British Columbia Fishing Blog

Normally, pink salmon are usually baked or smoked. In this video blog, we decided to try something a little different.

Last year, we put up a video of me fishing with a pole for small coarse fish in the Tidal Fraser River and there were quite a few questions about this type of fishing. Last month, we decided to have a little fun after catching lots of brook trout, by pulling out a longer pole to fish for them. The pole is between 6 to 8 meters long and can be adjusted into three different lengths if needed. Since we were catching plenty of fish in less than 10 feet of water, I decided to use a small coarse fishing float. I balanced the float with a few small split shots and tied on a small chironomid pattern at the end. I caught some fish, but as you can see in the video, bringing them in became a big challenge.

Last week, we had the opportunity to fish and stay at Ruddocks Ranch. The ranch is located just north of Lytton, at the edge of the Fraser River. On the ranch property, Onion Lake holds rainbow trout up to 10lb. During our trip, we did not encounter fish that big, but we had countless number of fish between 18 and 24 inches long. The chironomid fishing was best between 10:00am and 2:00pm, while occasional damsel hatches brought on feeding frenzies late in the afternoon.

Check out the video blog above as we documented throughout our trip. If you’d like to find out more about Ruddocks Ranch, please check out this video feature.

Earlier this week we spent a day fishing in Whistler for rainbow trout and cutthroat trout. When it comes to catching trout in lakes, fly fishing is probably the most effective method as the angler uses flies to imitate the exact food items that trout feed on. For gear anglers who don’t want to fly fish but still want to try something different than lure fishing, then float fishing with a fly is a fun alternative. In this video blog, I tried some of my usual fly patterns under a tiny float and the result was not too disappointing.

Yesterday we followed several members of the Fraser Valley Salmon Society to tag some northern pikeminnow at Cultus lake. This is part of the preparation of the upcoming Greg Clark Memorial Family Fishing Derby on June 18th.

The goal of the derby is to remove some pikeminnow from Cultus Lake. Derby participants who are lucky enough to catch a tagged fish will win some prize money.

Due to overfishing and other human-related causes, Cultus Lake sockeye salmon population has declined over the years and is currently listed as endangered. Northern pikeminnow, a native predatory species, eats sockeye salmon fry like cutthroat trout and bull trout. The hope is that, by removing a percentage of northern pikeminnow from Cultus Lake, it will improve the juvenile sockeye salmon survival rate.