Ok, this report isn’t as bad as it looks. We only brought home two fish, one a darker 10 pound plus hen, but we were able to catch them later in the morning using our conventional sockeye gear. A red 2/0 octopus hook, 4 beads, a prism pink smiley blade, a piece of cured shrimp trailing about 10” behind a 10-11’ chrome Swing Blade did the job again.

During the early morning prime fishing hours we (or should I say I, my son was snoring up a storm most the morning) experimented with my sockeye fly idea and we tried fishing a few unconventional areas of the lake. At daybreak and through the early morning hours knowing that it is later in the season I explored the flats looking for schools of sockeye that would be staging for the spawn. Last year they were thick up there by now. My thought was to flat line a swing blade followed by my fly idea through the schools of fish. Last year we tried this with some success and I figured that my new fly would be a killer for this fishery. Only problem was we couldn’t find any schools of fish up on the flats (12-50’ of water). We started out on the flats and moved around quite a lot looking for schools of fish. We also moved out off the flats from time to time and fished the fly set-up both along north shore and south shores, by Chadwick Creek and Noisy Creeks respectively.

Speaking about this year vs. last year there are quite a few differences. First the main body of fish has moved. Last year they settled in the area just west of Noisy Creek. This year the fish seem to have settled in the area between the bend and Silver Creek. I know antidotal but last year a majority of our fish were caught 45-70’ This year the active fish seem shallower, maybe 18-40’. Also something strange to me (and I know this is tempered somewhat because I have been making a point to stay out of the crowds this year) is that I am not seeing the schools of fish on the meter that we saw last year. This year there are 3 times as many of harvestable fish in the lake but we have seen very few schools of fish on the meter, very strange… Anyway, this is a great fishery and it is fun to have the opportunity to experiment with some different methods of catching them.

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