Monte Lake Ice Fishing Jan 23
by Mr BFSH
Plenty of Bait Thieves Like This
Wayne was heading back home to Penticton on Sunday so we thought that Monte Lake might be a good choice. It offers both rainbow trout and the prized "kokanee", both to reasonable sizes of 2-3pounds. When we left Kamloops we did not know what we were in for as far as weather... there was a thick fog smothering the valley which made the day look rather dreary. It was not long after we started the climb on the Hwy 97 from Kamloops to Vernon that the fog was isolated to the valley and that we were going to be blessed with a great day. The weather was spectacular... cloudless sky, bright sunshine and a comfortable +2C. We arrived just after 10am and the lake was active with ice fishing, cross-country skiers, quads & toboggans. The lake is quite a good size and there seemed to be more than enough room for everyone. We talked to a couple of locals at the north end of the lake and took some of their advise, setting up in about 18' of water in the NW corner of the lake... we were about 100 metres from them. The ice was only about 12" thick here so this time we were able to put in a 3rd hole to accommodate the fish finder. We dug our first holes and it wasn't long before we were getting bites... very light hits. At first we had a hard time hooking the fish. A gentler set seemed to do it but the only fishes that we were pulling out were little sculpin. After a while we moved out into deeper water (57'). Wayne set up the fish finder and we seemed to be tracking fish around the 51' level with a few bigger fish moving in the 40' to 49' band. I set my line at about 53' and started jigging and Wayne set his line at 49', hoping for a bigger fish. Well, I started catching fish but again it was only the sculpin that were taking the bait (pink maggots on a little silver lure). Wayne was getting nothing. We tried varying our depths but not much was working. We kept an eye on the local guys that we had talked to earlier and they decided to pack it in around 1pm and they said they would come back about 3pm for the end of the day bite. I ended up catching about 10 sculpin while Wayne settled for the 2 he caught at the first location we fished. If the local guys came back, we didn't see them. There were a number of other fishing groups in the area but I think this day's only salvation was the incredible weather. With the low winter sun, the area that we were fishing was in the shade before 3pm. That made the air a little cooler and we decided to head it out just before 4pm.  Custom Fly Rods by Paul Patterson 9.5 ft and 10 ft High Quality Graphite Taking Orders for Spring...Now!!! Best-in-British-Columbia Fishing Vacations Blog2011 Fishing Journal.Kamloops Area LakesRoche Lake AreaFree Solunar TablesBC Fishing Resorts |
