Spring is finally here!
It felt like spring for the first time today. I drove down to Kamloops for the night and saw many geese, ducks and swans bathing in the fields full of water.
I had some time to kill so I decided to bring my ice fishing gear and take a drive out to Monte Lake to see if I could go ice fishing for kokanee.
I drove straight to the end closest to Vernon first. There were people pulled over picking rocks of some sort from the rock cliff on the side of the highway. No one was fishing the far end of the lake.
There were 5 people on the ice fishing in the middle of the lake pullout when I got there. The ice was starting to turn color and was breaking away from the edge of the lake. I pulled over at 2 of the pullouts to see if I felt safe enough to get onto the ice and if I felt like risking getting wet if I broke thru the ice.
I watched the first three guys quietly and patiently from the safety of the shoreline and wished I had it in me to continue onto the ice. Ice fishing has become another favorite way for me to fish, however, inexperience and being over cautious prevented me from going fishing today.
I am always a person who will weigh the risks and benefits of a situation. Today, I only had an hour to fish so I decided to stay warm and dry on shore.
I continued down the highway to the larger pullout that has a boat launch. The parking lot was surprisingly muddy. I would have thought a lake like this would have a nice place to park and hangout in. The boat launch was rough and is in need of repair and leveling. I’m not sure who maintains this boat launch, but a garbage can or two might keep trash away from the shoreline and lake. I was very surprised to see how much trash was laying around everywhere. In fact, I wanted to pick it up but had no gloves or garbage bag handy which I could have filled. I even found a track from a large machine buried in the ground. I wonder how it got there and what the story of it is. There was also some tree stumps in the ground that looked like there might have been a dock here at one point?
The last thing I found on shore was a fish finder. There was a guy fishing close enough to shore to talk to. I asked him if it was his friends fish finder that had just left. He walked over to me and took the fish finder as we had a quick chat about fishing.
Fishing was slow today from what he said. I was happy I had not walked out onto the ice. We chatted and he said sometimes he brings a long plank just to get onto the ice. I’ve heard this before and I will leave this time of the year for the “hard core” fisherman. As we talked, he said the ice was 12 inches thick where he was fishing. I thought to myself, “ok, I can do this and walk out there,” but then, as he was showing me how the ice was and pushing down on it a 6ft by 3 ft chunk broke off and sunk into the lake. That was enough for me to determine that I was heading back into Kamloops to do what most fisherman do between seasons, shopping at fishing stores.
I went to Surplus Herbies first. I was impressed at their selection of fishing gear. They have a great selection of Scotty Gear and downriggers. They also had a great variety of kokanee gear, trout gear and lake trout gear. I found their prices were competitive. I even had a few items in my hands but chose to put them back. Then, I went to Canadian Tire. They had a decent selection of gear as well, but their prices seemed higher than Surplus Herbies. The variety and selection at Canadian Tire allowed me to find something I was really interested in. I bought 2 Gold Gibbs Dogtail dodgers and 2 gold bling blades (my first bling blades ever). I’m excited to try this new gear on open water.
Maybe, if I play my cards right, I can rent a boat and go fishing on Kawkawa Lake this upcoming weekend. I have some new Dogtail dodgers to try and I have my ice fishing gear I can use to jig from the boat.
Spring is finally here! It’s time to get the boat ready and wait for the ice to melt.