This spring sure has been depressingly cold. The fluctuation of temperature and precipitation has made trip planning rather difficult. Once we found out Thursday was going to be the first of three hot days, we quickly took advantage of it by heading back to Alta Lake.
Originally the forecast suggested a cloudy morning and learing in the afternoon, but we should have known how inaccurate the BC weather forecast is by now. Once we reached the Sea to Sky Highway at 9:30am, there was not a single cloud in front of us! It was turning into a warm day. Maybe too warm?
Some have asked why we keep going back when fishing for bigger species in the interior is currently available.
The answer would be time and cost. Although rainbow trout in Alta Lake do not grow beyond 14 inches, you do have a chance to connect with some nice cutthroat trout. It is just one of many quality fishing lakes where a day trip from Vancouver is possible. After
our last trip, Fishersak said to me, "It sounds like you guys had a good trip." I said, "Not really, because all I caught were small rainbows and the newbie took the big cutthroat!"
I was determined to go back and get one in the same weight class.
Traffic was horrible on the Sea to Sky Highway! It was even worse than last time. It took exactly two hours from Vancouver to Squamish.
We arrived at the lake just before noon and met up with TtotheE, who decided to come up after I showed him some of the photos from last trip.
The lake was flat calm, which is not exactly the best thing because it was so sunny.
Small trout were rising furiously in the shallows. We anchored at a drop-off where we had some success last week. Within a couple of casts, my strike indicator was already taking a bath with this little guy swimming away with the fly.
What amazes me is the colour and spotting differentiation of these small trout. Their size might not raise an eye brow, but they are always exciting to look at when emerging on the surface. Here is another one that I caught later on
TtotheE quickly got into one too, but with a few more quick tugs, the lake went dead.
At times we saw huge cutthroat trout thrashing on the surface nearby while we baked on the boat for a couple of hours. Finally a brief period of bites came on with more small trout before it went dead again. I said to Erin, "This is what fishing with me is like usually... You've just been lucky until today."
At 3:00pm, TtotheE had enough and left to meet his friend in Whistler. I said to him before he left, "You should have been here last week, as usual."
Since we still dressed for last week's weather, the sun finally became a bit too much to handle. We took a brief break on the floating dock nearby then we decided to slowly troll in the deeper portion of the lake. Normally I really dislike trolling.
The reason is not that I think it is a lazy way of fishing, but I simply do not have the patience for it. On top of that, it does not help when I always steer my boat as if I have a pair of beer goggles on.
Surprisingly, I managed to keep the lines untangled this time. The fishing was in fact quite fast once we started trolling. I first spotted Erin's rod kicking away at the corner of my eyes while steering, but she seemed to be more interested in the nearby scenery.
It was another tiny one. Who knows how long that fish had been on the line.
Awhile later while chatting, I looked at her rod again and asked, "Don't you have a fish on there?"
"Oh ya..." and she brought up a pretty good sized rainbow trout.
The exciting part of trolling was probably when my fly reel screamed everytime because I usually had it sitting on the boat unattended.
We finally saw our first cutthroat trout, at the end of Erin's line near the end of our troll session, but it was a miniature version of last week's fish.
Finally by around 6:30pm, the lake became shaded and we could actually see! Surface activity intensified immediately and so did the fishing. We ended up catching more rainbow trout, which were bigger than the ones that we caught during the day, but no big cutthroat trout on this trip. The boat was loaded back on the car at 8:30pm. I arrived on my driveway just before midnight. It was a very long day with perhaps two dozen fish landed.
Good luck to all on this long weekend.
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Topic: Alta Lake, May 15th 2008 (Read 768 times)