What strain do you think this fish is fraservalley?
That doesn't look like a Fraser Valley to me... The large, well defined spots on the head and the gill plate don't look consistent with the ones I've caught.
I had a little evening/early night session at Long Lk in Nanaimo this past Thurs. Roughly 630-930 pm.
My idea was to capitalize on the breeding termites as they look for mates around dusk and try to get bites on threaded nightcrawlers with a weighted float with a short leader (30-40 cm from float); I thought that any hungry bass or trout rising to feed on water-surface termites would view a crawler as a very welcome payload of protein and nutrients. It was pretty slow leading up to the Dusk bite, but as soon as those termites came out there were boils all over the place ranging from tiny perch sized bass approx 5 feet from shore, to big healthy looking trout and bass launching out of the water from the sheer speed at which they were hitting the termites.
Unfortunately the float setup near the surface wasn't getting hit by any of the bigger fish, so I switched to a bottom fishing tactic I've been messing with where I rig a corkie on the leader of a typical Carolina rig that you would use to target trout with powerbait. With the corkie on the leader, there is no need to rely solely on powerbait and other floating trout baits which may not always be effective.
My choice on that night was to thread a crawler on the rig, just as I previously tried with the float setup, and I quickly got SLAMMED by a roughly 12 inch, 1 lb or so Smallmouth. It put up a pretty great fight on 4 lb Seaguar STS leader and unfortunately popped off 'quick release' style right at the shore. Not exactly a hog by any standards, but I was happy to see some fair sized bass are still in the lake after a whole summer of many people likely targeting the big guys for the frying pan.
After this I wasn't getting much action, but I continued to soak a crawler on the bottom rig with intentions of finding out if there would be any action soon after dark. The reasons I wanted to find out were twofold: (1) I had recently watched a trout documentary where they focused much study on Salmonid eyesight and they were saying that the fishes eyes adjust to the night approx 30 mins after dark and that this can be a likely feeding time following the 'last light bite', and (2) I was also hoping to possibly get a nice big Smallmouth, as the best 3 I've landed were all only around perfect 12 inch 1 lbers like the guy I lost earlier.
Well, right around 9 pm, approx 30 mins after last light my rod went from zero to fully corked instantly and as I was fighting the fish it just kept diving straight down and pinning on the bottom. I thought I had a new 1.5-2 lb pb bass on the line for sure, however:
I was somewhat surprised it wasn't a bass, as this was a very scrappy fish. Caught, photoed, measured and released. The real surprise however, was when I got home and looked at the pics after the initial excitement started to wear off and noticed that it was actually a wild! It made me pretty glad I didn't bonk it.
Planning on going to Long Lk or perhaps Westwood tonight and fishing until 10 or 1030 to see if the first couple hours of darkness and colder temps will bring out any more of these guys or perhaps a nice Bass!