Wilmot Creek

Wilmot Creek runs off the Oak Ridges Moraine north of Orono and flows south past Newcastle to Lake Ontario, a few kilometres east of Bowmanville. It is a small creek with a long history. Samuel Wilmot opened one of the first government fish hatcheries in North America at Newcastle in 1866, to save the lake's Atlantic salmon, and the community of Wilmot Creek, near the mouth, is named after him. The salmon were gone from the lake by the 1890s. Today Lake Ontario rainbow trout run the creek in the spring, chinook come in the fall, and lake-run brown trout come with them. MNRF's stocking records show no recent plants here, so the fish are wild or strays from stocked creeks nearby.

This is small water for a single-hand rod, nymphs and egg patterns. Spring rainbows come up from late March into May, and the creek above Highway 2 opens to them on the fourth Saturday in April. Chinook arrive in September and October and hold in the lower creek, where the season runs later. Read the Newcastle gauge: the creek fishes from about 0.5 to 1.6 m³/s and is blown out past about 3.5 m³/s.

The rules change at two lines. Below the CN rail line near the lake, trout and salmon are open all year. From the CN line up to Highway 2 the season runs from the fourth Saturday in April to December 31. Above Highway 2 it closes on September 30. The Orono Crown Lands, public land with trails along the creek north of Concession Road 5, is the best place to walk in, and the Samuel Wilmot Nature Area has trails near the mouth. Most other land along the creek is private, so ask before you cross it. No local shop or guide lists the creek. Drift Outfitters in Toronto, about an hour west, is the nearest fly shop.