Right place, right time. This seemed to be the scenario for my last two days of fishing this weekend on Ten Mile Lake just north of the city of Quesnel, British Columbia. My first day of fishing started off in the most perfect way possible.
I arrived at the lake later than I had originally wanted and there was already two vehicles parked in the parking lot and two tents set up at the “kokanee spot.” On the plus side, I was able to watch the sunrise as I walked out on the ice. When I arrived at my location, I was hoping to set up my Otter ice fishing tent in the same location as last weekend. Unfortunately, there was a large tent with three people occupying the spot I really wanted, so I had to decide on another place to pitch my tent.
The crisp morning air had me rushing to get my tent open, heater on and holes drilled. When I took my Big Buddy Heater out of its bag, I realized that I had forgotten the piece of plywood that I always bring to put it on. The plywood helps keep snow from entering the unit and provides a solid base for the heater to rest on. My body was cooling down quickly and I had to compromise and find a base for the heater to rest on. Thankfully, the lid from my storage tub that I store most of my gear in worked perfectly as a solid heater base.
Getting my heater started worked the same way it normally does. I always start my heater with one pound propane tanks, then once my tent heats up, I switch over to my five-pound propane tank which is cheaper to run. I had issues getting the five-pound tank to work for some reason. It was not until I opened up the valve as far as it would go before the propane started flowing smoothly and the heater accepted the new source of fuel.
Time would prove that I chose the wrong location and fished for a couple of hours with only one fish landed and a handful of fish swimming by on my Garmin Striker 4 screen. To my disadvantage, the tents around me had more than one person in them. I suspect that the added flash from their ice flashers helped them land limits of fish before I had my second fish on the ice.
Kokanee fishing always amazes me. There were two tents within fifty feet of me and each tent had limits for all the people in the tents, totaling twenty-five fish. Meanwhile, I had one fish. While my original plan was to move around outside my tent during the day, I forgot my StrikeMaster battle jacket in my truck and had decided to wait for the weather to warm up or a tent to leave.
As my tent started to warm up with my five-pound propane tank running, I heard the bigger tent beside me starting to leave. Like a seagull circling for food left on the ground, I patiently waited for “my spot” to open up. I quickly moved into the spot where the three guys were, dropped my Garmin transducer down the hole and started marking kokanee right away. I was shocked to see how many fish were swimming in the water on my fish finder, just twelve feet below the ice.
As my hands started to get cold in the sub-zero temperatures and the eyelets on my new Diawa Crossfire ice fishing rod started to ice up, I found myself pulling line off my reel to get down to the fish. My Piscifun inline ice fishing reel I purchased from Amazon was also freezing up and I had to constantly clear the ice from my guides of my fishing rod then pull my ten-pound Maxima Ultra green monofilament fishing line off the spool. Thankfully, I only had to get down twelve feet below the ice.
The kokanee hit hard each time they came around. I landed three kokanee in the first fifteen minutes of moving locations. The main bite time seemed to be the same as last weekend which was an unusual time that I do not normally see when kokanee fishing. The bite happened at eleven thirty and lasted about a half hour. My Cabelas Guidewear bib pants kept myself, mealworms (in a container), and fishing corn I had tucked inside the pants warm enough to finish the day and limit out on kokanee.
My second day this weekend proved to be entertaining. I chose a different location away from the crowds to film a kokanee fishing episode for my YouTube channel Fougere Family Adventures. I was also hoping to film another how to video on using a Garmin Striker 4 and its features, but the disturbance in the water was making it difficult to read the screen for filming, so I opted to only film a fishing video.
I ended up catching five kokanee and three rainbow trout the second day. The kokanee took a while to appear, just like the first day. It was like clock work. Once the clock struck eleven thirty, the kokanee appeared in decent numbers and were biting aggressively until about twelve thirty. I missed many bites and lost lots of fishing bait, both corn and mealworms due to how hard some of the fish were biting. I could not figure out how I was not connecting with some of the hits. The timing could not have been better today. As soon as the bite started slowing down, I was out of propane in one of my one pound propane tanks. Somehow, I forgot my five-pound tank at home and the temperature inside the tent was starting to drop to uncomfortable levels.
As the kokanee started to disappear, luck would have it that not one, but two of my fish finder batteries died. I recently purchased a second Eco-worthy lithium deep cycle battery from Amazon and wanted to see how long I could go without a charge. It would appear that the answer was about five trips for two batteries. So, I found myself leaning over my hole looking down for the last fifteen minutes of my fishing trip. And of course, there were kokanee swimming ten feet below the ice and attacking my jig aggressively but missing.
I always love watching how a kokanee reacts to my jigs through an ice fishing hole. Today brought me back to a simpler time. A time before I purchased my first Garmin Striker 4 and a place where I had to look through a hole drilled through the ice to see the world under my feet. A time and place where my family would come fishing and get excited to see a fish swimming beneath their feet. A time and place where one fish caught sight fishing meant more than words can ever describe.