Well that was an awesome year but it’s time close off 2012 and move on to 2013! Thanks to everyone that contributed reports, stories & pictures last year and we’re really hoping to see even more of you on our … 2013 Fishing Reports post!
Tight lines & good times in 2013!
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Anybody know what the road is like into Frogmoore from Surrey Lake side? Can we get a small trailer in there? Thanks!
Hey I’m going to red lake this weekend and have never actually camped there and was wondering if there is a camp site there, any information woulod be greatly appreciated!
Unfortunately there are no camp sites at Red 🙁
Fished Red Lake today before the weekend craziness. Caught and released two rainbows, one was small, but one was a 19″ 4.5 lb hog. I know that there had been some worry about larger rainbows being winter-killed. At least we know there are 4 + lb fish there. Has anyone taken anything larger like last spring and fall? Red Lake is very, very clear right now by the way.
Cheers,
Darryl
Last spring my wife and I got 6 fish in the 6lbs and over range on Red Lake, biggest was 8.6lbs! This spring biggest so far is 4lbs.
The fish seem to be smaller this year for what ever reason…perhaps winter kill of some of the really big rainbows. I have been in the same boat when a 9 lb 11 oz rainbow was taken from there last year and heard of fish greater than 10 lbs being caught. Hopefully it picks up.
Cheers,
Darryl
Scuitto lake has been A-M-A-Z-I-N-G the last two days! We have just been going up for day trips on Friday and today. We anchored near the inflow Campbell creek, on day one the fish were hitting chironomids aprox. 5′ under the indicator. We caught 24 this day with the biggest being a 20″ 3lb
Silver bullet. Today we were in the same spot but the fish were hitting 10′ down in 11′ of water, we caught a nice 2lber that fought like crazy and took me on a few runs into my backing, only caught 12 today but had quite the audience around me while fighting my fish! The chironomids we used were size 10 and 12 chromies and black with red ribbed(both ice cream cones) and size 10 brown ice cream cone
Nice Jordan! Any pics?
what a gong show. thats all i can say.
???
just super crazy busy everywhere. was at blue lake. fishing was pretty slow. we got about 12 fish between three of us. lots of cruzers on the drop offs but not very hungry. 13 boats on the water saturday, which to me is lots of traffic for that lake. they seemed to be taking small size 18 green chronies. may long is not a good weekend for fishing in my mind but still good to be out. cheers
ahhh
Hi just wanted to let people know that roche lake is fishing excelllent now. The water has cleared up and the chronomids are coming off in large numbers. I found my best success today at 30 feet in depth fishing right on the bottom. Good luck to anyone who tries.
Thanks Randy … luv the deep water chronie fishin!
sat was good. caught fish in monster bay and a friend did really well fishing deep with chironies. We got schooled in monster bay though. We watched a boat with 3 guys in it absolutely slay them during the bite and we were only a couple casts away but a little shallower. They were in 14 ft and we were in 10-12ft. Not sure if this was the difference or if it was the flies they were using but they caught close to 60 during the 4 hour bite and we only caught 10ish. It was the same for anyone around them. Any answers????
We saw them do well everywere they went including the deeper water.
Anyways, fishing really slowed on sun and mon morning as the weather turned cold, windy, and rainy.
How do those guys fish the 30ft depth? Need to work at that more. Just seems like it is hopeless tossing a 16 chironi that deep down. Crazy stuff, sure works for the big guys.
As you will find much discussed on various forums, the deep water chiro fishing can be deadly. If the fish are 30′ down, the size 16 is just as effective, if put in front of their faces, as it would be at any other shallower depth. In a lake like Roche, the fish will see that little chiro just fine at that depth, and if that’s where the fish happen to be at where you’re fishing, you’d be crazy to fish any other depth. Be aware that often not all the fish will be on bottom and you’ll pick up fish suspended too, but I have found that USUALLY (not always) the nicest fish stick close to bottom and the smaller ones are inclined to suspend more.
Food for thought!
As for the guys out-fishing you, location and/or fly can be everything. I have certainly been schooled by anglers a cast away. Location can be that specific! Even if your location is good and there are lots of fish below you, fly choice can make the difference between just as good, half as good and not even a sniff compared to the person next to you – even in the same boat!! As discussed above, another factor is fly depth. If you are not dialed in to where the fish are feeding in the water column, it can make a big difference even in a good spot with the same fly as the person producing next you you (i.e. fishing near bottom at 15′ vs fishing 8′ down in 15′).
thnks Benny. very good info. I did get one in 27ft but none after that. I think the bite slowed by then as my friend had just got a double header when we arrived (after 15 other fish) and nothing after that.
How do you go about finding them in the deep especially in the area where it drops off so fast from 10ft to 30 ft in a matter of 10 – 15 yards? Do you start deep and work in?
Question, Mark….are you fishing WITHOUT an indicator to get down to 27′? I can’t even imagine trying to cast that long a leader…I have a hard enough time with 15′. Heading to Scuitto next week, with perhaps a few days at Roche at the end of the week…just trying to get a grip on this chronie thing, as we’re new at it.
Thanks!:roll:
With an indicator – quick release but i saw people using a thill(easier to cast) and pulling out the toothpick.
Casting is much easier in a boat, if you are in a float tube i imagine it would be even more difficult.
Definitely helps to have the wind behind you as well.
The thing is you don’t need to get it out far when the fish are that deep anyways.
Good luck. The fish i did catch were either black or antistatic with red rib and white tungsten bead head or black bead head and white antron. Caught a couple on antistatic with black rib. These were what was in the throat’s of any fish I sampled.
The other option is to use a sinking line when in water 15 feet or more … check out this article on deep water chironomids by John Sclar! 😉
Damn! I knew that! Brian Chan’s seminar….I need to pay more attention…blonde, you know…lol. Thanks, guys. 😳
Hey Dawn,
I can share a few pointers that someone gave me fifteen years ago that totally changed my success in deep water. Hopefully they’ll help you guys out too.
First off, marking depths on anchor ropes and fly lines are nice but unnecessary for true deep water chironomid fishing. A fish finder is a great tool for reading bottom depth and slope and I would call it almost essential. Whether or not it shows fish accurately doesn’t really matter, it’s all about reading the water depth. I’m sure you’ve seen it on the water before. The guy that’s anchored in ten feet of crystal clear water, not a breath of wind, with a cheap sounder beeping every second marking “fish” when there’s nothing around.
As mentioned before in numerous other forums and articles, solid anchoring is essential for success when fishing chironomids. I use two 50 pound rubberized mushroom anchors on our 17 foot jonboat and it doesn’t move an inch in the wind. Pulling the anchors up out of the marl is a different story altogether!
The next important thing is your gear. Try to use a slower action rod if you have one. More often than not the takes are pretty hard. Your flylines should be the fastest sinking possible. I use Rio Deep 6 on both my deepwater rods with excellent results. The line is expensive but well worth it. If you compare it to a type 2 full sink in forty feet of water your fly is in the zone several minutes before the type 2 ever gets there. Catch a few fish and cast the line back out and you’ve now lost over an hour of fishing time waiting for the slow sink line to hang vertical with the fly one foot off the bottom.
Next up would be the technique for setting up. After you’ve found a suitable location with chironomids hatching, bird activity, etc it’s time to get the gear in the water. I use a short 9 foot leader usually made up of 6 pound fluoro nail-knotted onto the line with a two foot 4 pound tippett blood-knotted onto that. A Duncal loop or standard loop knot is always used to keep the fly hanging perfectly vertical.
After your setup clamp your pliers onto your fly and strip out the line until the pliers hit the bottom. If the rod is going in a holder do this step with the rod in the holder. If you are going to hold the rod pick a reference point on the shoreline and the gunnel of the boat with the rod tip 1-2 inches off the water. Once the pliers hit the bottom gently lift the rod up one foot then back down to confirm the exact bottom, tighten the drag on your reel and carefully reel up one foot while keeping the rod in the exact same position. After you’ve reeled up one foot strip the line in, detach the pliers and cast the line back out returning it to the same position 1-2 inches off the water lined up with your two reference points.
The importance of the reference points and repeating the process is magnified when fishing a drop off or uneven bottom. Quickly checking the depth in the middle of the boat then casting out to the stern and having your line come to rest vertical ten feet away from where you tested can either pull your fly way off the bottom or stick it in the mud if you’re fishing on a drop off. This can be the difference between having an okay day and an exceptional one.
If I’m not fishing with my family I’ll always fish one rod static in the holder with the tip 1-2 inches off the water and the fly one foot off the bottom. I’ll perform a painfully slow hand twist retrieve bringing the chironomid up vertical in the water column. If I start hooking fish consistently at a particular depth with the retrieved fly I’ll set the static rod in the holder to the same depth. If the static rod is out fishing the retrieved rod I’ll break out the second rod holder and fish them both one foot off the bottom.
I’ve used this technique with great success in 60-70 feet of water all the way up to 25 feet when I switch over to indicators and long leaders. I’ve found over the years that lots of the lakes that I used to associate with spring chironomid fishing only fish as well or better in deep water in the summer. White, Stump, Sheridan, Lundbom are all deadly in August fishing bomber chromies and bloodworms 60 feet down on a type 6. The nice thing is hat you have the option of swimming if the 35-40 degree heat is too much!
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Chris
Thank you, Chris. I’m hell-bent I’m going to conquer this. I need to hit a few lakes where it’s NOT blowing ninety. Being in the LM, we’ve been going to a lot of lakes in the Nicola Valley on weekends, and haven’t found one yet this year that hasn’t been windy as all get out. Sometimes to the point of being blown off the lake because I can’t control the boat and fish at the same time. I guess that’s to be expected of spring fishing. I’ve only managed to fish with chironomids once, and it was in shallow water, but it was short lived. The wind came up and our anchors would not hold.
We’re hoping to have better luck and more chances to hone our skills at Scuitto and Roche next week. Thanks for the tips, much appreciated. I’ll let you know how we do when we get back. Hoping the weather and the lakes are kind to us! lol
No problems Dawn. Scuitto and Roche have been great and you should do well. The nice thing with fishing chironomids in deep water is that it doesn’t matter how hard the wind blows. You don’t cast, your rod tip is 1 inch off the water and the fly is straight down. It’s way easier than trying to cast with an indicator and watch it in the waves.
The biggest thing is to go overkill on the anchors so your boat does not move. I have yet to be blown off our anchors and we’ve fished the north end of stump with the kiteboarders and windsurfers out and Tunkwa, Island and Courtenay with two foot high whitecaps.
To take some of the mystique out of the deep water stuff our five year old son can set his depth, hold his rod just off the surface and catch fish in forty feet of water so I know you guys can.
Best Regards,
Chris
Great stuff
thnks again
You bet Mark, hope it helps! I used to spray paint anchor ropes and make an educated guess along with the sounder. However, your anchor line is never perfectly vertical and the deeper the water the more inaccurate this method is. Add in a little wind and some slack for your anchors to grab and the marks are now useless.
A nice heavy set of hemostats hung vertically off the thing that catches the fish, your fly, is as accurate as you can be. We’ve got a nice Lowrance sounder that will show a leech retrieved under the boat and I would never trust it over the previously described method for determining depth. Great tool for checking the slope of the bottom but not the exact depth to set your fly.
If the transducer isn’t perfectly parallel to the bottom the sounder will over read. To give you an example, last August we had a phenomenal day up at Stump fishing size 6 grey static bags in 65 feet of water in a bay with a gently sloping bottom. At the end of the day we decided to check all four depth sources with a tape measure on the boat. The sounder showed 65 feet, the front anchor rope was 71 feet and the back 73 feet. This is with 50 pound anchors in light wind. The real shock was the actual depth with the plier method………57 feet!
If we had used the fish finder or anchor rope as a guide we would have spent the whole day with our flies in the mud thinking we were fishing one foot off the bottom. I was shown this technique years back by a gentleman in his 80’s that had live up at White Lake for the better half of two decades. The crazy thing is he didn’t flyfish at all but he used a fly.
He would anchor his fiberglass boat, some 19 feet long with a Merc 150 on the back, in 60-70 feet of water. Next he would place two six foot broom handle sized trolling rods into rod holders angled down with the tips just off the water. Both rods were spooled with lead-core trolling line on old wooden salmon mooching reels. Onto that he would tie on his chironomid, attach a set of pliers and send the whole rig to the bottom. Next up, he would reel up one foot and quickly pull the line up by hand, unclip the pliers and throw everything over the side.
After he was setup every boat had the pleasure of observing the catching fish clinic first hand. May was a great month but his two favorites were always July and August. Deep water hatches, bigger chironomids, zero crowds and usually great weather. As I mentioned before, other than Tunkwa/leighton and a few higher elevation lakes I never would have thought the chironomid fishing could be so good in the dead of summer. Thanks to the information that was passed along, I now know differently.
Best Regards,
Chris
This is really good stuff guys! Thanks to all who contributed. To save some bandwidth on this post (2012 ice off & fishing reports) I have copied the info to the forum under the title Deep Water Chironomid Fishing. If we could continue the discussion there it would be greatly appreciated! 🙂 Thanks guys & gals!
6.5 lb. Eastern Brook…ahhh, chironomids…part of a 100+ fish day at a Southern Interior Lake 🙂
May 21, 2012
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Just to add…this was fish #129 for the day…
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Wow nice looking brookies. 129 fish in a day??????? Given a 4 hour bite you must be catching and releasing a fish under two minutes for hours on end…………unreal. Judging by the pictures I’d bet the farm you were at Red Lake!
Cheers,
Chris
129 fish in a day? I usually pack it in after fish #120, but to each their own.
Well, we packed it in at an even 130…
arms were too tired for anymore fish…
best day ever…
and I thought 40 was usually a great day… now I know better 🙂
My what big hands you have Herman 😉
Wow, good on you guys. I am jealous that is for sure. Amazing brook trout. 6 1/2 lbs is one of the largest brook trout I have heard of in BC. Again, good on you guys!!
Cheers,
Darryl
Anyone have any news on Saul or Walloper?
Hi All. Has anyone been to Horseshoe this week, or talked to anyone who has been there???
I was at Horseshoe on Tuesday. Got skunked along with a few other folks who were attempting to escape the gale force winds at Roche. I also tried off the dock at Tulip but all I saw were thousands of shrimp swimming everywhere. Made me wonder how many fish there are in Tulip.
Oh, terrific. This does not bode well for our trip all next week…. 😥
Fished Horseshoe today. A couple trolling hardware got a couple of rainbows, the largest being around 2.5 lbs. I got a couple of small brookies and hooked a very, very large rainbow that I lost at the boat. Two guys were fishing chironomids all day with just one bite. A number of people left in frustration as it was so slow and had been for the past couple of days.
Just got back from Horseshoe. Fished it for 3 days and got 1 fish. Lake is in complete turn over right now. Water is very murky and lots of debris floating on the surface. No chironomids at all……
Lundbom fished ok for me but one guy caught an 8 pounder I’m told.
He also caught 17 fish. The fish we got averaged 2 1/2 lbs.
It was cold and windy.
Going to edith tomorrow, anyone know how it has been fishing and what has been working? As well as any good spots for chironomid fishing?
My 10 year old son & I fished Edith today, 8am -1pm. We were in 19′ near entrance to Channel. Son hooked 22 and I hooked 12. All were 1-1.5 lbs on size 16 or 14 green / red.
I guess it’s true that the big ones are very elusive. We tried other areas, but no luck, Son was kept busy, a good day.
What Dave said is exactly what I experienced on the May long weekend. Lots of fish with a strong chiro hatch…nothing over 2 lbs.
Just got back from fishing Roche with Adam … the chironies were coming off pretty good but we had to work for our fish. Managed a bakers dozen between us with the biggest at about 6 lbs.
Heading back up to fish Roche & surrounding lakes over the next few days with Gord & Steve (flyguys North). Stop and say hi if you see us 🙂
Had a great day of Interior chironomid fishing today! Only a slight breeze all day, sunny, and 20+ fish, all pretty nice sized. Can’t complain 🙂
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Made the trek into Ernest Lake last week. Tonns of shrimp on the surface and not a single fish to be seen. Rumor has it a lot of lakes in that area were winter killed. Can anyone confirm this?
Shay
Shay there were no reports (that I heard about) of low oxygen levels at Ernest. It’s a tough lake to fish so I wouldn’t equate not getting into any as a kill. I was there earlier in may and got my butt kicked! Hope to get some redemption there later this week 😉
Yeah, all the reports and articles I’ve read called it a “moody” lake…The lake might just still be in turn over mode. Please be sure to let us know if you see any activity there should you make it in. The road is in great shape right now, not much mud to speak of and no washouts.
Ernest is fairly deep and in the 20+ years I have known about the lake and others in the area, I have never heard of winterkill. As Rob mentioned, it is notoriously stingy for the most part and skunkings are not uncommon. It is stocked lightly for a lake of its size and invert populations are not in the least depleted, so seeing scuds booting around is fairly common.
My buddy seen big floaters up there may long:(
I have never heard of the lake suffering a significant winterkill either, but I haven’t heard a single report of anyone catching a fish there yet this season…That being said, the lake can be a real bastard at times.
I saw a recent report on the bigfishsmallhook website siting sources at Roche Lake Resort who said that Ernest suffered a significant winterkill.
Has anyone fished Big O.K. in the last few days? I fished Gwen Lake yesterday. It was slow…. Then I tried a shrimp under indicator and WHAMMMOO!!! It was on. Right in the shallows left of the boat launch. Those fish fight hard. Turned out to be a pretty good day.