Campbell Lake - Fathers Day 2010
by DaveO
Campbell Lake - Hitchin' a Ride
With both my boys grown and living out of province/country, it was a particular treat to have them both here (one with a new wife) for Father's Day... and what better way to enjoy the weekend than a day on the lake. It was last year (more in July) that the fishing got real good at Campbell Lake so we decide that if we were to catch fish, Campbell would be as good a bet as any. We headed out about 7:30am on Saturday morning, grabbed a couple of gut bomb breakfast sandwiches and coffees on the way out and were on the water just after 10am... the boys were in belly boats and I had my 12' aluminum. Two things I noticed immediately... there was not a lot of people on the lake (odd because of the free fishing weekend - no license required) and how much the water level had come up... astounding... probably 2ft or more in the last 2 weeks. There were a number of fish rolling on the surface when we arrived (it was the end of the solunar period) but they seemed to subside as we hit the water. The boys decided to take the easy way and had me tow them to the north side of the lake where we were planning to work a stretch of shore line along the weed beds. The water was so high that the weeds had not emerged yet so we had to do some pre-scouting before we finally anchored. We started off with chironomids... a variety of chromies, black and greens, black and reds, and green and reds. Dano, the oldest of the two, who had been a hard luck fisherman the past few years, was the first into a fish (on a #14 chromie)... a real relief as far as he was concerned... he would finally get his picture on our site (lololol). Oddly enough, Campbell Lake was the first lake that Dano had fished and caught a big fish back in 1983. There were hardly any chironomids hatching (a trend that seemed to be common on all the local lakes lately). I got into a few fish while Mike... the younger son, was really struggling to get anything the first couple of hours. To change my luck I put on a couple of micro-leeches (I was fishing a naked floater and a strike indicator floater) and immediately started getting more strikes. Mike came over and I gave him a few of the same flies that I was using and when he re-anchored he was into a fish on his first cast. The fish were mostly small... the biggest I caught was about 16 inches long. We stayed on the north side until about 4pm... with 5pm targeted as our end of day. As we made our way to the south shore we all got into the best action of the day... catching a total of 8 fish in that last hour. It was nice to have a bit of success with the boys but it was even better having them there with me sharing a past time that we have enjoyed over the last 25 years. Thanks for making my Father's Day weekend a blast and let's do it again next year. Dad Best-in-British-Columbia Fishing Vacations BlogKamloops Area LakesFree Solunar TablesFly Fishing Strategies for BC Lakes FishingBC Fishing Resorts |
