Baking in the heat

Wendy and I spent an enjoyable couple of days fishing and baking in the sun with Spratley - yesterday at Logan Lake for the afternoon, and today at Tunkwa, also for the afternoon. Poor old Spratley certainly has the wrong colour hair for hot, sunny days! However, Wendy created shade with PFDs and his pillow, and we poured lots of water on him and kept him supplied with fresh water throughout the day, so he did fine. He was never too hot that he couldn't leap up and try to bite the fish whenever one of us was landing one!

Logan Lake was almost empty yesterday- there were never more than three boats on the lake. Very few insects were hatching, and the fish were mostly suspended at about 15', even in much deeper water. I suspected they were feeding on Daphnia - a suspicion confirmed by a throat pump. We tried a small bloodworm dangled under an indicator at 15', a tactic that has worked well in the past when fish were feeding on red Daphnia mid-water, but they were having none of it this day. Slowly retrieving an olive micro-leech under an indicator, or stripping an olive seal leech or a Pumpkinhead on a Deep 7 line were the tickets to hooking fish.

When we got back to Tunkwa yesterday afternoon, we received a report that Big Ken had done pretty well on Tunkwa fishing bloodworms. He had landed several good fish, some in the 4 lb range. I tied up some bloodworms this morning and Wendy and I joined Big Ken, Little Dick, Gordie, Leroy et al down by Goose Island at about 11 a.m. Big Ken was doing pretty well - not like in the old "fish a cast" bomber hatch days, but the fish he hooked were good ones. We saw him land at least one 5+ lb fish, a couple of 4 lbers, and several in the 3 lb range, all on bloodworms or a green red-butt pupa. Little Dick was also doing pretty well, but as far as we could see he wasn't getting the big fish like Big Ken. I hooked a fish that looked to be at least 4 lbs on a bloodworm within a few minutes of arriving. Sadly, it came unbuttoned near the boat, but I assumed we at least had it figured out and more good fish would be had. Unfortunately, we just didn't have the chi today. We managed a few fish, including one decent one, but there was long waits in between hookups. As far as we could see, Big Ken and Little Dick were the only guys hooking fish with any regularity. Moving from time-to-time seemed to help. We did that, too, and typically we got a fish or two every time we moved. Of course, every time we moved fish started jumping where we were... C'est la vie!

There wasn't much of a hatch on Tunkwa today. From time-to-time we'd spot a bomber or two hatching, and small sedges fluttered by occasionally. I pumped a couple of fish. One of them had only mud remnants in its throat; the other fish had a bunch of small green bloodworms and couple of large (sz 8-10) bombers which would have been well matched by an anti-static bag pupa with a wide dark reddish-brown rib. Hopefully, those are the start of the long awaited bomber hatch on Tunkwa!

Cheers! KW