Well, here goes...no story, no frills, no gimmicks. At least this time..."just the facts ma'am, just the facts..."
We hit up Tunkwa Friday evening after the inevitable delay it usually takes to finally get out of the city, many thanks to Berg for helping me get ready for one of my first serious interior fly fishing trips in quite some time...
We arrived at Tunkwa a couple hours before dark and quickly set up the gear and trolled around the shoals for a while just to get a feel for things...Intermittent, unstable weather was unfortunately what we were obviously going to be in for this weekend as we had seen everything from hail, to rain, to heavier rain on our trip up there.
In fact, I think all told, we only saw a handfull of sunshine hours out there, but otherwise the weather was miserable. Not what you want when targeting Beautiful aggressive Kamloops Rainbow trout. Due to the weather we decided just to stick with Tunkwa and omit our excursions to the various other productive lakes in the area...but I will say this for certain, it is more often than not, well worth the trip, and on top of that, using Tunkwa Lake as a base camp is a very convenient and central location to fish multiple lakes over several days...
Here's the skinny:
- Fishing was slow due to the unstable weather...! You want some warmth to get the hatches going...
- Surface water temps were centered around 56 degrees farenheit and colder below.
- Gear guys were doing ok trolling bait, hotshots, etc...but not really anybetter than the Fly guys if you were willing to put the effort in to get on top of the fish...
- We found or best success was enjoyed around a sunken Island with significant weed growth, fishing Chronomids in approx 15 ft of water with double anchors and a carefull selection of the edge to anchor off...you wanted to be fishing just off the weed beds above MUD bottom, as otherwise dealing with weeds would be too frustrating.
- Size 14 dull colored chronomids in Maroon, green and brown produced best...
- We pumped the stomachs of several fish and found small amounts of freshwater shrimp, and smaller green chronomids...
That's all folks...! Oh wait! We saw some nice large fish break water from time to time, and our only regret was that the weather didin't cooperate with us, as we were sure the fishing would have been much, much hotter if the weather had been too...
...and...thanks to nates and my girlfriend for a great weekend despite it's trials and tribulations, and also a very special thanks to the boys at
Tunkwa Lake Resort for their excellent hospitality!!! They took great care of us there, and we are definitely going back!!! Thanks Guys!
Here's some pics...
A view from the Shoreline...
Our lovely weather...
Smaller sized, but still beautiful fish in the poor conditions...
Another fish of only a handfull over the weekend that were mostly around 15 inches...
...All on their way much as this one one was to grow larger for the next trip up...
Tight "loops" everyone...LoL ;D
rib