Saturday, May 29, 2010

Spring fly fishing is hot in cool Kootenays


I haven't had much time these past few weeks but I did manage to make it out to Summit Lake and Champion Lakes recently.
Two weeks ago, I met Julius from Grizzly Bear Ranch and a few of his guests for a day of fishing on Summit Lake. I arrived two hours prior to our arranged meeting time and so put those minutes to good use.
Generally, I don't have much luck on Summit until the afternoon but this day I anchored off a shoal at about 10 a.m. and proceeded to catch a dozen fish in the next two hours. Most were caught on a bead head-leech pattern but a few on chironomids.
Once I met up with the party, I took Patrick, an author and ex-bureau chief for the London Daily Telegraph, into my boat and got him into a nice 16" rainbow almost immediately. I also landed one shortly after that and then the trout went into lock-jaw mode and I could only coax two more to the boat the rest of the day.
Still not a bad day.
My good friend Colin visited me this past weekend and we had a great time catching small rainbows on Second Champion Lake Friday. The lake is at much higher elevation than many other local lakes, and you can tell by the long skinny trout that they hadn't much time since ice-off to pack on some weight. By June the fishing should be excellent.
Check out this video of a classic How "Not" to release a fish:


Back to fly-fish-bc.com