Went to Sheridan Lake with my son staying at my buddy's house on the lake, last Tuesday. It was gorgeous and warm up there. Went out in the afternoon fishing micro leech: BC Brown #12 and got a 5.5 lb Penask Bow. I thought to myself, well this is a good start for the week....looking forward to getting into a mess of feeding rainbows. There were bow's all over the area we were in; jumping swirling and hunting on the shoals for scuds and whatever. Fished another lake north east of 100 Mile House and the four of us got into rainbows up to 3 lbs right away on leeches. Went around to the end of the lake into a sheltered bay and the bow's were leaping at Dragonflies dropping their eggs, so my son put on a Gomphus and had a hayday with them chasing it down like sharks on bait fish. Crazy and aggressive fish up to 4 lbs. The bite lasted 30 minutes and we hooked 6 landed 2. Then the wind came up and things changed...no more action so off home we went.
Fished Sheridan again on Thursday with the weather starting to change. We fished 4 areas for 9 hours. Bows were active in basically two areas of the entire lake. My son and buddy both hooked a bow each and lost them. 5 other boats in the area hit fish but lost them. All this before 10 am. I stayed in the one area with another friend in my boat for 4 hours watching bows jumping around us but closed mouthed. I put on my BC Brown with strike indicator and let it sit for 30 minutes. I went to do a slow retrieve when the minute I touched the rod and gave one light pull "wham" she nailed it. After 10 minute battle of tug a war, I landed a 5 lb Blackwater. Of the 13 plus boats in the area, I landed the only bow that day. It was very tough slugging with our foursome hitting three fish and only landing one.
Friday was our last day so with high hopes we ventured out into the light rain thinking that the change in weather might bring on some Fall feeding frenzy. After 8 hours of chucking every fly in the box from all four of us and travelling around the entire lake searching for feeding fish the four of us ended up with '0' hits and "0" fish. Last year we would have had 40 fish by this time. Not this year.
The only thing we thought of that might be reasonable conclusion as to why they were not feeding......"waterboatmen". We saw some rings on the water but no emerging adults from what looked like hatching insects. Brian Chan told us that when the Bows go into a feeding frenzy on boatmen they get stomach aches and will not feed for sometime after.
Conclusion: after our three days on Sheridan with four of us fishing hard and strategically as can be expected I was the only one to land any fish!!!
Came home on Saturday to the monsoon rains. Hope to get out one more time for some Fall still water fishing. Hit the Vedder this AM and only hooked one fish-nice chum doe.
A colleague of mine who fishes every last week of September for 7-10 with a group of quality fly fishers caught half the number of fish in Sheridan this year due to the extra warm weather and water temperatures. Like the old saying;
"Them is the days of fishing very unlike the days of catching".
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Topic: Sheridan Lake, October 9th 2012 (Read 2148 times)