Cast Adventures

Great looking fish! Gotta love the jumps

Current water temps on the lower Niagara river are 34.5. Super cold, steelhead are still in their winter patterns located in all drifts right to the lake. At this rate, looks like some of the best Niagara Steelhead fishing is yet to come! The bite last season kicked into high gear when water temps hit 36 or greater. At this time of year the dams can really pump out the mud causing the lower sections to become stained, while above the dams will remain clear. Those with small outboards can not reach the clearer water. Try these stained water tips, they've helped us boat fish when conditions are tough. -Streamers (experiment with colours for best results) with corkies -Plastic grubs in white with bright corkies -roe with yarn tied with a snell knot -kwick fish -spin'n'glows with roe bags -corkies with roe bags Niagara hogs to come in part 3! See you on the River, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

Too many pictures to share all with you,but we've picked the best from the past three weeks and will post all 50 pics in a three part update from the Niagara river! We've had some SMOKING days on the river, and a few where we struggled to boat fish! On a positive note, out of the past 26 days out only 4 were slow We've boated some real hogs and shared some great laughs in the Boat! Classic running and gunning has been the key! Moving until you locate fish, then working the area hard! Had Cliff and JWL out for a day, Check out the catch of the day RC Car LOL! Top Baits: Roe; Hot pink both in clear and stain water. Clear water white, yellow, peach rainbow bags. Minnows: Small! K-wick fish: silver blue, skunk, gold, silver chart. Streamer: white, white pink, white black back. Smelt have just started to show up in the past four days. With this the lakers have turned back on in the glen! We boated some good ones! View Part 2 for more. See you on the river, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

The River's still rocking!!! Great numbers each trip! Fish have been hitting different baits daily! Roe, kwick fish, yarn flies, rubber eggs......mixing things up and moving around have been the key! Here's a few from the 17 hook ups today: Check out the Niagara Steelhead taken on the Fly Rod......Well done! Water above the dams is very clear, today below the dams had 3 feet of green vis perfect!!! Good mix of fresh silver and darker spawner's in the lower river right now. We landed three loose hens this week! Niagara's Rocking right now! Enjoy the early spring bite........ See you on the river,

March 20&21 Niagara Steelhead: Biggest fish, 13lbs! Spring is just around the corner, get out there and enjoy the great outdoors!!! See you on the river, Cast Adventures

MuskieMike, As the other members mentioned, both have outstanding fishing! Both host steelhead and other trout species during the cold water period also both have LM, SM bass, Muskie, pike, and panfish. I would suggest a weekend of fishing the Niagara. One day on the upper. One day on the Lower. Be careful on the upper! Use a good GPS/mapping system and watch for rocks!!! Enjoy~ Cast Adventures

Highdrifter, Just wanted to follow up regarding your reply to my fishing report. 1st off My name is Paul Castellano, nice to meet you and thank you for reading the post. Hopefully you enjoyed the pictures and tips that i share from my personal observation while on the water. I don't know anyone from OFC Community, and only want to share fishing reports and pictures with this group. If i can every offer advise or update you with current conditions for the Niagara River, Just send me a message and i'll be happy to help you out! See you on the River, Cast Adventures

________________________________________ Rivers super clear and fishing has been REALLY GOOD! Biggest trick from the boat lately has been to drive WAY outside of the drift so that you don't spook the school, and always leave your motor off when over the drift/fish. Example: you catch a fish in a drift, when/if you decide to repeat the same drift again. drive straight out towards the center of the river until you drop off the ledge, then head back up to the top of the drift. I've seen in the past few weeks with the clear water other boats drive back to the top right over the fish, resulting in fewer bites for all of us.......but i never get mad, just move and look for new water. By avoiding the school of fish all together with the big motor running, we've had several days when you didn't have to leave a drift! Boat traffic can effect the fishing as well. Good to get in on the hot action, but hunting for fresh fish/areas has help big time! Fish have been hitting roe, live minnows, k-wick fish, jigs, yarn flies. We've really started mixing up presentations with the clear water past two days. Good way to get extra bites over the course of the day........ Shore line is starting to break up. Seen guys having a hard time walking close to the river bank. Falling through holes, ice chunks breaking off.......be carefully if you go to the glen! See you on the River, Cast Adventures

Glad to hear anglers on this site our enjoying the Niagara Region fishing reports. Some good news! Tons of Robins have arrived here in Niagara Falls this past week, SPRING IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER Before you know the ice will be gone and you'll be fishing your local waters! Can't wait to see more fishing reports on this site in the upcoming months! For those of you living near/close to Lake Erie. NY State waters are now open year round for bass!!! Please remember that there are always smallmouth to be caught that are not spawning (pre-spawn, post spawn) if you stay away from the shallow warmer waters/areas of the lake. Check you regs for more details! See you on the River, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

Not ture, The river has been ice free for the past four days. Even before that it only had the odd small chunck floating around. If anyone ever needs current condtions, please feel free to drop me a line. I live right on the lower river and check it every day. Happy to help, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

Sunburns and Good fishing past two days on the Niagara River! Started later both days and let the sun warm the air before launching the boat. Very good numbers both days. We found areas would be void of fish or schooled up tight!. Classic running and gunning until we located active fish was the key. Loose rainbow eggs tied in pink,yellow and peach yarn files also produced for us on these trips. Some of the fish have been really strong! even had two jump in 32.5 degree water! Lots of Silvers around, one still had this nasty little guy still stuck to him when we put the fish in the net, talk about a fresh steelhead........ A few tanks landed in the mix Experiment with different depths, it can make all the difference in the world! See you on the River, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

What a snow storm Niagara Falls just received! Finally it stopped after snowing hard for two days! We were on the Niagara river Friday, the day started out really nice. Light winds, no ice floating around the river and best of all the steelhead fishing was ON! We started at the backdrift and hooked one after our second drift on a pink roe bag. tried one more drift before moving on.......Ran up to the next spot, and the action was steady until lunch. All darker fish with the biggest, 11lbs. The fish was purple and hit a live minnow. By 9am the snow started, by 11am the snow was really coming down and the wind picked up! We stopped for a quick lunch break (hot chicken soup and coffee) then back to fishing. The afternoon bite was better then the morning despite the weather. It was surreal out! Snow was blowing, boat totally covered, all the other boats had left. No big fish in the afternoon, but we did find a good school of smaller silvers. The last fish of the day a small brown trout. We decided to call it a day just after 2:30. The guys were driving back to North Bay that afternoon, and the snow was really started to build. Good call, the boat ramp and hill out of the parking lot was tough to climb with the 4X drive..........Best day out for numbers to date in 2008! Although we didn't get a 15+ lber, it was a great day Adventure on the Niagara River! Cliff Kindly give us a few streamers that morning (CCR Streamers). If you haven't used them before, give them a try! We landed some nice silvers the second part of the day with them. Other baits that produce, hot pink roe bags, live minnows that we bought from Bill's bait & Tackle in Hamilton (bigger 4" common shiners). only two fish were caught on the US side the rest were from the Canadian drifts. Moving around was the key! We located two different schools of steelhead, in different areas. 20-to-27 feet was the depth that produce for us on Friday. Water was clear with a slight stain below the power dams, perfect Conditions! Had to cancel the weekend trips because of the weather! I Will be at the Sports men show next week. At 1:00pm Thurs & Fri Nick Pujic from the Canadian Fly Fisher and myself will be taking Fly Fishing/Niagara fishing at the WFN stage. On Saturday at 1:30pm I'll be at Bass Pro Shops talking about fishing the Niagara River. If anyone is there and interested in learning a few old and new tricks about the Niagara River, come by and check it out. See you on the River, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

Was on the river yesterday for a half day trip. Super nice out, sunny, blue skies and sunburns LOL. It was 15 here in Niagara..... No ice floating around made for easy driving in the boat. We hit 9 landed 7 (one customer). No big fish with a few around 7lbs. One small brown trout landed. LONG leaders of 6lbs floro was the ticket.........(hint over 7 feet for those fishing from the boat) Running and gunning from spot to spot. Didn't find any schools of fish. One here one there.......Live minnows, and hot pink rainbow bags (dime size) and one fish on a Power minnow. We caught fish all the way down to the lake and above the power dams.....did the full tour! Wind was crazy down river, made boat control tough! As we were leaving the run off from the flash melt was starting to take it's toll on the water vis.....not sure about today, but i'm guessing that the dams were pumping out mud. Shouldn't last long.......Sorry no pics this time. Oh yeah, forgot to mention talked to a few different angler out on the water today, seems like bigger fish are starting to show up. One boat hit a 15,14.6 and two over 12lbs !!! all from the same drift . Another shore angler showed me a picture of a TANK from the day before. Looked in the 13-14lb range......... See you on the River, Cast Adventures

Try this one, this pattern works killer on the Niagara at times...... http://hatchesmagazine.com/tv/play.php?vid=123 Another good one is sucker spawn...... Cast Adventures

This is a great site if you like to tie! Great step by step videos...... http://hatchesmagazine.com/tv/ good luck, Cast Adventures

The River was very kind to us this weekend! Water Conditions were over 3 feet and the classic blue/green of the Niagara. At times floating ice chunks were heavy, but didn’t affect boat control or the fishing. Anglers from shore seemed to be doing pretty good! I helped land a 12.2lb buck steelhead while putting my boat in the water on Sat. The Steelhead was hooked on one of Cliffs custom tied streamers! That was the biggest steelhead I’ve seen in 2008. We didn’t go above the dams, all fish were caught on the Canadian side of the River. Small hot pink, loose rainbow bags were the hot ticket both Saturday & Sunday. We did hit a few fish on Live Minnows, and one on a blue/silver Kwick fish. Our biggest Steelhead weighted just under 12lbs on the scale. Check out the teeth marks on this lucky ( not to have been eaten) little Brown trout! Great weekend on the Lower Niagara! See you on the River, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

Go get em!!! These are the best conditions we've had in over a month! Ice can still be an issue from shore at times. Just got a phone call from a friend that's on the water. Said below the dams had 3.5-to-4 feet of vis. I looked today and the river was MINT, blue/green. A couple of reports from other anglers on the lower yesterday. Some BIG numbers being hooked/landed in the past 24 hours!!! This is what we've all been waiting for! (will "try" to post some pics of current conditions later tonight) See you on the river, Paul Castellano Cast Adventures

Was still on my 1st coffee, when posting the above report. Was from Sunday Feb 17th, 2008............

Niagara River Weekend Report, Feb 15th 2008 Above seasonal temps was a nice break for wintering steelhead on the Mighty Niagara. The river was “very” fishable and although it rained off and on all day, the +5 weather and the hard fighting trout made the day one to remember! Water colour was a green/gray and the river had lots of small ice chunks floating around. Live Minnows and skein roe bags tied in pink, white, yellow and orange is what we caught the fish with. This time of year we’ve been doing much better in the afternoon. Yesterday, we had to work for the fish in the morning, but after Lunch the fishing really picked up! In the early morning the water temperature was 32.1, by 1:00pm the slight increase to 32.5 made all the difference! One of biggest misconceptions of the Niagara River is that you can’t catch fish unless the water is clear! In fact the fishing can be very productive with stained water and proper presentations. If the water isn’t brown, and or pure mud it’s fishable. General guide line, if you can see the prop on the outboard motor you can catch trout! See you on the River,

The Lower Niagara is in good shape for the weekend. River has over two feet of vis and a nice green colour. Some ice moving around but not that bad at 4pm this afternoon. Here are a few pictures of the current conditions. Cast Adventures

Kennyman, To answer your question: Steelhead/Lake/Brown Trout all feed heavily on Minnows in the Niagara River. Casting Mepps, Spoons, and crankbaits will all catch you fish. Mepps tend to be most productive when water conditions clear. Have had good success on size # 2-to-4 in fire tiger, silver and gold. Spoons in 1/4oz to-3/4oz in blue/silver, green/silver, orange/silver. Crankbaits- black/silver, blue/silver will get you started. Using a spinning rod with live and or plastic minnows will also work depending on the location and setup you use. Good luck!

Jigging for Lake Trout in open water can be very productive with good electronics and clam conditions. There are several different baits we use in the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. Bucktail jigs, jigging spoons, 3-to-5”plastic grubs/shads, Salted or live minnows fished on a jig head. Depending on depths were fishing, we use weights up to 2oz. Experiment with different colours and presentations in your area for best results.

The ice on Erie at the boom has finally formed. Conditions should improve in the next few days. The upper Niagara is "just" fishable today! Will post conditions with pictures tomorrow before the weekend. Paul Castellano

Winter Fly Fishing and Niagara River Report. If you enjoy to Fly Fish, or have always wanted to try it, the Niagara River offers some fantastic Fly Fishing opportunities for Steelhead and lake trout! Trout remain very aggressive during the winter months and there is no closed season. In addition, it may be one of the only locations which doesn’t freeze over. The minnow bite on the Niagara River is very good! Stripping streamers and different minnow patterns produces explosive strikes! Last Week I made a trip to a local river with the Fly rod. The Smaller river is open year round for fishing. It was on Groundhog Day, the day before the area was hit hard by a snow storm. When I arrived the location was covered by a fresh blanket of ice and snow, making for some beautiful scenery. We Also Explored the Niagara gorge.This is a great way to get out of the house for the day. Good alternative to ice fishing! Fishing the Niagara from the boat this time of year is always an Adventure, here are a few pictures from Saturday February the 9th 2008. One Bonus walleye, The Steelhead fishing was good to us and the biggest trout landed was 11lbs. The best cure for the winter blues is to get out side and enjoy the great outdoors! The best place in Southern Ontario to cure the winter fishing bug is the Niagara River along with a handful of hard fighting Lake trout or Steelhead! See you on the River,