Photo of the fish

As more and more people flock to the Okanagan to vacation or live, there is more activity on

Okanagan Lake by all kinds of sun worshipers. But when it comes to fishing the number of anglers on the lake is drastically down compared to two

decades ago. But the health of the fish are coming back and a trophy fishery sits right on our doorstep, nearly untouched by any kind of pressure. Capital News reporter Kevin Parnell looks into the health of the rainbow trout fishery on Okanagan Lake.

The morning we went out on the big lake it was cool. Radio said minus three. No wind as we launched, saving the chill factor for another day.

The calendar said late November.

We were heading out on Okanagan Lake in search of a monster. No, not Ogopogo. A monster of a different sort. This one seems just as enigmatic. A monster. A lunker. A trophy.

Call it what you want. In the Interior of B.C. the sport fisherman’s dream is to catch a trophy rainbow trout, something with some size. Like those pictured on this page.

No, that’s not me. But those are Okanagan Lake rainbow.

They’re out there, in the lake that is a boater’s paradise, a marketers dream, a sun-seekers salvation.

But is it a fishing destination? I had never thought so. Until this year.

•••

When you look at the gong show that is boating on Okanagan Lake, it’s tough to picture an angler sitting in an aluminum boat, trolling his lure or fly. There’s just not that much room.

But in the shoulder seasons of early spring and late fall, when the cigar boats are locked up for another season, there is some excellent fishing to be had on Okanagan Lake.

Rainbow trout weighing upwards of 10 pounds are not out of the ordinary. Twenty-pounders plus are said to lurk in the clear, cold waters.

“It’s a tough lake to fish but it can be very rewarding,” said Rod Hennig, the owner of Rodney’s Reel Outdoors, a fish guiding service that has been in operation for three years.

“It’s all about getting that chance at the big one. The action might not be as fast and furious as in a mountain lake, but when you do get an Okanagan Lake rainbow they’re a beautiful fish. They’re large and they fight really well.”

Hennig has seen his fair share of big ones come out of the lake. The biggest into his boat touched nearly 18 pounds, a trophy catch. He routinely gets clients into five to 15 pound rainbows out of Okanagan Lake. But sometimes people have a hard time believing it.

“I had some clients fish the lake from Saskatchewan and they took pictures of their fish,” recalled Hennig. “In talking to people in the restaurant and pub that they went to, no one could believe they caught them in Okanagan Lake. It’s that old saying that there are no fish in the lake. As a fishery, Okanagan Lake is nowhere near its potential. How we can get it there is up to the biologists.”

•••

The biologist in charge of Okanagan Lake and this region’s eight other “large” lakes is Paul Askey. The 32-year-old, based at the provincial ministry of environment’s Penticton office, was raised as a sport fisherman in the East Kootenays.

Askey’s job is to figure out how many fish are in a lake, find out why, and figure out how to make the fishery better, making recommendations about things like catch quotas.

Along with Okanagan Lake, he is also in charge of Kalamalka Lake, Wood Lake, Mabel Lake, Christina Lake and

Osoyoos Lake.

“The large lakes are neat because they are wild ecosystems,” said Askey. “We have no stocking of wild lakes. The preferred government policy is not to stock on top of wild populations. If you stock on top of the wild populations, they compete with the wild fish.”

It wasn’t always that way. In fact, once upon a time it seemed like everything under the sun was stocked in Okanagan Lake.

According to environment ministry stocking records, Okanagan Lake was stocked with several species of fish, beginning in 1901—yes over 100 years ago—when 975,000 lake whitefish were dumped into the lake.

Over four million whitefish were again introduced in 1928.

In 1913, 10,000 cutthroat trout were stocked in Okanagan Lake. Even brook trout were tried, just once though, when 5,000 of them were introduced in 1941.

Rainbow trout were stocked in numerous years up until 1960. But since that time, there are no records of any stocking in Okanagan Lake.

The fish are considered native to Okanagan Lake; the fishery’s health dependent on a couple of key factors.

“There are a few strains of rainbows that if we stocked them they would start mixing with the native population,” said Askey.

“Some of these stocks have their own unique genetics and you want to try and maintain that. There is a finite amount of feed in the lake and that is the kokanee population.”

•••

And there’s the biggest factor in the health of the rainbow population: The kokanee.

Once an Okanagan Lake rainbow trout gets past the first few years of feeding on insects, it switches and starts eating kokanee. In the 1980s the booming kokanee population gave rainbows lots of food, allowing them to thrive.

But when kokanee stocks in the lake crashed, it sent a ripple effect onto the rainbow stocks. No kokanee, no trout.

“In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we did really well fishing the lake for rainbows,” said Hennig, then a member of the self-named car-topper club, a bunch of guys who would fish Okanagan Lake in small aluminum boats.

“Then in the late ’90s and early 2000s, we noticed the fish were long and skinny and that was because the kokanee had dropped off.

“In the last three years there has been a lot of change in the thickness of the rainbow. Now just about every one you catch has a kokanee in its stomach.”

It’s not surprising then that since the kokanee have made a pretty good comeback in Okanagan Lake in the past couple of years, the health of the rainbows has increased as well.

And so once again the search for trophy rainbows is on. But it’s a small portion of people actually fishing the lake. And there is drastically fewer people fishing the big lake than a couple of decades ago.

Askey has studied the numbers.

“I would say there are still people out there fishing but it’s definitely a fraction of what it used to be in the 1980s,” he said. “Angler numbers used to be a lot higher.”

According to the ministry’s own numbers, angler days on Okanagan Lake have drastically declined since the mid-1980s. Angler days—defined as four to five hours a day—on Okanagan Lake totaled 80,000 in 1985 and averaged around the same number throughout the decade.

In 2006-07, the same stat showed an average of 11,000 angler days, a near 90 per cent decline. And it was even worse when the kokanee crashed.

“When the kokanee fishery went down we stopped doing boat counts,” said Askey. “Now that we

re-opened the kokanee fishery, each year there has been an increase in angler effort.”

•••

So, with a healthy kokanee population and a trophy rainbow fishery sitting right outside our front door, why aren’t more people taking advantage, especially when the fishing is said to be best from October through December when the lake is relatively quiet?

“There is no exposure, no advertising no one doing a fishing show on the lake,” said Nick Pace, co-owner of Kelowna fishing shop Trout Water Fly and Tackle.

“If you come to the Okanagan to fish you’re likely coming to fish the many mountain lakes and the streams and rivers on the outskirts.

“You don’t fly into the Kelowna to fish the big lake. It’s not marketed that way. But if you were to market the big lake properly, it could become a destination.”

Rod Hennig is certainly hoping that it does. As a fish guide, about three-quarters of his business is people wanting the big lake experience, trolling in comfort and hoping to get a shot at a trophy rainbow.

He has started to partner with some area hotels offering fishing packages in tourism’s shoulder season.

“People come here for wine and skiing and summer fun, let’s add fishing to that,” he said. “If we could somehow get the fishery a little bit better by whatever means I think it could be a huge benefit to the area.”

Hennig suggests several ideas for increasing the performance of the fishery including relaxing some regulations on the lake, maybe selling an extra license to allow anglers to use more than one rod. And to try to find a way to increase rainbow trout numbers.

The introduction of new strains of rainbows, like the fast-growing triploids (a sterile strain) that are being introduced in mountain lakes, doesn’t appear imminent.

“If you put more fish in there you just take the space of the fish that are being reproduced,” said Askey. “The lake has a certain capacity to it. The hard thing with the big lakes is you don’t have as much power to manipulate them. To turn things around it’s more of a long term sustainable thing. All you can do is help the fish along, try to keep the habitat intact and keep the harvest sustainable.”

•••

We fished all day, trolling in the top 40 feet of the water column, using down riggers and plugs that imitated kokanee. It was slow.

But fishermen will tell you to put in your time. That’s how you catch fish.

And wham, there it was, dancing into the air with three jumps just after it hit.

It wasn’t the mythical 20 pounder. But it was a lunker nonetheless.

Five and a half pounds, it’s stomach bulging with a kokanee dinner. Great sport.

“What you have in the Okanagan that you don’t have in other regions is the large lake opportunity,” said Askey.

“That’s what sets it apart. There is a lot of opportunity out there. Ultimately Okanagan Lake has a real good opportunity to produce a satisfied angler.

“You have a chance at a 20 pounder and one of those is worth 20 small fish.”

kparnell "at" kelownacapnews.com

The Regional Board has received a detailed final report from the consulting team that has been studying recreational marine facilities on Okanagan, Kalamalka and Wood lakes within the Central Okanagan.

The study was developed through extensive public and stakeholder consultation and research. The final report makes a number of recommendations regarding present and future amenities for the boating and marine community in the Central Okanagan.

The Board has recommended that the final report be sent to member municipalities for their consideration and response in light of possible financial implications.

Report Links:

Executive Summary (6 pages)
Part A - Understanding the Area and Issues Report (44 pages, 1.1MB)
Part B - Analysis and Synthesis Report (46 pages)
Part C - Environmental Issues/Impacts (102 pages, 6.2 MB)
Part D - Recommendations and Conclusions (10 pages)
Maps (25 pages, 6 MB)
Appendices (8 pages)

http://www.regionaldistrict.com/whatsnew.aspx

I agree with G. Smith that it is time for more input on the loud boat issue. I also own a loud boat and have had numerous lakeshore residences and still own recreational lakeshore property. The only way to quiet most of these boats down is by installing mufflers. They are moderately effective and very costly. Most higher horsepower boats can't run much over 3,000 rpm using under-water exhaust as it is too restrictive.

However it is not only the so-called "cigarette" type boats that contribute to the noises on the lake. Most of the high performance boats are simply passing by and usually fairly quickly so their interruptions are brief. Ski/wakeboard boats and many pleasure boats run thru-hull exhausts or at least silent choice which gives them the choice at the flip of a switch. How do you regulate that once they are away from the dock?

There is also float planes that operate from the Grand Hotel and other areas that are much noisier than most boats. The thing a lot of lakeshore people find most annoying is the Sea-Doos as they are also very noisy and lots of them stay in relatively the same spot for extended periods. Powerful stereos on pleasure craft and house boats are also very annoying and sometimes go all night. This is all part of people having fun and enjoying time on a nice lake that none of us have the exclusive use of. Furthermore, the lakes are federal jurisdiction so any regulations concerning noise would have to cover all lakes and waterways and all vessels including commercial. Maybe while they are doing this they can find a way to regulate the air traffic as helicopters and loud airplanes are getting far too common.

As for districts, cities etc applying bylaws saying loud boats can not use boat launches on city property is just annoying and unlikely to change anything. By the way we pay taxes too.

People looking for year-round peace and quiet should perhaps seek more rural residences or on smaller fishing type lakes instead of one of B.C.'s greatest boating lakes.

Jim Hartford

Next time you’re stuck in a line-up at a local boat launch, or you’ve got your boat in the water and have no place to park your trailer, you might want to think twice before you blame out-of-towners for over-crowded launch facilities.

The Central Okanagan Regional District has commissioned a boating study and while the two biggest complaints boaters have are too few launches and no parking for boat trailers, for the most the part it’s locals that are clogging up the launches.

Consulting firm GDH Solutions conducted surveys at 27 boat launches in the Central Okanagan over the past few months, recording trailer license plates and discovering where those plates were issued.

Of all the trailers counted and recorded, 72 per cent of them were from within the Okanagan. Just 11 per cent of the trailers were from Alberta. Other parts of the province made up 15 per cent of the trailers and the remaining two per cent came from the rest of Canada and the United States.

“We are finding out that people want to get onto the lake with their boat but it’s very difficult,” said Doris Haas, of GDH Solutions.

Boaters have told the consultant that boat launches are very crowded, parking trailers is a huge issue and there aren’t enough fuelling stations available.

“They’re irritated with the lack of moorage space,” said Haas.

The study, to eventually provide recommendations for the future to the regional district, will look at problems and solutions on Wood Lake, the south end of Kalamalka Lake and Okanagan Lake from its start in the north to the south side of Peachland.

According to counts done by GDH Solutions, there are 1,500 boats on a peak summer day on area lakes, but Haas said that amounts to just two per cent of the more than 60,000 boats registered to owners in the Central Okanagan.

“Four in 10 households have a boat,” said Haas.

An inventory of marine recreational facilities on the three lakes identified 77 points of interest with 47 of the sites deemed as significant.

Haas said approximately 1,800 new boat slips are scheduled to be added over the next one to five years, with 1,400 of those dedicated for private use.

Ipsos Reid conducted a telephone survey of regional district residents and found that:

• The majority of motor boats and sail boats are over 15 feet in length.

• Six in 10 respondents said there are not enough marine recreational facilities.

• Boaters are dissatisfied with parking facilities, the availability of public mooring facilities, washroom facilities, public boat launches and fuelling facilities.

• More than three-quarters of respondents agree local governments should invest more in marine facilities.

• Residents’ two top priorities over the next five years are to expand parking facilities at boat launches and offer additional boat launch facilities.

“The recommendations are going to be done probably in early September,” said Haas.

A final meeting of the consulting group and a presentation to the public is scheduled for Sept. 18 in Kelowna, where the recommendations will be presented.

The public will have the opportunity to provide input on the recommendations at that time.

Final recommendations will go to the regional district some time after the Sept. 18 meeting.