Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum
Fishing in British Columbia => Fishing Reports => Members' Fishing Reports => Topic started by: Pat AV on September 17, 2006, 12:01:14 PM
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It took a few days to get the photos in order but here we go with the report for my first ever trip up to the East Kootenays.
I have lots of photos from the trip if anyone is interested go to http://gallery.flybc.ca/patav.
I went with my girlfriend Kim and we were gone for 6 days, not enough time but you take what you can get.
The scenery up there was just excellent although on many days the sky was a bit hazy from forest fire smoke. I was hoping to see some elk but no luck there. We did however see lots of other cool wildlife like a muley with the biggest rack I have ever seen sitting on someones lawn in Sparwood, a black bear wadeing across the elk and some female California Bighorn's raiding the alfalfa fields.
On to the fishing, the first few day we fished a beautiful little Elk trib that seemed to be full of nice sized westslopes.
It seemed like any water knee deep or better would hold a couple great fish. We were hitting our fish on size 14 green drakes with a white parachute. kim was fishing with a small blue fox but as you will see later in the trip she became very handy with the fly rod. Small creek fishing is always fun and they are so nice to walk and wade, it is a bonus when they hold lots of 13-20 inch cutties!
We finally managed to pull ourselves away from the little trib and hit the elk for a couple of great days. The Elk was a very pretty river and as long as you were able to stay ahead of the guide boats (or a few hours behind) you can have great days walking and wading it. The fish were very selective and wouldn't hit anything other than size 14 mayfly's wich is what was hatching and what we were using. We hit lots of nice fish both days on the elk with a few around the 20 inch mark.
On our last day we stopped by the St.Mary's for one last kick at it before heading back to the coast. I like the river and will be back to explore it further, I thought the fish fought much better than Elk cutties and the river seemed quiter with fewer guide boats. It is really cool going from the Elk with it's spruce dominated almost coastal forest to the Ponderosa fringed St.Mary's it is neat to see drastic climate changes over short distances.
So all good things have to end and back to the coast we went, oh well I hear there is some rain in the forecast......yea
Cheers,
Pat AV
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Thats what it is all about. I have to do more of that in the summer next year. Awesome report and thanks. Those pics were wonderful to view.
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Awsome pics, thanks for sharing them
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Howdy Pat, nice report and pictures. Did you get any monster sized cutties?
Just curious, whats the cost for a BC resident to fish the ELK? I'll try it one day, but I will have to be done with the student thing then :-\
Mr. Cinco
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Johnny a couple 20 inchers, thats pretty big for a west slope. All you need is a classified water license, 16 bucks or something for the year.
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Pat,
Great report and pics ;D I have got to get over to the Kootenay's next year, need to get my Westslope cutty fix ::) Did you or Kim run into any bulltrout on the Elk or its tributaries?
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Nice avatar pic ;D
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I just got back from the Elk river as well. I was fishing further up, near Elkford. The scenery up there was amazing, probably one of the prettiest rivers I have fished. The river was just loaded with cutties. Once the mayfly hatch turned on, cutties were exploding out of the water non stop. Almost every cast with a little #14 mayfly resulted in a fish. I didn't see many bulltrout around, I only caught a few small ones around 12".
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Mykiss- same deal as the chronic says a few small bullies were all that we caught. We did not get a chance to fish any of the better bully tribs though.
We did see a 15+lbs bully sitting at the bottom of a deep hole but there was a guy fishing the hole so we did not get a chance to try for it.