Long time no post...

Sigh... Summer is long gone. Work has been very busy, thus the lack of posts. I had planned on only keeping a summer blog, anyhow, but as time permits I'll at least pop a few images up from time-to-time.

You might have notice the new banner image. I was at a South Okanagan lake last weekend for a day of fall fishing (the days sure are short now!) and, during a break in the rain I spied those beautiful colours and snapped a quick photo. Gotta love those fall colours!

Speaking of colourful, here's a fish from that day - lots of colour for a triploid!:

Here's a fish caught near the end of summer from a 4x4 only lake near Tunkwa 

Here's a fatty from Kidd Lake, caught on our way home from one of our last weekends at Tunkwa

Adams River sockeye - the gulls like to eat the eyes first...

Red Lake football brookie caught near the end of the season

One of the last Tunkwa fish of the summer - a decent one!

Time for bed.

Cheers! KW

On top of ol' Greenstone

A couple of days ago Alison, Lucas, Jim and I went for a bit if a 4x4 adventure to the top of Greenstone Mountain, the site of several radio and microwave towers and an old forest fire lookout. We managed to get the Explorer to within ~100m of the top. The last bit is steep and rocky, but no problem in low range, and the ground is very solid (i.e. rocky!) so there was no chance of damage to the terrain.

Greenstone is the highest point in the area and the views are great in all directions. We could see Tunkwa and Leighton Lakes in one direction, Kamloops Lake looking in another direction, and the Thompson River and Kamloops in yet another direction.

The lookout is at the highest point of Greenstone, and it ominously has a lightning rod on the peak of its roof! It would be quite a thrill to be up there during a thunderstorm...

Here are some photographs from our visit:

Lucas, Alison and Jimmy at the lookout

Lucas, Alison & Jimmy with Tunkwa Lake in the distant background

Me, Alison & Lucas

It was windy up there!

Alison in the wind

Inside the forest fire lookout

Lookit that!

We added to the graffiti...

Yup, it was windy...

On our way back we drove past Dominic Lake Fishing Camp where many of the fence posts nearby have hats perched on them. Since I first saw them I've wanted to add one to the collection, so we stopped and Alison placed a hat that I had found on the road a while back:

Alison calls the hats a "wilderness meme".

Cheers! KW

Fishing here and there

Fishing has been spotty since I got back from Terrace. Some days have been pretty good, while other days have been slow. On the bright side, we finally tried out a lake we'd driven by, but never fished, ever since we've been coming to Tunkwa. What a pleasant surprise! It has wild fish that fight well, and the best bomber chironomid hatch I've seen so far this year. Here are some pics from a couple of days of fishing the new (to us) lake:

A rare calm day on our "new" lake

There are some nice fish in there

There are some bombers, too!

Spratley in an old homestead we found during a shore break

Another nice fatty

It's usually like this, which is why we never stopped to fish it!

The fish still bite, though!

Chironomids have a tough life. Fish eat the pupa, and if birds don't get the adults, damselflies get 'em.

We've also fished some other local lakes lately. Wendy had her first ever trip up to Island (Big OK) Lake the other day when we went up with Brad & Shawna. Fishing was OK, but not as good as earlier this summer. Most of the fish were skinny and/or dark - quite a contrast to the nice fish we were catching in July. We also fished Morgan Lake; it was slow with mostly small, dark fish caught. We popped down to check out the Thompson at Savona a couple of days ago, and we saw a steady stream of sockeye swimming by. Not much chance for trout when there are so many sockeye around!

Happily, fishing picked up here at Tunkwa a few days ago and we got into some nice fish.

We're getting some nice fish from Tunkwa these days 

 Alison, Lucas, Mom and Jim came for a visit a couple of days ago, and the wind commenced to howling, so we haven't fished for a couple of days.
Alison, Lucas, Jimmy and I went for a 4x4 trip up to Greenstone Mountain yesterday - stay tuned for pix from the old forest fire lookout up there!

Cheers! KW

My arms are tired...

Well, I've been back from the Skeena for a few days. I went to Terrace to fish with friends Hu and Jack from Vernon. The lads picked me up in Savona and we drove straight there - 14 hours! - fished for 9 days, then Hu and I drove straight back while Jack stayed to fish for a few more days with some other friends. A quote from "The River Why" by David James Duncan sums up our schedule: "Eat. Sleep. Fish. Repeat."

Here are a few of my photographs from the trip:

Hu on our first day

 Jack on our first day

Jack fights a fish at Ferry Island

My new Redington CPX 12664, CDL reel and Skagit 425 - perfect for Skeena sox, coho and pinks

We use bright flies!

Sadly, it was very windy at China Bar which made flyfishing tough that day

Jack catching a few Zs at China Bar

Hu prepares to fillet one of our nice sockeye

Look at that red flesh!

We ran into Fred and Inge almost every day

Fred makes his own hooks!

One of Fred's flies, tied on his handmade hook

The weather was a bit variable this year...

Fishing in the rain

One day a bear decided to join the party

Anglers on a run near Terrace

Hu off on a stroll with a fish

I caught this fish 5 minutes after it was released by Hu. It didn't fight at all and the distinctive wound told the tale - same fish!

Jack with a nice steelhead

On our last evening of fishing, Hu landed this beautiful steelhead...

...and then two casts later landed this one. It was a great way to end our trip!

Cheers! KW

Off to the Skeena!

I just spent a couple of days packing and tying like a madman, 'cuz I'm off to Terrace to cast my spey rod for salmon and steelhead! See ya' in a couple of weeks.

Cheers! KW

Happy Anniversary to Don & Judy (38 years(!) yesterday), and to me & Wendy (27 years today!)

What a difference a day makes!

I got up Wednesday morning and tied up some (I thought) killer flies to imitate the large chironomid pupae I pumped from a fish's throat on Tuesday. Having heard promising stories about their efficacy, I also tied some Orange Boobies to try out on the dour fish. With visions of 5 pounders dancing in my head, I headed out onto Tunkwa shortly afterwards, only to see long faces on Don, Little Dick and Big Ken, who were all anchored close to the site of Big Ken's good fishing on Tuesday. No one had landed a fish, and some hadn't even a touch. Sigh...

I figured I might as well give it a go, so I anchored nearby. Since there was more wind which made it a lot choppier than the previous day, I decided to fish naked with one line and try the booby on my Deep 7 line. Despite moving several times to places where I saw jumping fish, I could not get a sniff. As far as I could tell, the rest of the gang were equally unsuccessful. There were few fish jumping and I saw only the odd chironomid.

Misery loves company, so I moved over and anchored near Big Ken. Happily, I was soon into a fish on a sz 10 maroon-ribbed anti-static bag chironomid pupa. Unhappily, it came unbuttoned just before it arrived at the net. As I was playing the fish, Normfish came over and anchored beside me. As we were chatting I hooked and landed a fish on a sz 10 copper-beaded Kraft Dinner. A throat pump came up empty. Norm and I continued to chat for the next hour or two, and several fly changes resulted in about four more fish hooked, but none landed - each one took on the rod I wasn't holding, jumped and shook the hook.

Norm had two lines out - one fly and one with garden hackle. He had no takes on the fly and he only got two fish on bait, so the fish were definitely dour. Big Ken, having had such a good (relatively speaking) day on Tuesday, barely had a sniff today. Sigh... So much for the start of bomber season! On the bright side, Norm reports that the Tunkwa fish taste good right now, a nice change from their usual muddiness at this time of year.

Back to Island Lake

Yesterday, leery of baking in the sun to no avail on Tunkwa again, Don and I made another foray to Island (Big OK) Lake, and we were not disappointed. We got a bit of late start - sitting around chatting in the morning seems to eat a lot of time! - so we didn't get to the lake until about 11 a.m. where we found three fellows on pontoon boats on the water. As we were getting the boat launched we spotted one of those anglers with a fish on - a good sign!

We cruised across the shoal to our favourite starting spot and we noted that the mayflies weren't hatching like they were last time, nor was there as much surface activity as there was last week. Undeterred, we anchored at the drop off and got busy. I had a take almost right away on a sedge pupa, I spotted a good fish swimming right under the boat, and Don landed a small fish on a chironomid shortly afterwards, but we had no action for a while after that so we pulled anchors and headed to our next favourite spot.

It was a good move, as Don (or was it me? - I can't recall!) was into a good fish almost immediately, and we had fairly steady action for a couple of hours. The good old Ice Cream Cone and a brown-ribbed ASB pupa did the trick; there was little need to use anything else. We had at least three double-headers, and I got one fish that took me well into the backing. It turned out the backing was tangled, too! How the heck does that happen? Luckily, the fish turned before the tangle locked up tight and I was able to land the fish. As you can imagine, I spent the next 15 minutes peeling line off the reel and making sure the backing ran true. It would be a shame to hook Walter and break him off because of tangled backing!

 

After hooking a few fish under the indicator, I decided to dig out my 3 wt and fish naked. what fun! The takes are like getting a mild electric shock - a little tingling in the fingertips then a jolt. I'm really loving that 3 wt rod, too. I think I have arthritis or something in the lower joint of my thumbs and I sometimes get quite a bit of pain when I cast with my thumb on the grip of the flyrod, but the 3 wt. is so light that it puts no strain on my casting-hand thumb. I can cast it for hours with no pain. I am also impressed with the fish-fighting ability of that rod. At first I was worried that, when using it to catch larger fish, I would have to play them for too long and thus increase the chance of them not surviving. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. Despite it being only a 3 wt which casts a 3 wt floating line beautifully, I have easily fought and landed rainbows over 6 lbs. It is a fast rod and it seems to have a lot of reserve power in the butt section which allows me to really "put the screws" to the fish, which is great because I like to land and release fish quickly so they live to fight another day. BTW the rod is a four piece Redington CPX 9' 3 wt with a Rio Gold line.

Island Lake double-header

Things slowed down considerably after a couple of hours, like someone flicking a switch, so we decided to go for a cruise and see if we could spot some fish in shallow water. We headed into a shallow bay and we saw some nice fish slowly cruising, but we couldn't entice them, so we went back out to fish deeper water. We were using a colour sounder (Humminbird 345c), loaned to us by Al Patton (Tunkwa lake Resort) which allowed us to easily mark fish, so we cruised the drop until we spotted some fish on the sounder, then anchored. It paid off and we both hooked a couple more fish. In fact, we must have stopped right on top of one because Don had a take while he was lowering his anchor!

Since it was Don and Judy's anniversary (38 years! Happy Anniversary!), we packed up early and headed for home. On our way out we chatted with one of the other anglers and he had landed a few fish, too, also on a "black chironomid". He reported that the surface action during the evenings had been good (he and his pals were camped there) and, indeed, they were headed out to toss Tom Thumbs for the evening. When we got back to Tunkwa we found we had made the right move, as most of our pals enjoyed limited success on Tunkwa.
 
 
Time to get packing for salmon fishing with the spey rod!
 
 
Cheers! KW