2010 Winter & Spring Trout Fishing Looking Promising!!

News from Bella Coola rivers suggests a great trout fishing season, and Coast Mountain Lodge offers a great fishing special!!!

Bella Coola’s healthy coastal rivers and streams promise to produce another strong and sustainable sport trout-fishing recreational opportunity for avid fly fishers on BC’s Central Coast. With mild winter temperatures from December through February, it is expected that some salmon fry will be hatching a little bit early, prompting the sea-run cutthroat trout, Dolly Varden, and resident rainbow trout to be seeking the hatching salmon fry early this year. Look for sheens of silver salmon fry heading to the ocean in early April through May and expect great trout fishing for novice to intermediate skill levels; experts beware, this will be a fishing overload!

Expert anglers know to use a silver-minnow pattern with a sinking leader to mimic the hatch. But does anyone know where the Dolly Varden got its name, and why it is the only BC coastal fish whose name has capital letters? The reason is that in the late 1890’s Charles Dickens' wrote a novel called Barnaby Rudge in which there appears a character named Dolly Varden that often wore a pink polka-dotted dress that apparently resembled the natural colouring of the ‘Dolly Varden Trout’. There forward the Dolly Varden was so named…