If your regular fishing hole isn’t producing you must give it a break and move on. I know it’s great to go back to the well, over and over again, because you know the waters and you’re comfortable there. This past Saturday Adam and I decided that although we like our regular spot, it wasn’t producing. So, the move was made.
We decided to go to Beaver Lake in Victoria. I want to make one thing clear, going to Beaver Lake is by no means crashing through bush and conquering nature. Beaver Lake is connected to Elk Lake, which is a stocked lake. But, if you’ve been suffering through a dry spell, sometimes you have to go where you know there’s fish.

We rolled into the parking lot around 7:20am and it was already beginning to fill up with cars from people fishing, jogging and walking their dogs. We spent the first hour of the morning in one spot with no sign of fish, but as the day warmed up the bugs began to hit the water and I knew we would catch a fish soon. We decided to walk around the lake and find a new spot. That’s what I love about fishing, using your own smarts to draw conclusions about were the fish might be. Sometimes you’re dead wrong and sometimes you’re spot on. Well, the second spot we chose was dead wrong. Nothing again. We hiked around the lake for about 45mins looking for a good spot to fish from the shore. As neither of us have a boat in Victoria, shore fishing is our only option. We had no luck finding an area to fly cast from the shore. We ended up back in our first spot and decided we would live and die with this choice.

After a couple of casts, with the casting rod, I hit a nice looking trout and finally the streak was broken. The sun was fully up and there were bugs bouncing all over the water. The bite was on. Just after releasing my fish, a man in a boat hit a nice big rainbow about 300 yards off the shoreline. He brought his boat in and showed us the beauty up close. Now this is why I love the outdoors in British Columbia, a guy I’ve never met but shares an interest, begins talking about fishing and just like that a connection is made. It turns out he lives in Black Creek and has a business producing lures and tackle. He gives me a brand new lure, which is exactly the same make as the one he got the beauty on and motors away.

It made my day watching that guy catch that fish and then talking to him about fishing. I caught two more trout before it was time to leave and unfortunately, Adam’s shutout streak continued. But, it’s really about getting out and doing it. If you produced great, if not, at least you showed up.
I doubt Beaver Lake will be in my near future as I’m not really into the public side of that place. There’s just too many people and rightfully so; it’s a lake ten minutes from downtown. However, I’m glad Adam and I went. The streak was broken and we met a great guy at the same time.

Story and Photography Greg Miller

 

Tags: bc, beaver lake, british columbia, elk lake, Fish, fishing, flyfishing, greg, victoria

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Fish, Locate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.