I had a fun time fishing at Quesnel Lake this past weekend with a friend at Blue Chute Guiding Co. This lake intrigues me due to the generous size limits and great tasting fish (when eaten fresh and not frozen). It still amazes me that you can troll less than 40ft away from the edges in spots and be in 400ft of water. We did not spend much time on the lake because of the hot weather, but had a fun time. I’ll be back for sure as there are a lot of places to explore on this lake.
We got out late after breakfast and tried our luck trolling for Rainbows. We caught our first lake trout on a plug at 3.5 miles per hour. Unfortunately, when being trolled this quickly, this lake trout seemed to loose its energy too quickly. It started coming in with it’s mouth open and was too tired to release. After exploring a few spots, we returned to base camp for a late lunch and quickly headed back out for an afternoon fish. I enjoyed a visit to Elysia Resort, Quesnel Lake, BC as well later that evening and can see why this is a fishing destination.
The afternoon wind died down enough to try our luck at jigging. I was amazed at how deep most of these fish were hanging out. The average depth over open water seemed to be 180ft down. Thanks to my Diawa Lexa line counter reel I was able to confidently drop to the correct depth. My usual 3X heavy blue holographic Buzz Bomb was not heavy enough to get down to depth quickly, so I sized up to the largest Buzz Bomb I had which did the trick. We ended up landing 2 lake trout with the larger fish weighing 7lbs. We lost 2 other lake trout and missed at least a half a dozen bites. My 15lb test monofilament line definitely made bite detection and hook sets tougher at the depth we were fishing, but I managed to connect with my fish at 187ft. One of the fish came up too quickly and was bloated right up. I took my time with the other fish and it was amazing to watch this fish burp all the way up to the surface. Since I’m fairly new to lake trout fishing, my understanding is that they can burp and equalize pressures if brought up slowly. What I saw was proof that they can adjust, but only if brought in extremely slow (although this fish dove and pulled at least 50ft of line at times). When I got the fish to the surface, I couldn’t believe how well the fish was reacting to being brought up 187ft. The fish showed no signs of trauma, so I decided to release it to live another day. What are your thoughts on this? Should I have kept it, or if lake trout burp enough are they good to release at such depth?