The news last Spring that my old uncle Bob was moving from California to Ontario, and would be living in Hamilton, just West of Toronto and 10 minutes from the lake, decided the venue for the Autumn fishing trip.

On arrival in Hamilton, the weather was perfect, high 60’s and dry, and on looking round the area on the first day I felt quite at home; the town is the steel-making capital of Canada and the two biggest mills border the lake. I was surprised to see that the local tackle store had quite a range of carp tackle and they put me in touch with one of the local anglers called Jack.

Next stop was the feed store for bait and I found it even cheaper here than in the US, $11(£5) for a 40kg. sack of maize which was to last the fortnight. Also loaded up with cracked corn, pigeon scratch and breadcrumb which when mixed 1 part each worked perfectly with the big Fox method feeders.

The first session was a bit of a disaster; I had trouble finding the swim Jack had told me about and ended up blanking, not seeing any fish but being entertained by the dozens of windsurfers launching all around me. I was a bit limited this trip as I was relying on my uncle for transport and after dropping me off in the morning, as on this occasion, it was difficult to move swims.

Fortunately the next day we found the area mentioned by Jack, a half-mile long "rip-rap", i.e. a straight shoreline where large rocks have been dumped to combat wave erosion, adjacent to a massive flyover taking the freeway over the lake and on to Toronto, with a nice view of the steelworks two miles across the bay! Not the most glamorous place to fish but straight away it was apparent that there was a large head of carp present. We fished from the top of the rock banking giving a good view of the fish as they crashed out, something I’ve not experienced much in the States before, this area had almost zero boat traffic so maybe this was the reason they were so eager to show themselves. Fish could also be seen browsing in the rocky margins, and we took quite a few on float tackle as well as on the bolt-rig further out.

We fished this spot for a few days, catching carp up to low twenties, and as invariably happens one of the local guys had a fish of exactly 30 pounds on a little 6 foot rod fishing sweetcorn. Landing fish was a real agility test, clambering over dozens of big boulders then having to carefully pick a spot for netting; many smaller fish were just unhooked in the water. In amongst the carp I took several channel cats up to just under double figures and they can certainly fight. One 7 pounder had a cancerous growth on its’ lower jaw; the whole Hamilton Bay area has been cleaned up but there is still a legacy on the lake bed. On Jacks’ advice I stopped putting sweetcorn into the groundbait and sure enough after that the cats disappeared.

Round the corner from the steel mills there is a grain terminal area, a mile-long finger of lake maybe 150 yards across, reputed by the locals to hold a few carp. Bob dropped me off at dawn the next day here. The sight which greeted me was amazing; the whole surface of the dock was covered in a vast number of carp-shaped bubbles, in fact there wasn’t more than a square yard of still water visible anywhere. I found 30 feet of water close in so decided to fish with the slider and introduced some groundbait. From then till late afternoon was to be probably the most frustrating fishing session of my life. The bubbling, although it didn’t really stop anywhere in the dock all day long, started to really get going over the groundbait after an hour or so, and I was already stacking them up like breeze blocks in my minds’ eye, always a mistake!

To cut a long story short, I could hardly get a bite. The bubbling only intensified as the day wore on, the swim was just heaving, the surface broken by debris from the bottom every so often. What was really interesting was watching the bubble mass, which was maybe 15 feet square, moving around the swim as a unit, you could imagine the carp below grazing and following each other around like so many sheep. Tried every method and bait at my disposal, finished up with just two carp and a catfish.

Went there again two days later and had better results fishing further out and in shallower water, but why I didn’t catch on the first day remains a mystery. Vast number of fish visible all over this area, there is a nature reserve nearby and a "carp barrage" has been installed to limit their numbers there.

At the end of the second week Jack reckoned it had been cold enough at night to make it worthwhile fishing for rainbows, so we did. Dawn on an overcast morning seen us joining around 20 other anglers on the pier next to a small river-mouth. The rainbows would be following the salmon as they came in to spawn. Jacks’ methods were interesting, using almost UK tactics; fishing 12 foot "noodle" rods, rather like a very soft-actioned match rod, 3lb. test with a spawn-sack(salmon roe) suspended mid-water under a grayling-style bob float. There were no purists on the pier that day (fortunately) and Jack sure picked the right spot as first he took a 9 pounder then it was my turn with a fish around 5, definitely my first wild ‘bow ever!

The carp action climaxed with a session back at the rip-rap. The swim was baited with 8 gallons of maize and groundbait at dusk the night before and the next morning started well with the first fish to my rod, a 25 pounder. Fish came steadily up till lunchtime, I think we had a dozen between us, all good doubles. Jack left then to go to work, a shame since they really got their heads down in the afternoon. In the next 4 hours I took eleven fish, including 2 more low twenties. The bay had been flat calm but around 5 o’clock the wind started to push into the rip-rap and from then on it was "yee-hah" big time, 3 more big doubles and another fish around 23, all hitting the bait as soon as it touched bottom.

At this point disaster struck, I looked round and found I’d used up all 4 gallons of groundbait for the method feeder. I fished on till dark but didn’t get another run, what a coincidence! Still after 20 carp on a daytime session including four twenties who cares.

Overall impression of Western Ontario:- not the most scenic fishing in the world, alhough the Niagara River is stunning, but huge numbers of fish, and the potential for something special exists, Jack and one of his friends both had 40’s in the Spring of this year. Aso it’s one rod only, on some slower days this might be a problem.