Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EricR]

Sitting here watching tv, dreaming about ice off in Kamloops and in the Cariboo. Looking at my fly rod and thinking seriously about tying up some size 14-16 brown with copper rib. The last few years the ice off early chironomid season before the bombers show up, has seen this pattern as the most effective, on quite a few different lakes that we fish. Best bug was dark brown almost black with skinny copper rib and either gold or black bead head. It seems that the fish do not come as shallow as they once did on some lakes in the early season and that the big hatch on some of the lakes has been out in 14 to 18 feet of water past the indicator. It is rather strange as at one time we would nail the fish in more shallow water during the early season before the lakes turned over.
Screaming good fun sometimes when you come to a lake and it is only half iced off and you still manage to nail big fish in the shallows.

Even lakes with lots of weed beds seem to not have the fish come shallow as much as they once did. I remember having an indicator on and nailing big fish on small chironomids with no more than 6 feet past the indicator, especially west of Williams Lake and on some of the very best early season lakes near Quesnel. Now it seems the fish stay deep it is almost as if the lakes turn over as soon as the ice comes off. Anybody else notice a difference in what is happening in to these lakes especially in recent years past the big bug kill? Same thing seems to be delaying the caddis hatch on these lakes as well, on some the caddis hatch has all but dissapeared

I am finding that there has been a fundamental change in the ecology and seasonal timing of insects of some of the best rainbow trout lakes. Perhaps this might be in part due to the changes in the surrounding forest. Just a thought but I have noticed a radical change on the best interior lakes since the 1990s. I don't fish the Kelowna area or out in the Kootneys but have fished the Cariboo for very many years.

[hacklejockey]

This is what Brian Chan had to say on another forum:

There is no question that there has been some significant changes to many lakes in the interior regions of the province during the past 5 to 10 years. While not every lake has seen water chemistry changes, appearance of algal blooms that never occurred before and even partial or complete winterkills that rarely or never occurred in the past. What has changed at the landscape level is the loss/removal of large tracts of Lodgepole and to a lesser extent ponderosa pine stands. Add in some significant snowpacks, extremely wet springs and on some lakes we see the results. Many lakes that are landlocked or only see seasonal inflow have not seen changes nearly as much as those waterbodies that have larger drainage areas and more regular flows and flushing rates. Take Roche Lake for example, like many others on this forum I have spent a lot time on this lake over the past 35 years and it is not the Roche of old. Huge nutrient rich runoff due to minimal forest to act as a buffer and significant flushing and mixing not only in the spring turnover event but mixing of shoal water occurring on high wind events has changed water clarity, change aquatic plant species composition and made blue green algal blooms the norm. Think back to the Roche from early 80'x to mid 90's and they are vastly different lakes.

Other anomalies that are hard to explain are lakes like Pass that is suffering pretty significant winterkills that were much less evident even 5 years ago and back. Another very small watershed and limited inlet drainage but something is happening.

Bottom line is a lot of lakes are seeing changes that in the end have a bearing on fish survival and fishing tactics or locations where we fish in the lake. I think we will continue to see lakes "changing" from what used to be.

[EricR]

Yes, in my estimation many of the lakes are losing their abundance of certain strains of insects. For instance the lakes up Surrey Summit had bomber chironomids in June. Now the numbers seem to have dropped and the caddis hatch seems to not come on at all some years. What is strange is that some lakes seem to have more shrimp and a great many more leaches than in the past. Even more strange is what seems to be an earlier may fly season. Last year I went a week earlier and found that some of the best may fly lakes had already peaked and the fish were sitting down deep not chasing them, which is unusual because in the shallows you could see a great many darting around and they were hatching like crazy and the only fish that were taking them were of the loon food variety.  Except for a few like this one caught in deeper water on a leach all the fish I caught on chironomid last year were small,


In the past chrome rockets in the six to ten lb range were common during early chironomid season. On Forest I had days when it was difficult to get a fish under 4 lbs if you knew where and what they were taking. What was a real blast was actually sight fishing in the shallows and casting deliberately to the biggest chrome fish that you could see moving in close to the weeds and actively cruising. The trick was using a very small strike indicator and knowing how to gently land your line into the sun in relation to where the fish was cruising. Either that or freezing my butt off in a driving wind and sleet while hooking nothing but chrome rockets, then ordering pizza to be delivered to Legion Beach if we were fishing on Dragon. LOL

Forest up near Williams would like Dragon have incredible chironomid hatches early in the season, where you would have a hard time keeping the fish off. Now you are really lucky if you can time your trip to find a decent chironomid hatch. Now the most effective technique is to run a small brushed leach and wind drift dead slow down deep. Not my favorite method, as this is what we used to do to find fish that were feeding. The days of almost choking on clouds of little bugs if you opened your mouth at the wrong time in the shallows are gone. It has almost become like commercial fishing with fly fishermen running gear down deep and watching their fish finders.. YUK