I've normally fished for Rainbow Trout by trolling in Westood Lake, but I've recently seen a few people pulling out good sized Smallmouth Bass. I decided to give it a try. If you're unfamiliar with Westwood, its located on Vancouver Island, just outside Nanaimo. See map below.
I went early in the morning, around 6am (that's when the park gates open). My tackle consisted of black and silver "Blue Fox" spinners, Powerbate grubs rigged Texas style and a Rapala frog popper. I was using a regular spin casting rod with 4lb fluorocarbon fishing line.
The water was dead calm with a bit of mist. A beautiful sight. I saw a couple fish rising to the surface for flies and other insects so I decided to start with my frog popper. I tossed the line in by a sunken log and some lilly pads. The first cast didn't yield any results so I gave it another try, this time with a slower, more "twitchy" retrieve. That seemed to work because after about the second pop and a short pause, BAM! fish on! After a decent fight to my kayak I landed the fish. It was a good sized bass, probably about 2lb. I put him back and tried again. This time with a faster retrieve like I did the first time. Again, no results. The key seemed to be a couple short pops, followed by a second or two pause. Then repeat.
After the sun came up, the water started to ripple a bit from the wind and the fish seemed to be feeding below the surface. Time to pull out the spinners. I didn't have much luck on the silver spinner, so I switched to the black. What a difference! On my third cast to a large sunken tree, in about 6 feet of water I hooked up on a 4lb Smallmouth! What a fight! After about 5 minutes of running and reeling I managed to land him. What a rush! I caught a couple more, not that big, using the black spinner. One downside I quickly noticed is how easily it gets snagged up on all the trees and twigs in Westwood. I wouldn't recommend fishing like this form the shore because most of the time I had to paddle right over to the snag to get it out.
I didn't get a chance to fish the texas grubs (was having to much fun with spinners and poppers). It was a productive morning and I landed about 8 Smallmouth Bass (all released). I'll be going back and giving those texas worms a try.
If you fish Westwood, what tackle and techniques do you use? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!
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Hello,
ReplyDeleteI've fished Westwood Lake about 6 - 7 times now. I live in North Vancouver, but have family that live in Nanaimo, and visit regularily. I was never really sure what to fish with on Westwood, but after talking to some fellow Westwood anglers, I was informed on what to use. Large dark colored wacky worms work well. I've recently had some great success fly fishing Westwood as well. I was using floating line with about 8 feet of full sinking tip line, with a 5 - 8 foot 6 lb florocarbon leader. I had the best results with a size 14 green flashy olive woolly bugger. I also tried a size 14 silver woolly bugger, and managed to catch some with that as well. I recently fly fished there for a couple hours a day two days in a row. I managed to get about five little small mouth bass, and two nice rainbow trout. These were caught on the little olive woolly bugger. I was told that Westwood was just stalked with rainbow trout on Oct 23.
Thanks,
Ryan
. . . also last year I caught a smallmouth on Westwood using a copper colarado spinner
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