Okanagan Lake Fishing Charters

Fishing Okanagan Lake

Okanagan Lake is 135 kilometres long and deep enough that the fish in it grow to sizes most people do not associate with a rainbow trout. Fish over twenty pounds have come out of this lake. That is what we are hunting.

It is also a hard lake to fish blind. There is an enormous amount of water and the trout are not evenly spread through it, they follow the kokanee. Without local knowledge you can troll all day through empty water and never know it. That is the whole value of a guide here.

We fish it year-round out of the West Kelowna Yacht Club on Gellatly Road. The best trophy fishing runs from October through April, when the big rainbows come up out of the depths to chase bait near the surface and a bucktail trolled flat behind the boat is the single most effective thing you can put in front of them.

How we fish it

The same way we fish everywhere: trolling our own hand-tied bucktails, with downriggers when the fish are deep and flat lines when they are up. Everything is supplied and you do not need any experience. If you want to understand what is actually happening behind the boat, the bucktail fishing page explains it properly.

Picking a date? Check the hourly wind first, then the feeding windows, and if you are choosing a month rather than a day start with the best time to come.