G
Guest
·I spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday till 3:00pm at Mile High Lake outside of Kamloops. The fishing was at times frustrating. There were hundreds of rainbows large and small jumping up to four feet out of the water which I had never seen before. It was unclear as to whether this was a feeding behaviour or something else as they didn't seem to be keying in on anything. Generally speaking, large splashy rises indicate feeding on adult hatched insects rather than nymphs(or am I out to lunch here?) and I couldn't quite crack the mystery so I went fly by fly through nearly my entire box until I reached my red Doc Spratley. I had taken the advice of fellow fisherman to try the old faithfuls like Damsels and Scuds and maybe a Gomphus... nuthin'! I have been reading and re-reading The Gilly and recalled that Alf Davies favoured a Spratley in tough times as one of the better attracter patterns, so I busted mine out. All the locals has told me that green was the magic colour on Face lake and my Spratley was red but I put her on anyway. Nailed a small 'bow and then fifteen minutes later another twelve incher followed by another small guy. I got up at five on Sunday morning to see what I could tempt and ran through some other flies in the hopes that I could snag a larger fish but this proved only frustrating as the leaping rainbows splashed all around in mockery of my efforts. Back on went the red Spratley and the sink tip line and soon after I was into a little yet feisty rainbow. It was nearing breakfast when I turned for shore and had my fly hammered by a rainbow. I set the hook and then everything went dead for a couple of seconds. I was wondering whether there was anything still on the line when suddenly the fish took off and stripped five to ten feet of line. I quickly added a bit more drag as this wasn't one of the little guys I had landed previously. Three more runs like the first and eventually I played the roughly two pound 15" rainbow in. It was a beauty and fought hard enough to make my morning so I released it and hit the shore. I rented a boat in the afternoon and trolled around the far end of the lake looking for some more lunkers but got nothing until I returned to the same spot I caught the other. Sure enough I was soon into a three more all of smaller size but all fought extra hard. It was far from an amazing day and half fishing, as I had visions of multiple two plus pounders, but it beat the pants of the lower mainland fish. In any case, I'll be going back.