mind , organizing a classic-type  competition by international rules with Sectors and Beats is out of the question. SOTTO FF Club tried over the years many approaches and different competition systems but none of them managed to provide us with results that accurately reflect the competitors’ actual fishing skills.  Unfortunately,  as things stand now,  it all comes down to who gets to the honey hole first and then follows an episode of Alaska’s grizzly bears waiting for the salmon (to jump)at the falls.

Nonetheless the event is still lots of fun, the scenery amazing and the river is mighty. We will not give up on it but continue to improve the system and try new approaches for the seasons to come.

It is great to fish and compete with friends.Lots of work to fish in the rapids.

Always fun to fish a #18 micro-nymph in such fast and deep water.

Fish on…

Jordan came up with a new computer program to calculate the results. Great job Jordan!

All the competitors are friends at the end, drinking beer and eating together.

Fun fact : at this competition the guys from Sotto Club managed to win 4 medals  😉

Congrats guys! Great job!

Also a special thanks to Dave Culver who took a swing at managing this event.

Hi guys,

After a brief break we are coming back with more highlights from the Ontario Fly Fishing Championship.

First we would like to give a shout out to all the participants in the Sotto FF Championship this year, we hope they enjoyed the events and had a good time.   Also a big “thank you” to all SFFC members that helped organize the 2017 events.

Before we finalize the results for this year we would like to go over a few new things that Sotto Fly Fishing Club included in this year’s Championship.

First comp for 2017 was at a new venue, never used in the Championship before, a totally amazing fishery…Franklin Club.

The size of this venue and fish density allowed us to accommodate 24 participants in a 3 sessions rotation system. 1 session fishing from the boat and 2 from the bank using two bodies of water.

24 competitors caught in that day over 700 fish…enough said.

All these elements together produced a good competition with a true leaderboard and Champion.

Next event is the Grand River, another beautiful venue for fly fishing.

to be continued…