Pretty soon you can start thinking about Steelhead on the Squamish. While they have been known to be in as early as February, they generally don't show up in this river till mid to end of March and well into April. This makes this a go to river when others are starting to wind down. So instead, practicing on bull trout is always a therapeutic way to pass the time. Hopefully the Squamish Steelhead will do better than the Vedder which is starting to yield some bigger fish, which is typical for February and March but the numbers are not overwhelming just yet.
Fishing for bulls now starts to switch from trout beads and flesh flies to something minnow like. In fact the only restriction to the size of the fly is how much resistance it will put up in the water and thus how slow it will sink. Depth is still a target, and while you can find fish at any depth, tossing the fly in water that is one to five feet in depth and moving at a good walking pace in terms of current speed is always a good choice.
Over my last few outings, I've been focusing on trying new stretches of the river over hitting familiar places and this means more walking and sometimes less finding of fish. However if you just keep going back to the same places, that dulls the experience and appreciation for the whole river. January 2018 was one of the wettest on record, with the 4th highest rainfall and the Squamish is known to be a flashy river due to historical logging taking out the dampening effect of the forests. With forest recovery, the recovery of the water to clarity and depth in shorter periods is improving but still, a hard rain can cloud and raise the river quickly.
Lately though, I've been working on getting some good video in addition to catching fish, so setting up and taking down the camera and getting good angles and sequences will cut into fishing time but it heightens the experience and ups the challenge quotient.
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