Bronte Creek

Bronte Creek starts in the Flamborough countryside near Carlisle and Progreston and runs east and south past Lowville, then through a ravine about 50 m deep in Bronte Creek Provincial Park, to Lake Ontario at Bronte harbour in Oakville. It is a stocked steelhead and salmon creek. In 2025 MNRF put more than 90,000 rainbow trout and 80,000 chinook into it. The provincial park is the easy public water: the Half Moon Valley Trail drops to the creek, and the park lists rainbow trout, steelhead and Pacific salmon as the fish to target in season.

This is small water, and you fish it on foot. Steelhead come in with the fall rains from October, and the creek below Highway 407 stays open to December 31. A second push of fish comes in the spring, and the creek above Lakeshore Road opens to them on the fourth Saturday in April. Chinook run in September and October. A single-hand rod with nymphs and egg patterns covers most of the runs. Read the Zimmerman gauge: the creek fishes from about 0.6 to 4 m³/s, and past about 8 it is blown out.

The creek is closed above Lakeshore Road from January 1 to the April opener, so there is no winter steelhead fishing here outside the harbour. From Highway 407 up to Progreston it also closes on October 1. The creek sits between two cities, so expect company on fall weekends. Bronte Creek is a target stream for Lake Ontario's Atlantic salmon restoration, so release any Atlantic salmon you hook. Drift Outfitters in Toronto, about 40 minutes east, sells the gear.