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Sunday morning and nothing planned, so what to do? Oh I know, get the girls up and go fishing. After some grumbling, a pot of coffee and a rainy drive we launched the boat in Lake Roesiger at around 9:00. We motored through the forebay leading to the first lake and set the gear out after crossing the 30’ line. After we made a couple elongated loops of the lake with four rods out, 2 on the riggers, 1 lead line and 1 flat lined, I decided that I had had enough of the floating weeds and debris. We were metering good numbers of kokanee and getting bites but the weeds were fouling our lines so bad I couldn’t even get a line in the clip before it was loaded up with weeds. Decision made we pulled the gear and headed for the big lake in the 3 lake chain.

Taking it easy we worked our way through the new lily pad growth and weeds in the center lake to the larger lake. Although the floating weeds were not as bad as in the first lake there were still some weeds but we were not seeing anything on the meter. Gear over the side we fished anyway but did not have any hits. About 45 minutes later we pulled the gear, did a quick tour of the shoreline and headed back to the first lake.

On the way through the center lake we saw a turtle taking advantage nice weather and sunning itself on a log. We also saw a lot of some sort of milky, translucent ribbon like spawn on the wedges of the weed beds. I don’t know what critter was responsible for the spawn but it must have been quite a party. Sightseeing over we arrived at the first lake and got back to fishing.

On arrival we noticed that the light breeze had cleared all the floating weeds and debris. A good sign and got down to business. Back to our original plan we ran four rods, 2 on the riggers, 1 lead line and 1 flat line. It wasn’t too long we had our first fish on but lost it as we were grabbing what could have been a double but loosing both fish we came up empty. The next fish was carried off by an eagle so still nothing for the box. Shortly there after it was fish on again but the eagle had figured the game out and was on us in a second. I was fighting this fish and would put the reel in free spool as soon as the eagle was about to grab the fish, allowing the fish to swim deeper out of harms way. Well sort of anyway, because a few minutes later we slid the net under our first Roesiger kokanee of the year. The eagle verses kokanee game continued for another hour until we had enough fish for dinner and we called it a day. It was so cool watching the eagle trying to grab the fish. It would circle and you could see the eagle watching the fish as it went into this full ground effects stance and swoop down to try and grab the fish. Wingtips down, legs extended and talons ready clawing at the water as it would try and grab our kokanee.

We were running between 1.0 and 1.7 mph in the 56 degree water. It seemed that the key trolling speed was 1.2 mph but that may have been coincidental. I was running a full complement of some recent spinner/fly combinations that I have been working on behind a variety of dodgers or swing blades. There was no real depth pattern; we caught fish on all the gear running surface to about 28’. I was tipping the pointy end of things with a variety of kokanee baits but plain maggots seemed to produce more bites. We had a fun morning on the water with numerous bites, many fish lost to early releases, a few fish lost to the eagles and we went home with a dinner of very nice 12-14” kokanee to boot. We posted a short video clip of the eagle trying to snatch one of our fish to YouTube but I am not sure we did it correctly or it may not be posted yet. It should be on our “channel” @ rseassportsfishing (we just set it up).

urbanangler

4/24/2012 9:13:00 AM

Love the video! Nice work getting that fish in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmXU1R5gAPM

Smalma

4/24/2012 5:31:00 PM

Good job on those kokanee!

Always found nicer but fewer kokanee in the first lake.

Hard to get too mad at the eagle gettings its breakfast -LOL

Idstud

4/24/2012 8:39:00 PM

The video turned out great thanks for sharing. I watched an eagle take a trout at lake cassidy from a guys hands holding it in the air to show a friend and it swooped in. It probably didnt help the guy that in the same area I tossed a perch back hitting its head on the boat stunning it and they swooped down and ate him. I may have done it on purpose a few more times and he would get close to me. :) I wish I would have gotten a video of that day. Thanks again for posting I look forward to reading your reports.

TomD

4/24/2012 8:50:00 PM

Nice video! I almost headed there too, but chose to go south to American instead. Nice day everywhere, it looks like!

Mike Carey

4/25/2012 8:21:00 PM

very cool.

blurock

4/25/2012 10:09:00 PM

Awesome report! Bet that was so cool watching that eagle! I'll have to check out the video. Sounds like my kind of day on the water :)

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