Summer is here.
The sun was bright today, Rodney's fishing future is also brighter now.
This morning I phoned Itosh up at 10am and got him out of bed so we could do an afternoon trip to Alta Lake in Whistler. At first I tried to convince him to get in his float tube so I could fish alone on my boat with a video camera set up at one end, but he mumbled something about the water being cold in the lake...? So the finalized plan was to fish together on my Brandywine Flyer and search for some big cutthroat like the ones Chrome Mykiss connected with two weeks ago. We arrived at the lake around 2:00pm. It was pretty calm with a light southerly breeze occasionally. The light chops on the surface was good as it gave the fly some action under the indicator as Chrome Mykiss suggested last time.
Today we were mostly fishing with a strike indicator, with a small wooly bugger positioned just above the lake bottom.
Our first spot did not produce. After about 30 minutes, we had only seen a couple of small rises. My indicator dove once but it may have been weed.
We decided to shift to a different spot, an area where Chrome Mykiss was doing quite well last time. Once we anchored, I changed up by taking the indicator off and tied on a bead olive wooly bugger. My first cast into the shallow was satisfying, the slow strip soon produced a tug at the end of the line. My instant reaction resulted in a kicking rod, fish on the first cast!
A nice little rainbow trout around 12 inches in length. After a quick closeup photo it was released. Alta Lake is not a stocked lake and all fish have to be released.
After that fish, I decided to change back to my indicator setup. In the meantime, Itosh was into a fish! It was also a rainbow trout. It seems like we had found ourselves a school of rainbows that were feeding aggressively.
Once my setup was ready, I proceeded to cast into the same area. The light breeze pushed the indicator slowly to one side, making this technique almost like float fishing in a river. Several minutes after the second drift, the indicator took a deep dive and the fight was on again!
The next five minutes I was able to hook up two more fish, the fishing was on fire!
After a series of hookups, it died down for 20 or so minutes, but another wave of fish came by. This continued for the entire afternoon.
Unlike the catchables, these rainbows are rather scrappy. Prior to being released, they always performed this sockeye dance on the surface, making things rather difficult. A few of our flies were damaged in the process.
Itosh did not do too well with the indicator.
He was determined to get some fish on his sinking setup and was able to hook into a few. His second and third trout came off immediately after hookups. The third fish looked like the cutthroat trout that we were after as the rolls it produced on the surface were quite big. Frustrated, Itosh brought in his fly later on and discovered that his hook was missing the point!
Someone was taking catch & release to a new level.
Itosh also spotted a very large cutthroat trout that casually swam past our boat near the bottom. I saw it too after he pointed out.
Although we were unable to produce what we were targeting today, the rainbow trout kept us quite busy. I managed to connect with around a dozen fish. I'll let Itosh tell you how many he connected with.
Lovely day, caught some fish on the flies I tied last week, was able to improve my casting a bit, didn't fall in the water, didn't get hook by a fly like what I did to Itosh.
I am finally fishing.... I mean, catching.
Photo captions1) Closeup of the first rainbow trout.
2) Closeup of the closeup of the first rainbow trout.
3) Size doesn't matter, really.
4) The fly that did the job today.
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Topic: Alta Lake, Whistler May 4th - Finally some progress (Read 4551 times)