The day after I turned 30, I thought a fishing trip should be granted. Since Shane had a day off, and Spudcote (Thomas) is in town during his reading break, we decided to head up to Squamish for an afternoon outing.
The day started out with some serious traffic jam. It was bumper to bumper from No. 2 Road in Richmond to Arthur Laing Bridge around 8:30am. I should have known, as I used to participate in this brutal daily commute to UBC.
Thomas phoned at 9:15am wondering where I was, but I was still 10 minutes away from Burrard and Broadway (Yes! It took 45 minutes from Richmond to Broadway...
) where I was picky him up. By the time we reached Shane's house in North Vancouver, it was almost 10am.
A quick stop at Tim Horton's in Squamish, we were on our way to the Squamish River. We took a peek at the Cheakamus River as we drove across the bridge, it was low and clear.
Finally, just after 12:00pm, we were standing on the river bank, ready to make a cast.
We picked a spot where Carlo, Shane and I did well last weekend. The
bull trout fishing this winter has been relatively slow, hit and miss most of the time. Out of the four trips that we have done so far this year, only one trip (last weekend) has been extremely productive (for some anyways
). On Sunday, while I was only able to connect with two and bring one to shore, Carlo and Shane put on a good show right in front of me. Within an afternoon, Shane managed to land five, while Carlo landed four. All fish were caught either on purple leeches or sculpin patterns. Expect to see a new series of photographs in the
photo gallery as well as some new videos from Sunday in March.
That being said, overall the fishing has not been hot, we were just lucky to find a run where a school of fish were feeding. From past experience, the same run does not produce a few days later, the fish generally move on. Winter bull trout are highly mobile, constantly searching for a food source. We wanted to try the same run again to see if the fish were still there due to low and clear water conditions.
The weather was rather eventful. After our walk to the river, we were so warm from the glowing sun. The wading jackets immediately came off before the fishing started. Ten minutes later, snow began to fall! Wading jackets were back on very quickly. The wind followed, which blew the clouds away, resulting in sunny weather soon after.
This basically went on for the entire afternoon, not uncommon in the Upper Squamish River valley, so always a good idea to be prepared.
As expected, or feared, we were not able to produce anything after working through the same run where we had so much success on Sunday. After working from the top of the run again, Shane indicated that he had missed two in the deep section. I asked Thomas, who brought his drift rod along with the fly rod, to run a Jensen egg (unscented, as there is a bait ban on the Squamish River
) through the same channel. Finally it was pulled down right in front of us after the Drennan Piker has been through it a few times, Thomas was a bit slow on the strike, so the hook came up empty. He made another cast to perform the same drift, and the float was once again buried completely at the exactly same location. Again, Thomas was slow on the strike, but this time the fish did not get away.
The fight was on, the typical deep dive indicated that it was a bull trout. A couple of minutes later, a nice fish around 2lb emerged. I snapped a couple of photos as this was Thomas' first fish of 2006.
See attached photo (must log in to view).
Discouraged by the lack of fish in this run, we decided to work on several other runs further upstream. Shane again indicated that he had missed a fish in a small channel.
I made some casts into it while he ate his lunch. I was unable to produce, so Shane came back with his rod after the quick lunch break. "Watch, two casts, that fish is mine.", he said. I watched as he made his first drift. He lifted his rod quickly near the end of the drift, the rod began to dance right above my head.
"First cast!
", he rubbed it in. I took the video camera out, and filmed as he played a bull trout similar to the one Thomas caught to shore.
After that short lived action, we moved onto a few other runs but none produced. The day ended around 5:30pm as snow began to fall heavily again. Nothing for me, but was glad to show Thomas the Squamish River. It is never too productive, but the breathtaking mountains that stand around us are always so relaxing to look at.
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Topic: Squamish River February 23rd (Read 3423 times)