There are a million really fun things to do in this life from white water raft to climb mountains. BUT few things compare to ripping into a HUGE RAINBOW! I say huge rainbow trout and most people think of a 4 pound fish. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a nice fish, but I’m talking about HUGE RAINBOWS! I’m talking about the above 20 pound category! There are few things more fun than trying to drag a slab like that in. There are few things like a Gerrard Rainbow Trout.
In 2006 my dad and I went up to Kootaney Lake in search of a record rainbow.
He hoped to snag a Bull Trout or two as well. (Bull Trout are commonly referred to as Dolly Vardens although they are technically different fish) Bull Trout are in the char family and have pink spots. For the most part they are aggressive-meat eating fish with light colored meat. They are also pretty good fighters, which makes catching them fun.
Fishing for Kootaney rainbows isn’t like fishing for anything I’ve ever done before. I’m not sure if it’s because they are smart, spooky, or something else entirely, but to catch these big rainbows you need to be way behind and way out from the boat.
Try to follow this: We used down riggers with plainer boards, and rubber bands. Let me explain.
From our boat we had a large rod going straight up in the air.
Then we tied a special buoy-type thing which veers hard right on the right side of the boat, and one which veers left of the left side of the boat.
There buoys or plainer boards would just veer hard away from the boat. The more line we strung up the poles the farther out they would go. BUT before we sent the plainer boards out from the boat we attached our line to them with a rubber band.
Our line could slide through the rubber band, however. Then we would let the plainer boards a couple hundred feet out from the boat with a simple fly dragging from our line.
Of course we did have a couple casualties along the way… Here a smaller fish managed to get tangled in 2 lines.
We would let a few more hundred feet of line out for a total of 500 to 600 feet of line (about 200 feet away from the boat and 300 feet back). Then we found the right depth of the Kokanee fish. A Kokanee is a land-locked Sockeye Salmon. They are very good to eat, but on this trip we were after the fish eating the Kokanee!
We got several fish that day. Our goal was for each person in the boat to get a 20+ pound Gerrard Rainbow trout. Gerrard rainbows are the largest natural strand of rainbow trout in the world, and we were after a monster!
My dad, Steve Valentine was the first to catch a big rainbow. His first was in the 14-16 pound range.
Here I am holding it up. I actually landed it and he netted it and took the picture.
Wayne Lemmon is in the background. He was the next to grab a nice large rainbow trout.
We let every fish we caught go that day. When we could we did measure and weigh them.
It’s a bitter-sweet feeling letting a huge rainbow go free after a ½ hour fight, but they’ve certainly earned the right to live and it’s nice to know someone else will enjoy their offspring.
My dad ripped into another huge rainbow and the fish seemed to be getting bigger and bigger with each catch. The next one measured in somewhere in the low 20 pound range!
We were all so excited for dad because he wanted more than anyone to land a monster rainbow trout, and this Gerrard was a beauty!
It was finally my turn to tear into a huge Gerrard trout and to this day it’s my favorite catch of my life! When that huge Gerrard took my hook my eyes lit up and it was fish on! I was so excited the adrenaline was flowing Red Bull at a night club! 15 minutes later my arms were getting tired and I felt like I really did need a Red Bull. Then 25 minutes passed, then 35 minutes crawled by, finally 45 minutes later we could see this beautiful and huge rainbow next to our boat.
I tried to hoist this beast up and realized my arms were just about dead.
I was able to hold it up long enough for a few decent photo ops.
We couldn’t have this big trout out of the water too long so we had to let her go back into the water.
Wayne Lemmon took one last picture and I held her in the water as she swam away.
I don’t know if my hands have ever been so cold!
That big Gerrard rainbow trout may have been the best fish I caught those couple days but I also got into a really nice bull trout later on in the trip.
We got back to the camp and another fisherman had kept the biggest rainbow trout I’ve ever seen. My dad held it up just to document this monster.
It must have been 30 something pounds.
All in all it was a very memorable trip. Now I’ve landed some monster rainbows, and I can’t wait to go back. As we do things we learn and gain experience. With that experience we learn how to be more effective for the next time. There is a super steep learning curve catching monster fish with downriggers and plainer boards. If I had to do it all over again I would take most of the work out of the set up and I would hire a guide. There is literally no better guide for catching Gerrards than Captain Mike Thompson.
Contact him at:
Box 175, Balfour, BC Canada V0G 1C0. ~OR~
Toll free: 1-877-368-3474
www.split-shot.com