It's raining right now, so I'll start this report. We got here the first of May, St. Mary Lake, and right away I caught a cut throat trout off the dock at Lakeside Gardens Resort, one of this sites advertisers. I'd been here late last June and caught a lot of smallmouth bass, some of them pretty large by my standards, but I'd never so much as had a trout interested then, so I was surprised when that trout hit a silver spinner I had thrown out. It was a pleasant surprise, because I had expected to have to catch a bunch of perch for supper in that bass are not to be kept until June 15th.
When I set out to catch perch with worms from my compost pile, I caught a 20 inch rainbow. She was kind of skinny. The lake was kind of depressingly brown, and it was windy, so I set off to explore some of the other lakes I'd heard about here on FWR: Cusheon, Weston, and Stowell. Here's what I've learned: Stowell, just a big puddle, really, but it is a very pretty spot, seems to get very light use (as do all of these little lakes--I've seen only one other fisherman in all the time I've been out) has small to medium sized cut throat trout (14" is the biggest I've caught there), but there seem to be quite a few of them, and they will take a small spoon or spinner or flies fished about six feet deep--I've used dragonfly nymph and black leach with some success--I'm just learning this lake fly fishing.
Weston is slightly larger than, maybe twice the size of, Stowell. It is barbless fly fishing only. That fisherman I mentioned above told me it has large rainbows but that they are hard to catch. You have to have a floatation device to fish this lake, there is no dock or beach that I could see, just a narrow entrace to put in a boat. I fished there for a couple of hours with a dragonfly nymph and had one bite, which I missed.
Cusheon is the largest of these three lakes, but it is still pretty small. I went there this morning hoping to catch trout for supper and work on that lake fly fishing technique. I put in at about 10:30 this morning and pretty fast I caught a fat 13" cutty on a big black leach. I fished it a little more with no bites, and since I was having trouble casting it very far because it was so heavy, I put on a dragonfly nymph. I fished it and some other likely looking patterns to no avail, and since it was looking more and more like rain and the breeze was stiffening, I put that nymph back on, set they pontoon boat up to drift along the shore on the way back to the dock. About half-way there a 19 inch cutty took it, and it was pretty exciting for a few minutes. It started to rain as I was loading the boat.
St Mary Lake: the lake has cleared quite a bit during the past 12 days, to the point where yesterday I went out with a flyrod and caught bass on big black flies. Before that, just about any time I've wanted to catch a bass, I've been able to walk down to the shore here at Mark's, throw out a spinner bait with a black curly rubber worm bait or just about anything that flashes and catch bass. Not one right after the other, but often enough to keep me intersted in each cast. And seems like most days I catch at least one pretty good-sized fish. I don't know exactly how big, because I release them all, and I will say, that last June I remember a larger percentage of bigger fish. I've been out in my boat a few times, and there are bass in all the usual places--around the sunken island, in front of Mark's, and in front of the public access beach, over by the beaver house, and along the shore line in between.
We expect to be here until the end of the month, so I can update this report if people are interested. Or if you have questions or suggestions (like what might work) about any of these lakes, perhaps I could check them out.
. . . seems to have stopped raining. I haven't exercised the bass in front of the place yet . . .
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Topic: Salt Spring Island, May (ongoing) (Read 3396 times)