So, we have missed a couple years because of Covid and shoulder surgery, but we were back at it this year.
We were up in the Okanagan area, fished multiple lakes and camped at two of them. And no Chopaka wasn't one of them.
The weather this year was colder, wetter and windier than any of us can remember it being. I actually had a total of 1.70 inches of rain in the weather station over 14 days, and that didn't count two of the heaviest rains (moving and pack up day).
So, one of the lakes water level hasn't been brought up yet, but was rising. The water temps were at about 55 degrees. The fish were healthy at all the lakes. The first lake camping shore side, was VERY slow but when you got fish they were healthy! We got rainbows, browns and tigers. My wife got her first German Brown and it was 19 inches, so she was happy and went in because it was raining.
We drove to other lakes over several days, and found one that was consistently producing bigger and higher number fish. We had to work it and figure out what, where and how to fish it, always part of the adventure, but once we got it (kinda) figured we decided to move camp.
Over the next week we caught many very healthy fish. They seemed to be more aggressive and fight very hard.
We also fished a new, to us, lake (apparently a day late - "Oh, should have been here yesterday.") that provide us with some nice Lahontan Cutthroat. According to a local guy we missed the spawn, schooled up, fishing by about a week. (So noted in the journal, but maybe weather related also). We will be back there next year.
As always we met and visited with some nice people along the way. Maybe even some guys from on the board, but I didn't always introduce myself, so didn't realize it until we got home and saw other guys pictures/reports. Bad on me for not saying "Hey are you on PNW Fly Fishing?" and I need to get a hat or stickers to advertise, haha.
A couple of bonuses to the trip, I was able to share first fly fishing catches with a couple of our friends that came for a long weekend. And then the weather broke just perfect to see the lunar eclipse (cell phone, through 10*50 binoculars), very cool!
Anyway, came home to grass that is a foot tall, and wet, so Hard mowing. And time to get going on more garden work.
Tight lines and cheers to you all!!
We were up in the Okanagan area, fished multiple lakes and camped at two of them. And no Chopaka wasn't one of them.
The weather this year was colder, wetter and windier than any of us can remember it being. I actually had a total of 1.70 inches of rain in the weather station over 14 days, and that didn't count two of the heaviest rains (moving and pack up day).
So, one of the lakes water level hasn't been brought up yet, but was rising. The water temps were at about 55 degrees. The fish were healthy at all the lakes. The first lake camping shore side, was VERY slow but when you got fish they were healthy! We got rainbows, browns and tigers. My wife got her first German Brown and it was 19 inches, so she was happy and went in because it was raining.
We drove to other lakes over several days, and found one that was consistently producing bigger and higher number fish. We had to work it and figure out what, where and how to fish it, always part of the adventure, but once we got it (kinda) figured we decided to move camp.
Over the next week we caught many very healthy fish. They seemed to be more aggressive and fight very hard.
We also fished a new, to us, lake (apparently a day late - "Oh, should have been here yesterday.") that provide us with some nice Lahontan Cutthroat. According to a local guy we missed the spawn, schooled up, fishing by about a week. (So noted in the journal, but maybe weather related also). We will be back there next year.
As always we met and visited with some nice people along the way. Maybe even some guys from on the board, but I didn't always introduce myself, so didn't realize it until we got home and saw other guys pictures/reports. Bad on me for not saying "Hey are you on PNW Fly Fishing?" and I need to get a hat or stickers to advertise, haha.
A couple of bonuses to the trip, I was able to share first fly fishing catches with a couple of our friends that came for a long weekend. And then the weather broke just perfect to see the lunar eclipse (cell phone, through 10*50 binoculars), very cool!
Anyway, came home to grass that is a foot tall, and wet, so Hard mowing. And time to get going on more garden work.
Tight lines and cheers to you all!!
