In Search Of
After finding the initial jolt for fly-fishing, on my last trip home, I can’t wait to get the juices flowing for the art down in Victoria. My buddy Matt was coming down for Halloween weekend and this would be a great opportunity to check out the area. I already had a pretty good idea of the main fishing lakes, such as Elk, Beaver, and Prospect. However, I wanted something less popular.
After going to a hockey game and wandering around downtown the night before, Griswold and I got up around 8:00am, with just a slight bit of brain fog. After some coffee we headed out the door to talk to the guys at Island Outfitters. After some obvious and also good information we got on with it. We really wanted to head towards Port Renfrew and hit the creeks and rivers along the way, but we had a busy afternoon planned, so we headed to Durant’s Lake. Durant’s Lake is easy to get around along with being a very short walk. The main problem here was the lack of area to get a good cast with the fly rod. Durant’s Lake would be good with a belly boat or casting rod. Fish were jumping out in the middle of the lake or out far enough to get at with a casting rod. After some hopeless attempts we headed back to the van. While walking back we ran into two guys fishing with casting rods and power bait. After mentioning fly-fishing, they told us to head to Matheson Lake in Metchosin. They figured we would have better luck finding a good spot to fly-cast there.
We drove through the Uplands and Langford and then into Metchosin, after what seemed like forever, we arrived at Matheson Lake to find more people fishing with power bait, the one problem was they were in the spots good for fly-fishing. Feeling a little deflated we continued to walk along the trail hoping for something good. Matt pressed on further than I and found a great spot. I could here him hollering every time he hit a big one. I gave up on the spot I was fishing, which produce one small cutty, and headed towards Matt. I found him balancing on the tip of an Alder, which fell into the lake. Classic Griswold. I had no luck trying to leech off Matt’s spot, but he ended the day with three rainbows and one cutthroat. We checked out some other fallen tree spots, which would have produced, but Matt almost lost the top of his thumb in Griswold fashion and we needed to get him wrapped up.
One thing I should explain is, I don’t own a pair of waders. So, that’s why I’m always looking for spots to fly-fish from shore. When the money comes in, I’ll be hitting up a pair of waders.
