Vancouver Lake bigmouths

[Beerbelly]

Good story, I fish lake river for large mouth all the time . Like you said you never know what you might catch, Caught salmon, cutthroat,steelhead,walleye, and all the warm water fish. :cheers:

[bucketmouth]

That was a great story.

I fished only one time out of the felida launch. Would love to get back there and try it some more.

[shalom]

Welcome aboard :dance: :smile:

[riverfisher]

When I was a kid growing up, my dad used to take me and my fishing buddies down to Lake River and let us fish out o his 76' Smokercraft sled. It had a 50 merc pump and a 9.9 merc kicker, and we never could get the keys for the pump :grin: . Anyways, we used to shove off at the old Felida morage and head on into Vancouver Lake. You never know what you would catch in there, crappie, bluegil,catfish, heck, I even caught a flounder looking fish in there! Well, after watching several Jimmy Houston fishing shows, and reading magazines like In-Fisherman, I decided I was going to catch a largemouth. I remember what I was using, the month, and the weather conditions (thanks Jimmy). On the shoreline of the lake, I found where a Beaver or Nutria had collected a mound of old branches that piled several feet out of the water onto the bank. I casted my white skirted Blue Fox spinnerbait with a willow-leaf blade as close as I could to the shoreline. After letting it sink to the bottom, I only reeled 2 or 3 times and WHAM! A 4lb. bigmouth, my first one. That rainy April morning was one me or my fishing buddies will never forget.
I took my 10 year old nephew there 2 summers ago to see if it's the same as days past. Sorry to say it is not. I managed to catch some bass, but they all had leeches/parasites attatched to them. Same with the catfish. I don't know what caused the parasites on the fish a few summers ago, but I will never forget my first Largemouth bass.

[riverfisher]

You know, one time I was achored up right by the Felida boat launch waiting for my dad to pick me and the boat up, and I hooked into a fish that I never saw, or even had a chance to land. I was just plunking away, passing the time. Then my rod went down, my line went straight under the housboats, and the drag on my reel began to scream as I tried to give the fish some kind of fight. I bet it peeled 50 yards of line off my reel before my line snapped! My guess is that it was a large catfish or sturgeon. It was a fun 10 seconds while I had it on!

[rebell]

Vancouver lake and Lake river still have some quality fish in them. I don't recall seeing the parasites that you refer to. It's disapointing to hear that you have seen that.

Don't let it get you down to much, their still fun to catch and release ( is there another option? ).

Welcome to the board, be prepared to meet a bunch of good people. :smile:

[chuckee]

Last summer we fished lake river quite often, late in the summer Vancouver Lake had an algae bloom and it looked like thick pea soup. We caught several bass with some kind of sores on them, If i can find some pictures I will post them, most of the fish with sores were 11/2 lbs on up,

Chuckee