Well known Kamloops flyfisherman Ron Boudreau caught this Sheridan Lake beauty on September 24th, 2006. With a measured length of 32” and girth of 19.5” it was calculated to weigh just over 15 pounds.

Ron reports the fish took him way into the backing a couple of times and he eventually had to chase it with his boat before  getting help from a couple of friends to land the monster.

Ron spent the entire week, with five other fishing buddies, including Brian Chan.

The weather was awesome by sun seekers standards but it probably was not the best for fishing. New moon, day time highs reaching 20+ C and nightly lows to about 5 C. with most days being bright and sunny.  The surface water temperature varied between 12 and 14 C. which is within the parameters for good fall fishing.

While the fishing was only fair in terms of Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE), 0.44 fish/hour, the fish that were caught more than made up for the lack of them. Lack of them biting that is! For those of you who fish Sheridan regularly you will know that during the spring and fall there is a whole lot of jumping going on as fish try to rid themselves of freshwater copepods.

The fish that we did catch were almost all feeding on Hyalella, the smaller cousin of the more common Gammarus freshwater shrimp. According to Brian when fish are feeding on these little guys they tend to be very selective on what other food items they will eat. We did catch a few fish on small shrimp patterns but we caught 90% of our fish on small dark colored leech imitations fished near the bottom. To further substantiate Brian’s theory about the fish not actively feeding was the fact that most of the fish were caught “soaking” the fly.

All in all it was a good week but the fishing should only get better as fall progresses and the water temperature drops and the photoperiod declines. Get out there while the fishing is good!