![]() Dark, snake-like forms entered and left our chunk of lakebed in what appeared as a continuous stream, in sizes ranging from forearm’s to full arm’s length, and longer. I had never seen so many fish in one place in my whole life. Down below, swimming over a silty lake bottom less than 10 feet away, was a jaw-dropping aquarium of fish. In the dank, musty dark of that shack, the two-foot by three-foot, chain-sawed hole in the ice literally glowed with the light of a Kootenay, winter sun filtered through snow-covered, green-blue ice. And, a four-butt bench overlooking a huge rectangular hole in the ice. Beers and cigarette butts scattered on a table. Tempting fate with several tonnes of truck on nothing but ice was not enough for a young lad to process (“If we break through, David, open the doors so the truck will hang up on the ice and we won’t sink.”), we were headed towards an entire community, a man-pad, shanty town comprised of dozens of ramshackle, ice fishing huts, complete with its own mayor.īut what I remember most clearly is what followed: the excitement and sense of belonging, of entering the Club, when we were invited into one of those shacks. Now, burbots have been replaced by introduced populations of large-mouth bass and other species. Whiteswan is southeast of Lake Wintermere, where the famed burbot once flourished. Driving! On a lake! What the…? Tumi Quinn soaks up the mid-winter sun on chilly Whiteswan Lake, where the only remaining catch is stocked rainbow trout. ![]() I remember riding with my dad out onto the frozen surface of Lake Windermere, British Columbia. I am eight-years-old, and it is as crisp and clear as the waters that created it, frozen into my brain. ![]() I can’t shake a certain, early 1980s, winter memory from my childhood. Following an era of over-recreation and lakeside development, KMC Senior Writer Dave Quinn reflects on the frozen memories of an amazing East Kootenay lake bottom beast, and a strange future that followed. In the dead of winter, we used to angle for them. ![]()
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