Hunting the hunters

After I noticed fry movement in the Tidal Fraser River over a week ago, I have been dropping by my favorites spots during flood tides to see if I could find some feeding activities.

The effort has not really been paid off. Beside a brief hook-up last Saturday, I have not landed a fish since my birthday in February. That doesn’t mean the fishing has been poor, it is just the way it often goes when hunting for predatory species in such a large body of water. In fact, there hasn’t really been a shortage of fish. Swirls and splashes have been sighted regularly, but sometimes high abundance of salmon fry is not such a good thing because it simply means there is too much feed in the water.

Arming with the 6wt fly rod, I stopped by one of my regular spots at 6:00pm yesterday after spending several hours at another spot with absolutely no sightings of fish. To my surprise, the surface was restless. Salmon fry could be seen frantically dodging around on the surface. Some big fish were obviously causing this commotion. It took several casts before one noticed my fry pattern being skipped away just under the surface. A strike, a brief hook-up, a few head shakes and a pop made up five seconds of blood boiling excitement, which lead to a couple of jibblish phone calls with fishing mates. More swirls and splashes were displayed in front of me before dusk, but there were no other takers.

After taking care of some business today, I tied up some new fry patterns, retired the 6wt and dusted off the 4wt rod. Since I am now casting much lighter flies, a lighter rod is adequate enough, not to mention that it would be more enjoyable when casting and playing a fish.

Four o’clock approached and I rushed out the door as if I was going to miss the action. What was the hurry? They don’t seem to be active on the surface anyway until dusk, but being there earlier never hurts I guess.

I arrived to find the water still reasonably clear, considering freshet will start anytime now. The 4wt felt much easier on the arm, even when I decided to try my big bunny strip leech to work the deeper water column. After hearing how excited I was last night, Mark arrived soon after he finished work. Only minutes after his arrival, I felt three soft tugs and a bent rod followed. The fight was short lived, as it was a rather tiny bull trout that engulfed the fly just several feet from shore.

A fish this early? Perhaps it was a good sign. We worked the same section for another hour with no result. Plenty of salmon fry were emerging as the tide turned, but no signs of surface feeding. It was beginning to seem like an uneventful ending, but that shouldn’t be too surprising because we were targeting highly migratory species after all.

Just when Mark was ready to give up, he felt a good tug in the shallow water. The strike brought a rather large fish up to the surface immediately. The splashing broke the evening silence. I quickly ran over with the landing net, but it turned out the urgency was not needed. This fish took three solid runs, peeling line off Mark’s reel while the rod was bent to the cork handle. This is so typical for spring bull trout, which are so solid and strong after feeding on salmon fry.

Several minutes went by and we still hadn’t seen the fish after the initial splash. It finally surfaced in the shallow water and Mark yelled, “It’s a big pikeminnow!”

“No way, too early for pikeminnow, and too big to be a pikeminnow. A bull trout for sure!”

After a closer inspection, I was right. It was a bull trout and a rather large specimen!

 

I scooped it up with the net and took out the measuring tape. Its fork length was 47cm, or just under 19 inches. I collected a small piece of pelvic fin for DNA sampling as requested by the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC. Data such as this will be valuable for future studies of trout and char population in the Fraser River. After marvelling its size and shape for a moment, it calmly swam away from Mark’s hand. It was a first for him, the first bull trout on the fly in the Tidal Fraser River.

We spent some more time flogging the same spot as we were very motivated by the catch. Beside another fish that Mark almost hooked, the evening ended without much more activities. This is truly a very enjoyable time of the year for Vancouver anglers. There aren’t too many other places where you can escape to after work with a rod and have the expectation of catching some quality fish. Take advantage of it now before freshet degrades the Fraser River water clarity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Fishing trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.