Spring time in the Kootenays.

 Spring time in the Kootenays.

In a nutshell: We drove up to Trout Lake to see the gerrard trout spawning.

Here's a few scenery and wildlife photos, plus a short video.

A couple of weeks ago, we saw this badger, on our way to Cranbrook! Awesome!

Spring flowers in my garden.

Kaslo is our 1st stop on the way to Trout Lake.

Johnson's Landing- mudslide from last summer

The gerard trout spawning at the mouth of Trout Lake

 Early in May the gerrard trout spawn at the mouth of Trout Lake and Mother's day is the perfect excuse to go for a beautiful drive up along Kootenay Lake, and see them. 

It's become a bit of a tradition for us to witness this annual event, and enjoy our lovely scenery,  that we sometimes take for granted.

Trout Lake from the bridge.

 We went on the Monday after Mother's day, so there was no one else around for a long time, makes me nervous about bears. It was sunny and hot which encourages the spring run-off, and the fish are BIG!

The trout seem to just hang in place, but if you watch them closely you can see they are quite busy, and once in a while one would jump out of the water. 

Gerard spawning, just missed a jumper.

 There were many butterflies and birds of all kinds, including some common mergansers and a mature bald eagle. 

Hope you enjoy my photos :)

Mergansers

Spring run-off. This silty creek is flowing into the main river. Note the
difference in the water's colour.

Here's a short video of a jumping trout.

The salmon are swimming up streams and spawning.

Short version: I took some videos of the kokanee salmon spawning and have compiled them into a 7 minute video.

Question of the week:

"Is 7 minutes too long for a video?"

The rest of the story:

When I started this video, I just wanted to stitch together a group of short clips of the kokanee salmon swimming upstream in our nearby creeks. I managed to "catch the tail end" of this annual event (sorry about the pun...I couldn't resist)... but wanted a film to share a piece of "Kootenay time", with my relatives and friends, as most live very far away.

(Note: This photo, with lots of kokanee, was taken in 2006.)

With 12 minutes of video recording time available, I'm happy to have such a handy little digital camera- I take it everywhere! But rarely use the video. I have to practice being steady & stop moving the camera so quickly. I was up until the wee hours cutting out jerky parts. (Perhaps I could use a tripod, but my purse is already over-loaded. ) Besides it's hard to hold still when there's rustling in the bushes, or a mosquito bites... and I'm alone in the trees, surrounded by bear food.

I was going to add music too, since the creek sounds loud & quiet in different spots, but decided to leave it alone, so it's just the birds and water. Natures music...

My video may be quite amateur, but there's some good parts to it.

With practice, my next one should be much better :)

The video was too large to add here, so I've uploaded it to YouTube... here's the link.)

If you'd like to see some of my "fish" related creations, click here.