What a fun day!
We started our day with a great plan. We planned to go fishing on Tyee Lake for family day. We were going to be meeting Kevin and hopefully catch some kokanee on a quiet, naturally reproducing kokanee lake.
Thankfully, Kevin did not have to wait for us and was going to be meeting up with others on the lake. Our initial plan was to leave by 8am and be there for the last bite of the morning.
We woke up at the right time this morning, but quickly made the mistake of checking the weather network. It was a balmy minus 21 outside so we decided to “sleep in” some more and attempt to escape the weather.
In typical Fougere fashion, we left later than anticipated and finally started walking the trail at 1145am. It didnt take long before we got onto the ice and started the trek to Kevin and the gang.
After we set up our tent, it was lunch time before we even started fishing. To keep the boys’ bellies full we borrowed Kevin’s hot dog grill and cooked up some hot dogs on our Big Buddy heater. Lunch was great. The aroma of cooked hot dogs and crispy buns in the air set the mood for another Fougere Family Adventure.
We started fishing around 13:00 (1pm) and Austin was able to land the first kokanee of the trip. It was looking like it was going to be a great day. We heard the second bite was around 14:00 (2pm) so we braced ourselves in anticipation of a 40 fish day. As time would tell, we were not going to be rewarded with such a bounty.
I learned a few things today and hopefully I am able to transfer this information into our next ice fishing adventure. Some would say kokanee are an easy fish to catch thru the ice. Others would not. I am part of the others would not group. This might be due to my knowingly stubborn tendencies of not switching it up when ice fishing (because of the cold) and not listening to those around me. I had been told that a mealworm and piece of corn work wonders on Tyee Lake, however, because of my mealworm fetish this year, I left my corn in my fishing box and tried to catch all our kokanee on mealworms.
It was humbling to miss the few kokanee that came into our offerings. I knew I had to change something, but today I chose to take in my surroundings and the beautiful blue skies that unfolded instead (at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). I was enjoying my day with my family on family day. My highlight today was definitely a new opportunity to cook food on our big buddy heater.
I learned that even when large schools of peamouth come into your presentations, you still get excited.
I was able to capture some footage today on our GoFish Cam of what I believe to be peamouth at our presentation.
My thoughts on the slow fishing day are:
1.Could these large schools of peamouth be scaring the kokanee out of the area we were fishing?
2.Could the smell of the peamouth schools be scaring the kokanee away from the area we were fishing?