KOOTENAY LAKE FISHING TRIP

Last Monday, we hooked up our boat and headed over to Kootenay Lake (about a 3 hour trip) for a few days of fishing.  The drive through Nelson to the ferry terminal at Balfour was enjoyable as we haven’t been in that area for a number of years.  The Kootenay Lake Ferry ride is the longest free ferry in the world and takes 35 minutes to traverse the lake from Balfour to Kootenay Bay.

  Here we are boarding the ferry and then parked on board for trip.

We went out fishing shortly after disembarking the ferry and launched our boat at a public launch close to the ferry terminal.

We fished for about 3 hours that first day and caught one rainbow trout and 2 Kokanee (land locked Sockeye Salmon).  There were a couple of other boats out there in the afternoon and we were told by locals that we had picked a popular spot on the lake to fish.

After fishing, we checked into our cabin at the Crawford Creek Cabins and had plenty of room to unhook the boat and park the truck beside it. 

The cabin was recently renovated and very comfortable for a short stay.

The next day, we drove to Creston to visit my brother and to help him out with some home maintenance work.  Stuart fixed a fluorescent light, installed a new kitchen tap, installed a new toilet float mechanism and put in a water shut off valve to the toilet.  That was an interesting job as the house is very old and he had to go into the basement to cut the water supply line and then solder in the new sections of pipe.  The supply pipe was an odd size so he wasn’t able to use a compression fitting which would have been easier.  Anyway, he got the job done with no leaks.  We stayed in Creston for dinner and drove back to our cabin (about an hour away) and got some scenic photos of the lake even though it was raining.

The next day the weather was nicer and we spent about 6 hours fishing.  We tried the spot we had fished on Monday, but only caught 1 fish there, so went across the lake to try the other side.  We caught 2 more fish there and had about 4 others on the line, but they wiggled and jumped their way to freedom.  It was a great day and a great experience to fish on a different lake.

On Thursday morning, we caught the 9 a.m. ferry and headed home.