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What is happening on Pass?

2K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  Pat AV 
#1 ·
I am dropping the wife off at Sea Tac next weekend so I have decided to make a weekend of the trip and try for some Browns and Bows on Pass on the way back to Canuckland.

Has anyone been out there lately and how has it been doing??

Also I will be on the vise all week tying some bugs in preperation for the trip. Anything in particular I should be tying?

Thanks in advance for any help, I will be happy to repay any local advice with BC stillwater info once our trophy lakes become liquid again.

Regards,

Pat
 
#2 ·
Pat, I would say blood worms chironomids and bait fish patterns, white woolly buggers.

Congrats on the hockey game!!
 
#6 ·
I was at Pass on Sunday. Caught lots of fish on my special chronie and on small flashback brown pheasant tails stripped real slow or drifting with the wind under an indicator. Dissappointed with the size and fight of the fish. Of course the big browns are easier to catch at dawn, dusk or dark but the rainbows and browns I caught were all under 16". I have fished Pass many times over many years and I have consitently had better luck on the larger sized fish than what I experienced on Sunday. I was fishing my chronies very deep to shallow so I know it wasn't a depth issue. Has anyone else noticed a difference in the size frequency distribution of Pass Lake fish as compared to previous years?
 
#9 ·
Has anyone else noticed a difference in the size frequency distribution of Pass Lake fish as compared to previous years?
Absolutely yes and I'd only be surprised if that weren't the case. At any lake they'll continually cycle over time, and to confuse the issue more, throughout the seasons of the year and on any given day different sizes will be more or less frequent. If not for this constant state of change with sizes, feeding times/locations, etc. etc. stillwater fishing would become too predictable and rather uninteresting. But about Pass, those rainbows certainly came by the bucketload in that 13-15 range over the past year but have more recently fattened up in a lot of cases, plus I'm starting to see a fair number of 18ers that look really healthy. And yeah, I haven't seen them running over 20 in probably the last 4 years. Around '06 you'd see them regularly up to 23 but that was it. Still beats the hell out of a put-n-take where planters abound from 3rd week in April till about the 1st week in May, then rarely a strike for the next 25 weeks.

Browns have been similar but you can still see them regularly over 20, not every day buy pretty consistently. I remember a good number of them running 20-23 (some bigger) two seasons ago and some may recall how willingly those boilers would take a small dry in broad daylight in Spring08...didn't happen this last spring and that was one of the biggest disappointments of the year. But on the whole even the browns are anything but pigs...I track those and over the past year (March to March) the average size on a pretty large sample was 15.5" with a range of 10" to 23." Also of interest: Seasons and temps had the impacts you'd expect for the most part (spring, fall, 50's were best); Largest generally showed up in Spring; Biggest numbers in Fall - November was king by a lot and that happens every year; Winter was an unbelievable rarity thanks to all this balmy weather and weeks upon weeks of upper 40's water; Maybe best of all is a very good sized family of 19ers has been showing throughout Fall & Winter so by Fall10 and Spring11 it could get real interesting again. (Nearly all taken on leeches with the remaining handful on minnows; Type V sinker only)

--

As for recent action on Pass, I wouldn't be surprised to know it's in a state of turn and Spring action is just around the corner. It fished unusually well the entire time from last freeze till just a couple of weeks ago; I observed the stable mid/upper 40's temps along with a nice abundance of minnows kept the feed on with great shoreline action much of the time (eves were stellar for weeks on end). Seems food sources are changing over about now and I know the chironomid action has been hot/cold as of late (for those into that sort of thing.....not that there's anything wrong with it :clown:). But in short I don't see March Madness happening by this weekend. Water needs a few more degrees. Still very fishable...it is Pass after all...but clearing, say, 30 by conventional means would be a stretch at the moment. That said, at least 1 or 2 boats oughta find that "flash of brilliance" out there if armed with fishfinding technology and a good ol' bobber.
 
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