2010.03.05 Six Mile Lake
Earliest Fly Fishing Season Ever
by Mr BFSH
(Kamloops)
13" Rainbow on a Green Micro Leech
Man, it has been so nice here in the BC Southern Interior... we have been witnessing temperatures in the mid-teens Celsius (that's 60'sF for our American readers) and the ice is off on at least 2 of the lower elevation lakes.
I decided to try Six Mile Lake on Friday, Mar 5... absolutely the earliest this guy has ever fished the small lakes in the Kamloops Area... and I could have been fishing 4 days earlier.
I arrived about 1pm... sunny, light east breeze, high barometer... almost perfect. There were about a half dozen other boats there when I arrived but it looked like a few were already starting to leave. The word from a few guys that I passed while I was driving up the hill from the Tobiano entrance had said that it was going to be busy and only a few fish were being caught and that the fish were not very big today. That always sounds like a challenge to me to so proceeded with excitement.
On this day I decided to rig up 3 rods... one wet line of which I was going to work my familiar Booby Fly Patterns and 2 floating lines. The two floating lines and rods were lent to me try out courtesy of my good fishing friend Paul Patterson. He has found a new rod blank that he likes and recently built them. He asked me to try them out and I must say that they were quite nice. Smooth casting and well balanced, look for these custom built rods to be for sale on the Best-in-British-Columbia.com site in the near future.
I started out dragging my wet line around just looking to spot fish on my fish finder. There seemed to be lots of fish sitting around 11'-13'below the surface in 15'-16' of water. Once I moved out to 17' there were few fish and if I moved into shallower water the fish disappeared too. After scouting around for about a half hour I anchored and brought out one of the dry lines and hooked it up with a chromie. Although I was picking up fish on the finder, they didn't seem to interested. I then changed to a hyalella shrimp on the floater and still no action. One guy (the only one left by 2pm) was hitting a few little fish in shallow water further down the lake and he too left by 2:30pm.
Without much success, I pulled up anchor and drift-trolled to the east end of the lake. There was a consistency in spotting fish at the 11' to 13' depth and it was also consistent that they were not interested. Again I anchored to fish this depth and again I was skunked.
As the afternoon drew on (and I had the lake to myself - 4pm)) I noticed the odd fish rising in the shallow water not far from shore. I changed to a dry line (10'rod) and put on a cool little green micro-leech that I had tied a couple days earlier. First cast (near the water control structure) got me a fish within about 3 seconds after I straightened the line. The fish was a scrappy 13" fish and I was able to shake it off beside the boat (I forgot my net at home).
After the first fish, there was another lull. I decided to try the west end of the lake where the water was a little more shallow. There were a few rises in the real shallow water (I even had to pull up my electric motor because of the weeds) but I couldn't get them to take at first. As I pulled out into the 6'-8'water, a couple of young guys came to flycast from shore. As one of them was gearing up I was cruising by and telling him how poor it had been all day... just the motivation he needed. As I was yapping he caught 2 fish on his first 2 casts (small ones but fish never-the-less... so much for my prophecy). I drifted by him (outside of his casting area) and I too was soon into fish. There was quite a rise going on as the sun has settled and the air got significantly cooler. The feed seemed to last about 20 minute and I landed 3 more fish. Then, the lake went dead and I was running out of light.
I headed in and was pleased with final outcome although the fish were on the small side. The day was absolutely spectacular and I was pleased a punch to find myself fishing the Kamloops Area Lakes 4 weeks earlier this year than last. When I got home I checked the solunar tables and sure enough, the major feed was to occur between 4pm and 6pm. Nature was right on... but it was too nice of a day not fish all afternoon.
By the looks of the weather report, it might be another week before I hit the water again as it appears that things will be getting back to a more normal temperatures of 5-6C and little more unsettled as expected in the spring.
