Today was a bitter sweet kind of day. While there’s surprisingly still lots of open water to be found in the Cariboo, I decided to shift gears and prepare for ice fishing season.
Covering my boat every year seems to get harder and harder. The weather seems to always be changing and can’t seem to decide if we’re going into a deep freeze like last weekend (a balmy minus 12 on the lake) or if we’re going to be wearing t-shirts like we did this weekend. A heated garage would make fishing well into November a doable endeavor, but not knowing if the floor of my boat will be layered in ice going into the winter is a concerning thought as it still has no leaks to this day. So, as I say goodbye until next year, I reflect on the amazing fall fishery we have, and had so close to home.
This fall proved to be filled with adventure. Peeling away from a productive lake, like Dragon Lake, proves difficult in the fall. The fish are always hungry and plentiful. However, this fall seemed more difficult to find the larger fish that are normally feeding in the shallows.
Last year, I was catching fish in the 4lb to 6lb range quite steadily, while this year I seemed to only catch a handful of fish in the heavier weight classes. To me, the fish also seemed to be feeding differently. I had multiple fish inhale my spoons this fall, which had me thinking that they were starving and ensuring an easy meal when they came across my spoons. Out of the four or five fish that were not able to be released, most of them had nothing in their stomachs. Is this normal?
I also witnessed the largest school of goldfish that I have seen this fall. The school was so big, that I wasn’t sure if any rainbow trout would be found, because historically I’ve only ever caught small rainbows while casting spoons into schools of goldfish. This time, I managed to catch a couple decent sized Horsefly strain rainbows which appeared to be feeding heavily amongst the goldfish as they were jumping in an attempt to escape.
Over the last couple years, I typically only fish Dragon Lake in the fall. My thoughts as the 2023 open water season comes to an end are that these fish are starting to see higher competition with goldfish in the lake. The Horsefly strain of rainbows are definitely helping keep the invasive numbers down and I’m hoping as they get hungrier they will target the larger goldfish that are able to reproduce, but time will tell. I haven’t heard too much about the electrofishing program and whether or not it will continue to help keep the numbers of goldfish down.
Another interesting observation I had this fall was the weed structures and the changing lake dynamics. There were a lot of new areas full of weed beds that proved to be fun fishing for some hungry rainbows. Maybe these weed beds will continue to get bigger and provide more hiding areas for insects to reproduce?
I was also able to experience the lake turning over this fall which was fun to learn and witness how the fishing slowed and then picked up again when the water clarity got better.
My favorite part about spoon fishing for these amazing fish is their aggressive nature and I love being able to watch them smash spoons boat side by themselves and in competition with other hungry rainbows in the water. Another first for me this fall was watching a bigger fish swim up to another fish I was fighting with great speed as if it thought the fish was feeding as it was fighting on the end of my line.
I tried circle hooks this year too and was disappointed on their hook up and landing ratios. Maybe spoons were not meant to be used with circle hooks, but I had fun trying another type of hook.
I will definitely be back next year and I look forward to meeting more people out there. I met some great people this fall and look forward to meeting more like minded people in the future.
Here’s some of my videos from this fall. Subscribe to my channel for more videos coming soon.