The Back eddy Bully

[billycap]

After the stellar rocky whitefish action i had earlier this week i thought id try for a round 2 on a rainy sunday afternoon. Having swore off ice fishing the day before after taking a dip threw shere lake in my snowshoes i headed back to the exact same spot with the exact same setup as earlier in the week. First cast.. then second... then 10th... nothing...

Decided to switch up to a tiny sparkly green fly.. no self respecting whitefish would turn that down right? Umpteen casts and i finally feel a little nibble... getting desperate for some action i set into somthing thats tiny and swimming awkwardly.. A tiny rocky white emerges foul hooked under the jaw... Quickly released as he was still in good shape im thinking its go time! Another 50+ casts yielded nothing more than a few light nibbles. Thinking this was going to be an easy fish i brought nothing more than a package of assorted flies and 3 secret whitefish weights. I was getting ready to bail when i tied on the biggest fly i had and gave it a shot... Bam a big hit! thinking the rainbows have arrived i cast out again. Instantly i got somthing much bigger than a white and fighting like a trout should.. Here was the culprit.. my first bull trout of the season!

The whites are waiting... the bull trout have arrived... soon the running of the rainbows will commence and im hoping to not be at work when it happen.

Also tossed in my last iced fish.. a smallie brookie.. not worth joining the polar bear club for let me tell ya!


Good luck out there

[BeeGuy]

Awesome

How big is the water you're fishing?

Great lookin bull

[Liarsenic]

Great report and pictures, love the bull beautiful fish

[jacenbeers]

Great story and nice bull. The markings on that one are really nice.

[billycap]

Originally Posted by BeeGuy

Awesome

How big is the water you're fishing?

Great lookin bull

About this big

[fishstix]

Nice! I wish I was out fishing. Did you get a picture of the bull? The pics in the post are all brookies . Decent size but definitely Brook trout.

[pickrel pat]

Originally Posted by fishstix

Nice! I wish I was out fishing. Did you get a picture of the bull? The pics in the post are all brookies . Decent size but definitely Brook trout.

.

[The Fisherman Guy]

Great pictures! The spring colors on Bulls are always a treat. Love the mottled spots and white edged fins of your BC Bulls.

Fishstix, that's definitely not a Brook Trout - except the last picture. The color variation from Alberta Bull Trout to BC Bull Trout can be large. I notice that here in AB, the colored spots are not as dramatic as they are in BC. Here in AB, in my experience, our Bulls are green/gold and more solid of a color. In BC, they tend to have very dramatic red spots with a more silver base color.

Looking forward to chasing some Bulls in BC soon!

[fishdude17]

Nice bull there! Congrats!

[AdamJ]

Originally Posted by fishstix

Nice! I wish I was out fishing. Did you get a picture of the bull? The pics in the post are all brookies . Decent size but definitely Brook trout.

The first three pictures in the first post are all Bull Trout.

[fishstix]

Originally Posted by The Fisherman Guy

Great pictures! The spring colors on Bulls are always a treat. Love the mottled spots and white edged fins of your BC Bulls.

Fishstix, that's definitely not a Brook Trout - except the last picture. The color variation from Alberta Bull Trout to BC Bull Trout can be large. I notice that here in AB, the colored spots are not as dramatic as they are in BC. Here in AB, in my experience, our Bulls are green/gold and more solid of a color. In BC, they tend to have very dramatic red spots with a more silver base color.

Looking forward to chasing some Bulls in BC soon!

Ya huge difference. Ours are more grey ish green than that. I stand corrected.

[waterninja]

great looking fish. i love fishing for rainbows and don't have much experiance with bulls and browns, but i must confess that after looking at the pics. and checking pics in the regs. i thought your pics were of a brook trout also. going to have to some research before fishing any southern streams or rivers.

[Zanzibar]

Billycap, yer a lucky dawg to live in an area with such awesome fish right in your back yard.

[billycap]

Originally Posted by waterninja

great looking fish. i love fishing for rainbows and don't have much experiance with bulls and browns, but i must confess that after looking at the pics. and checking pics in the regs. i thought your pics were of a brook trout also. going to have to some research before fishing any southern streams or rivers.

You guys had me going lol... For a moment there i thought my dreams had come true and some of those Fortress lake (hamber park) hogs had escaped down the wood river into kinbasket lake... Ill be sure n takes some spawn season pics this year... When they school up and hang out in the shallow water come late august they totally look like spawning brookies to me.

No worries though its been a learning curve for fish identification for me too..
Still cant really tell the difference between the young rainbows and the kokannee.

[billycap]

Hit up the N thompson river today. Still some very deep snow out there. Some strange second growth forest in this area mixed with old growth. Bulls where biting but no bows or whites to be had. Not monsters but still worth the effort.

P.s: Ive officially hit rock bottom in my spoon/spinner department. Resorting to busting 2 hooks of trebles and using oilfield shwag hooks that usually scare fish to other fishermen. One of these days ill make the 5 hour round trip to buy cambodian tire/wallmart hooks in hinton.

[iliketrout]

Originally Posted by billycap

One of these days ill make the 5 hour round trip to buy cambodian tire/wallmart hooks in hinton.

Save yourself the gas money and fishing time. Ebay has a lot of good deals and reasonable shipping. For example: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/100-Size-4-Ho...item53f7674351

[Alberta Bigbore]

Awesome fish!!!

[Fisher_man#1]

Originally Posted by billycap

One of these days ill make the 5 hour round trip to buy cambodian tire/wallmart hooks in hinton.

No need, there is a store in McBride "wahoo enterprise" that sells fishing lures and such. Take a right off main street by the train station.

Or there is a Rob the owner of Bustin Trout in Tete Jeun that sells flies and other fishing stuff.


Cheers,

[billycap]

Awesome I will have to check these out.

Thanks

[jstelfox]

Originally Posted by AdamJ

The first three pictures in the first post are all Bull Trout.

You're right Adam.

Fishstix, colour is too variable to be reliable for identifying fish species. The key identifying feature, to differentiate between bull and brook trout, is the dorsal fin.

The fish in the third photo is clearly a bull trout, because it has no black markings on the dorsal fin. The fish in the fourth photo has distinct black markings on the dorsal fin, so it is a brook trout.

Cheers,
Jim

[Steven Noel]

Beautiful Bull Trout, thanks for sharing with us. Hopefully within a few weeks I'll be in your boots, if but a bit closer to home.

[OneGirlWolfPack]

Great pics and story! Love the colors!

[billycap]

Went out in the pouring rain this morning in search of a bite and found nothing but wet and cold. Right before noon it started to clear off a bit and i managed a few whites before bailing home. Had couple hour nap and headed out to see if any more bulls had shown up this week. I stayed a little too late and had a rough time walking threw the bush in the dark on the way out. Got into a couple nice ones finally! Including one that dragged me up river with it for 50 yards making sure i was good and soaked. Its amazing the color variations in 2 fish caught out of the same hole.

Enjoy, I sure did!

[Steven Noel]

What a beauty!

[BeeGuy]

picture perfect specimen

[waterninja]

billy, your 2nd trip was worth a new post. i'm betting a lot of us missed those great pics. congrats.

[billycap]

Its all good ninja this will be a continuing thread for me so im sure they will see em eventually. Yesterday i hiked what looked to be an easy 1km hike to some untried spots in the river. And by easy i mean google earth said it looked easy.. Anyway the bush was soo thick there that it took over an hour each way.. Near the end i was using my rifle as a machete and did a lot of crawling on rabbit trails. At first i saw what looked to be deer scrapes all over... after seeing that there was literally thousands of them it dawned on me that no self respecting deer would live in this dense of underbrush.. Then i spotted one.. and another and another and another. Irish rabbits everywhere! Just starting to turn from white to brown they looked very red. Wishing id brought the .22 instead of a fishing rod.. Then i remembered that wabbits are only to be taken during hunting season in bc. Stumbled into an ancient homestead.. No discernible road in or out... all collapsed in.. house, barn.. even the chicken coop. Was a creepy place and i did not linger but did notice the garbage pile of rusty cans and bottles on the way out. Hmm none of the bottles had twist tops so im guessing thats an old settlers homestead. So when i finally made it to the river i ditched the heavy pack and traded hiking boots for cheap wally world chest waders. I walked a good 10km in those badboys yesterday and i gotta confess.. My feet are sporting quadrant blisters and the ones on the ankle bones are pretty bad. The fishing was stellar and had pretty steady action all day. I went both up river and down river from my backpack and each time id go by id flip a hook into this little eddy and pull out this fish... After the 3rd time catching him in 6 hours i decided to skip that pool on the way out. I named him "One Eye". Got into a few bigger ones through the day but never landed any monsters. Speaking of monsters i noticed quite a few dead ones in the landlocked pools of tributaries that are seasonal.. Seems big bulls are more territorial than i thought. Was thinking of heading back to the honey hole i caught the monster at but having seen what ive seen id prob just be catching the same fish again... Ill heal the feet and head out looking for a new monster soon enough!

[billycap]

Caught my first bull out of basket lake yesterday.. Ice is off.. water is very low. Again a big color difference.. no defined markings and no red tail
Im wondering if im looking at the difference between a dolly and a bull?

[McLeod]

Possibly..Have a picture ?

[BeeGuy]

Originally Posted by billycap

Caught my first bull out of basket lake yesterday.. Ice is off.. water is very low. Again a big color difference.. no defined markings and no red tail
Im wondering if im looking at the difference between a dolly and a bull?

In previous Dolly/Bull threads I have posted lots of really good info as well as links to papers which will show you the known distributions of the 2 species in BC as well as regions of distributional overlap and hybridization.

You are unlikely to find S.malma (Dollies) in the Valemont area as they are not known to occur there.

Genetic testing is the only way to really know what you are dealing with. However the distributions of the 2 fish are quite distinct, so by using that info you can be fairly sure of what you are catching.