Well it was touch and go with the weather. I had checked the weather report and it said less than 1mm rain for Chilliwack in the morning so even though it was raining and very dark in Vancouver I took the gamble and set off early with my son to give Hicks another try.
I love the pit stop at Chilliwack, first to McDonalds for a crappy sausage and egg McMuffin and then over to Timmy Ho's for the coffee and donuts to finish. PS If anyone knows of a cafe/truck stop that does real breakfasts in Chilliwack nice and early , I'd love to know.
Got at the lake bang on 8 and it was raining and cold. I have an inflatable Zodiac style boat but it's amazingly fast to put up and within 15 minutes I'm in the middle of the water and setting up the rods. Problem number one was I look at my reel and it's a bird nest. Don't know how it happened - but that wasted 20 minutes to get untangled and into the water. Problem 2, I'd rushed in to Berry's late Friday to pick up a fly rod and reel (which had the line loaded) for my son and hadn't noticed that the reel was left handed
Never mind I thought lets fish (since I'd already waster 20 mins on my own line) and my son elected to hold the rod with the reel pointing up so that he could reel right handed. No problem I thought.
Things fishing were generally pretty slow. We both each reeled in a small cutthroat early on, but through we were trolling through some decent numbers of fish, nothing seemed to be working. Tried a number of different flies etc but generally things were quiet, cold and wet.
So were were trolling along when BANG my son got a hit and his rod arced. He started reeling, and way out on the back of the boat the fish jumped. Now being honest, my eyesight isn't particularly great so I couldn't say what size it was - but the splash was a decent size and his rod was showing a good bend.
So he reels, and reels , and the fish jumps again, and reels some more ( I'm busy getting my line out the water) and once I'm done I turn to him and at the same time we both realise.... he was reeling the wrong way
So that one got away...... and I felt bad for not fixing the reel and rewinding the line before starting. Better late than never, I decide to flip the reel upside down and respool the line.
Call me silly, but I thought fly reels were like screwdrivers, no such thing as left or right but it turns out no, this one (once I had spent 15 minutes stripping all the line off and then spooling it back on for a right hander) is left handed. The drag only works one way..... my mistake for rushing, and buying too cheap.
Anyhow, in total we both had landed 2 very small fish each and missed a few hits plus a couple got off. We concentrated mainly on the North and North West area of the lake around the shoals but ventured half way down the west side at one point - but headed back due to the wind and the lack of fish showing on the fishfinder.
3 of the fish (and most of the misses) were caught on the heavier Type III sinking line (my line has a Type II line on it) with a simple brown nymph pattern (no idea what fly it is meant to be - still learning) and the other fish was caught on a black/red wooly bugger. A few nibbles on various other patterns but nothing big I suspect.
One other boat out caught one small fish and two guys fishing from shore landed a few small ones using worms.
So I'm hoping by next weekend we're due a nice sunny day. That's two rained-on weekends on Hicks for me in a row, and the 5 times I have fished from my new boat, 5 time's I've got rained on and cold.
I'm due for some sunburn....
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Topic: Hicks Lake - June 5th (Read 4826 times)