Brown Trout fishing near Richmond Hill, ON

911 documented waters within 300 km, 12 of them with brown trout as the primary species.

Where they are biting today

Fishing brown trout around Richmond Hill

Anglers based in Richmond Hill have 911 documented waters holding brown trout within a reasonable drive, which makes picking today's water the real decision. That choice is exactly what the daily scores are for: every water on this page is re-scored each morning, so the order reflects current conditions, not last season's stories.

Start with Windo'er Lake (Elora), today's top scorer at 76 (about 87 km from Richmond Hill, roughly 8 m of water at its deepest). If it is busy or the wind is wrong, Pefferlaw River scores 76 (about 50 km from Richmond Hill, roughly 7 m of water at its deepest). Waba Creek at 75 is the third card worth keeping in hand. All of these numbers come from the same daily model, so they are directly comparable water to water.

Brown trout are widely considered the wariest and most selective of the commonly-targeted trout species, especially once they reach a larger size - a real reputation earned through genuinely more cautious, structure-oriented behavior than rainbow or brook trout, not just angler folklore. Great Lakes browns, most common in Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, occupy shallower water than rainbow trout or chinook and hug warming nearshore sand and rock in spring; inland fish hold in stream-fed pools in southern Ontario. Spring anglers flat-line or planer-board small stickbaits and spoons over shallow nearshore water, or cast from piers and break-walls; fall tributary fish take small spinners, plugs or small baits drifted beneath floats.

Treat this page as a living shortlist: the ranking refreshes daily (currently showing September 14, 2026), and a shift in wind, cloud cover or water temperature is often enough to reorder it.

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