Saturday August 12th (cont.)At 7:00pm, we arrived at Juniper Beach, which is around 40 minutes west of Kamloops. Carlo's truck was already in the lot, he had been working his way up from Spences Bridge since that morning.
The evening hours were still hot, but the cool breeze made it rather comfortable.
Last year we camped at Juniper Beach without realizing that trains run on both sides of the river on day and night. The first night was rather interesting, there wasn't much shut eyes going on in the tent.
This year, the hotel package was the only way to lure Nina along to the trip.
We hiked to the river with our rods, to check out how the river was. After 30 minutes or so, Carlo made his way downstream and met up with us. He reported fair fishing throughout the day, with the odd large ones being caught. Our day by the river finished around dusk with only a couple of gentle taps at the end of the fly rods to show.
Saturday August 13thOur second day started pretty late.
Early morning is simply not our thing. We woke up at 8:00am, took our time with the breakfast while watching Global's morning news hour.
We eventually reached the river at 10:30am. Our (late) morning stop was the
Rock and River Rustic Retreat, where anglers can park and fish for $10/day. Although paying to fish is so rare and almost unacceptable in BC, I find this is a small price to pay to have my car parked at a secured camp where washrooms are available.
My day started out rather, wet.
As usual, we decided to leave the wading shoes at home and stick with sandals.
While Nina was casting away just upstream from me, I took a fast plunge just several steps out from the river bank.
Not knowing what had just happened, Nina turned and was surprised to see me sitting in the water. I attempted to stand up, only to find myself falling on the butt again.
Oh well, air temperature was already above 30C, a pair of wet pants was not going to ruin the day.
We proceeded to work our way to several spots further upstream, where the water was slightly more turbulent. Because the Thompson is so grand, each run takes a few hours to cover properly. The runs are usually broken up into smaller runs. Finding these trout is often like steelheading, walking is part of the prerequisites.
After a couple of hours, with the odd misses, we were still fishless. It wasn't surprising, as this game was still very new to us, but it sure was frustrating after waving that stick constantly under the scorching sun.
Nina eventually went further upstream from me to check out a spot where she thought was promising. I stayed behind to cover a run that looked rather interesting to me. Ten minutes later, I heard a scream "FISH ON!" from 300+ meters above me. I looked up, only to see Nina hanging onto the bent fly rod by the edge of a deep run. Armed with my backpack, cameras and rod, I began sprinting and hopping from one round boulder to the next.
"Hurry!", she yelled again.
Hurry? I wasn't about to kill myself on the rocks!
Immediately after that thought crossed my mind, I tripped and took a tumble over some boulders.
Wanting to get a shot of this fish, I quickly got up again and carry on with the hopping.
I reached her a minute or so later, panting and almost crawling. "Hurry!", she said again.
It was a beautiful rainbow trout, sitting just below the surface. Although it had been on the line for several minutes, it was still very energetic and a mistake could easily pop the fish off. Nina guided it towards me as I held the landing net by the water. It darted straight out as soon as it approached the net. Second try only resulted in the same reaction. Third try brought the fish straight into the mesh.
Relieved and joyful, Nina was all smile after a few hours of hunting. I just couldn't believe that she landed the first fish of the day, on the fly!
Nevertheless, it was fantastic to see. I brought the camera out, captured a couple of photos of the fish and Nina.
After releasing the fish, Nina said that fish went for the fly during the first drift and came back again on the second. She was sure that more were around and determined to find another one. I gave the tailout of that run a shot but came up empty. It was less than a dozen casts later, Nina was into yet another fish!
This time it was a much smaller trout, which grabbed the fly as it was being stripped in.
Absolutely stunned and disgusted by my own performance, I was now very determined to find a fish. I decided that I should go with a strike indicator while nymphing, because Carlo has been successful with this technique this year. We decided to work our way back down the river so we could have our lunch at the camp. As I fished along each run, I was finally having some good hits with one good sized fish that was briefly connected.
We eventually reached the campsite, it was time for lunch. I was still fishless.
Part three will come tonight.
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Topic: The annual hunt of Thompson rainbows, August 13th - 15th (Read 3787 times)