Heyyyyyyyy Guys: What a trip ! What started out as a 2 week trip over to the Arrows, Slocan Lake and the Kootenays ended up being a 2 week trip to the Upper Arrow Lakes. One Derby I was to fish wound up being a catch and kill derby fishing for wormy fish I had no use for after I would have killed it so I canceled out. Also when I arrived over at Nakusp to fish the Arrows all reports coming out of Solcan Lake were of slow fishing so instead of leaving fish to find fish I just stayed and fished out of Nakusp for two weeks.

This year I lucked out finding a camping spot for my camper overlooking the boat launch rite in the Village of Nakusp where I could tie up my boat at night without having to take it out of the water while still being able to keep my eyes on it. Best of all worlds as I was also in walking distance to all services, food, restaurants and boat gas in town.

Worst part of the whole trip was the constraint rain, some days just like a Monsoon other days a slow steady drizzle. Made taking pictures by myself of myself and fish almost impossible as neither my still camera or camcorder are truly water proof so I just snapped pictures of numerous fish in the bottom of the boat ASAP and got said fish back in the water. To the best of my knowledge I never killed a fish, releasing them all for someone else or to grow up.

Largest Bow I took was a 17.5 pound beautiful Buck taken on a Green Hockey Stick off the downrigger at 66'. Several mid teeners and tons of single digit rainbows. Some people call them Kams and some call them Gerard's but whatever name you hang on them they are one hard fighting good looking fish.
This trip I couldn't seem to hang into a serious Bull Trout, biggest at about 12.5 pounds taken on a Flasher / Hootchie down at 115 feet off the downrigger. One of the problems might have been they are just coming out of the spawn and in most cases haven't regained their full weight. One fish I had on will probably weigh about 15 to 18 pounds next spring.

This trip there were no one super hot lure. Plugs, Hockey Sticks, Spoons, Bucktails and Flasher / Hootchie combos all seemed to work at certain times as well as there was no set pattern for depths or trolling speeds, surface to 125 feet all seemed to produce at one time or another. Just kept changing and slugging it out for another fish. Best part was hard to guess what I was going to take Bow or Bull.

Like most of these types of trips I kept playing around trying to fine tune my skills with various techniques. As Bucktails on certain days were working I spent a little more time then I usually would pulling hair. Lucking out I also got to spend a day on the water with Brad Stubs of KootenayKingfisher Guiding Services who was a wealth of on the water advice in fine tuning this presentation. As well I got to spend quite a bit of time with my old buddy Glen Olson probably the Arrows premier fishing guide and his wife Gail. Wanting to learn more about Flasher / Hootchies it didn't take all that much pleading on my part to get Glen out on the water for some instructions in this unique presentation for both bulls and Bows. "Works" trust me. Also Mike Thompson of Spilt Shot Charters out of Balfour was in constaint touch via cell phone any time I seamed to hit a snag or had one of the million questions that seamed to keep popping into my head.
How two weeks can go by so fast is beyond me even with the weather being the way it was.

Jim