This is my fourth or fifth trip here, and every time the fishing is a little different. Briefly, the fishing in St. Mary Lake wasn't as good as I expected, although it hasn't been all that bad. I fly fished and I caught perch, trout, and bass. There are lots of finger-long perch, but not as many larger one as I caught two years ago. None of the trout were large; I threw them all back, but I did have on larger one on that got away. I only caught two bass larger than 15 inches, and I had to fish pretty hard to catch many bass at all.
It seems St. Mary lake has a pretty much permanent algae bloom, so it's not really ideal for flies, and that may have something to do with it, but I didn't see anyone doing any better; in fact, there aren't many people fishing. St Mary Lake is the only like on the island that has significant algae in it right now, so I did quite a bit of my fishing on Stowel lake, near Fulford where the trout were bigger than I remembered them. And more cooperative. At this point there are both cut throat and red sided trout in that lake. There I fished with a damsel fly nymph and usually caught eight or ten fish in a few hours, and at least three or four of those would be 13 inches long or better. The biggest fish I caught was a 17 inch red sided trout. Very pretty spot. There was never anyone fishing there but me.
A couple of those trout are ready for supper and I'm being called to eat them in five minutes, sooo.... It's kind of sad about all the algae in St Mary Lake, but there is still good fishing on Salt Spring, and it is a very pretty spot.