Nobody wants to start? I guess I'll start the journal...
A few of us decided to give Kawkawa Lake a go today. Located in Hope, Kawkawa Lake opens on March 1st for kokanee fishing. It was an invasion by FWR, some may call it a gong show.
The participants included myself, fishersak/Mark, Chris, Gwynn, buckeye/George, Nicole, Thomas, Nick/the "master", Donny, Lew, Ken, Lucky/Sean and Mary.
The day started out with a bang at the Home Restaurant in Hope for a energizing brunch. When Fishersak and I arrived, Lucky and Mary were ready to leave and hit the lake before us.
Chris, as usual, arrived when we were ready to eat.
As usual, he blamed it on his travelling companions.
The breakfast serving at the Home Restaurant was massive... Never have I seen a pile of hash brown that high.
It was indeed delicious and filling as Nick recommended earlier this week.
At 11:00am, it was a race to the boat launch.
Everyone else had the luxury of the boat trailer while Fishersak and I had to unload an upside down boat and fit it with all the accessories before heading out. By the time we were out there, others had already wetted their lines for 20 minutes.
Here were the teams.
Lew and Ken
The Leaf Craft (Buckeye, Chris and Gwynn)
Thomas and Nicole
Donny and the "master"
Lucky and Mary (drifting far far away as they did not bring an anchor
Look at the background!)
Myself and Fishersak
The largest kokanee means the winning team would be able to claim two Maple Leaf Drennan, which have mysteriously disappeared...
When Fishersak and I finally anchored and had our rods rigged up, I first spotted a couple of rises directly in front of me.
The rises became more frequent as we started casting. We just happened to anchor right in front of a school of kokanee.
After twenty minutes of casting with one boil after another one, not a single tap was detected.
Oh well, another hour or so went by, the rod tips were not harrassed, although we were rather comfortable with the warm sun beaming down on us.
While this was (not) happening, I looked over at the other side of the lake. It appeared the other teams all decided to park at this one spot. Suspicious indeed, so Fishersak and I decided to pay them a visit.
We arrived and found that fishing action was happening, only the species was not the right one.
Residualized coho were being pulled up once awhile. These coho, range between 8 and 14 inches in length, are three year old according to the "master". You cannot keep them, but they are certainly scrappy on a light spinning rod. With no kokanees around, I was eager to connect with one (especially after two fishless weekends
).
We sneaked up behind the Leaf Craft...
Parked just several feet away to make sure that we were directly above the school.
I rebaited my hook with a piece of fresh shrimp, and dropped down the rig. 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet... Bottom, winded the line a few times, tap tap, jerk! Rod did a few familiar kicks then it bounced back up.
In the meantime, Chris, George and Gwynn were having quite a party with these fish.
I managed to get some action on the video too, which will hopefully come later on in the fishy clips.
The "master" and Donny strolled over to see what all the noises were about. They anchored not far away from us and began to fish. In the meantime, two more fish popped off my rod before they even surfaced.
Then we started hearing constant splashing sounds behind us. Sure enough, the "master" was bringing them up like a commercial drift net.
One, two, three, four.... He must have caught a dozen or so in 20 minutes.
A few more taps on my rod tip produced yet another connection. This time I kept the tension rather tight, and first fish in two weeks surfaced for that photo shoot.
This specimen was rather skinny. Gwynn caught one right before me that was easily as big as a Capilano coho jack.
The rest of the day involved sitting around and watching more kokanees surfacing, and connecting with a few more small coho. We ended the outing at around 5pm.
I'll let others to fill in this incomplete journal.
Chris should be doing this as I am probably driving the readership away.
Ok, someone else has to explain this, or add a caption to it.
I was not in that boat, so I had nothing to do with it.
Thanks to everyone for a fun day.
Author
Topic: An invasion at Kawkawa Lake March 25th (Read 4396 times)