Nina and I just returned from Salt Spring Island this evening after fishing St Mary's Lake for four days. Fishersak and his wife are still on the island and will return tomorrow. Our stay at
Lakeside Gardens was fantastic as usual. Mark has changed a few things on the cabanas and the floating dock had some TLC since last summer. The fishing was incredible, we were catching fish until we did not want to catch fish. Since Day Three, Nina has complained about her extremely sore arm after fighting so many fish.
The first day we did very well right in front of the resort, it was basically fish from the minute when we did the first cast. The water was rather warm, so we were fishing in fairly deep water, up to 40 feet deep. After a few hours, we had easily caught about 30 to 40 smallmouth bass and decided to come in for a break. In the evening I went out again and surprisingly caught two cutthroat trout right away on my bass gear. The rest of the evening Nina and I were still pulling bass out from the same spot in front of the resort. It was amazing how many fish were sitting in that one single spot. The evening finished off with a 18 incher, which was the biggest of the day.
On the second day, we again fished the same spot in front of the resort! The fishing result was the same, if not better! After lunch, I went out to the middle of the lake and fished beside the island. The fishing was even better. Not only every cast produced a fish, the average size of the fish was also much bigger. In the afternoon, Fishersak and his wife arrived and we fished the island briefly but failed to produce much. The island can be unpredictable at times but it produces well when the fishing is on. We then took them to the front of the resort once again, and pulled out fish after fish.
On Day Three, Fishersak slept in so he showed up on the water around 11am, two hours after we started fishing.
Nina and I had already been catching bass, but also witnessing cutthroat trout chasing our bass rubber tubes to the boat everytime we brought them in! I managed to land another trout that was around 18 inches that morning. We finished the morning fishing session by pulling out more big fish from the island.
After spending an hour at the Saturday art market, I went back to the island while Nina stayed at the resort. The fishing around the island that afternoon was the best so far. The fish would literally hook themselves before the rubber tubebait even sank to the bottom. In the evening time we moved to this new spot where we had done well in the past. It did not disappoint us. The fish were not as eager to bite, but the fish were huge! Fishersak and his wife both caught their biggest at this particular spot.
On Day Four, today, the fishing was rather slow in the morning. It appeared the fish at the same spots were rather educated, finally.
We finished the last day's fishing on the island, and still managed to bring out quite a few big fish.
In total, we must have caught around 150 smallmouth bass. We basically stopped counting after the first twenty fish on the first day.
Most fish were between 12 and 16 inches in length. About 5% of the fish were up to 18 or 19 inches. Olive or black tubebaits worked extremely well.
Both of us used 2-6lb test spinning rods, with small Shimano reels spooled with 6lb test.
We did not take as many photos during this trip. Nina and I spent most of our non-fishing time filming each other fishing.
Lots of bass video coming up, some pretty exciting footages.
Fishersak took some great photos with his SLR camera, they'll be available when he gets back. Below are some of the photos that Nina and I took during the last few days. Enjoy.
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Topic: St Mary's Lake July 13th - 16th (Read 3142 times)