Hurray Hurray, it’s finally May! And the weather has finally warmed up.
This means the water temperatures are rising, and the fish are waking up.
Here’s your latest fishing reports:
Kootenay Lake:
It’s like a switch has turned on. The water temperatures are finally in the high 40’s and the fish are putting on the ‘feed bags’.
The last week of April saw some great fishing, and the first couple weeks of May have been on fire.
With a couple hot days at the end of the month, we saw our favourite ‘flying ant’ hatch. This usually marks the beginning of our great spring fishery. Although I didn’t see many ants on the water, we did notice that the fish were in a frenzy and they were full of ants.
In saying that, if you were lucky enough to be fishing during the hatch, you would have had a lot of action. However, if you missed the hatch and only managed to get out a few days later, thats’ when the fish were full. So, fishing was on fire for a few days, but then it was pretty slow for a few days while the fish stopped to digest all those ants.
Now that the hatch is over, the fish are all looking at the surface. It’s that time of year when everything is feeding on top.
Our last couple trips have been amazing, with Rainbows up to 8 Lbs an d Bull Trout up to 10 Lbs.
Most Rainbows are still between 2 – 4 Lbs, but we’ve been catching at least one or two over 5 Lbs lately.
Our last trip celebrated a 40th birthday on the boat. The guys were treated to some great fishing. All 6 guys managed to hook into 2 or 3 fish each. And on that trip, there were 3 Rainbows well over 5 Lbs.
And the trip before that, we had some new friends from Alberta with us. The kids managed to hook into a bunch of Rainbows between 2-3 Lbs, and then Mom and Aunty got the big ones over 5Lbs.
Our favourite time of year is upon us.
As the water temperatures break the 50 degree mark, we should see the fishing get even better and better.
Stay tuned…..
What are they biting on???
The Rainbows are mainly on the surface now, so we’ve been dragging our favourite bucktail flies, as well as the usual Gibbs crocs.
The lucky numbers for the flies have been #210, 216, 221, 226. You can check them out at luxflies.com
If you’re ordering online, make sure to use our code ‘Reel’ to receive a special discount.
And, as usual the Brass/fire stripe croc has been producing well for us on the surface. Or, for Bull Trout we’ve been trolling the Gibbs STS flasher with a green spatterback hoochie down 55 – 101 ft.
Check out Gibbs Fishing on-line if you need to order any of the above. Use the special offer code ‘reeladventures’ to receive a special discount.
Since the water temperatures are finally near the 50’s, you can begin to speed up your presentation. Our trolling speeds have been between 2.7 – 3.0 mph lately. But look to be speeding up even more as the water temp increases.
Hope this helps with your next adventure.
Tight lines………….
Captain Kerry