Toni and dbfield from WashingtonLakes and I hit Baker Lake the morning after the 4th celebrations. I don’t think either one of them got any sleep but they were on-time for a 3:00 departure and excited to head up the hill. With a quick stop for gas and ice (wishful thinking) we were in the water at Panorama Point right around 4:30. Lights on, we headed to the Silver Creek area along the south shore of the east leg of the lake. My plan was to meter around some of the “stock” holding areas just to get an assessment of the situation. We did not really see any fish until we were up in the Noisy Creek area. There we saw a few schools of 2 or 3 fish on the meter and decided to set out the gear.

We were running 4 rods, two off the downriggers and two with 4 ounces of lead. Attached to the gear were various “0” dodgers followed by smile blades/bare red hooks, bare red hooks or some version of sockeye flies. The leaders were about 8” long and all hooks were tipped with cured shrimp or krill jell. We chased meter marks with the downriggers and the other rods were ran at 18 and 33 pulls.

Right off the bat we got a nice hit but the fish turned out to be a larger kokanee that popped off before we could claim it as caught. All OK though, with the 18” minimum size restriction on sockeye the fish would have to have been released anyway. We had a number of other drive-bys that may have been sockeye but…… We made a quick trip to the Shannon Creek campground/launch for a comfort break and then got back to it. When we got back on the lake we located an occasional solo fish on the meter but couldn’t relocate the schools. We continued the search and finished fishing the area by Chadwick Creek and Road 11. There we had a few additional hits and caught and released a nice dolly. I gave my boat mates a quick tour of the east arm of the lake and then we loaded up for the ride home. On the way home I showed them all the launches and we stopped at the PSE trap in Concrete. There were a few sockeye and a nice Chinook in the trap. There were so few sockeye in the trap that I figure they had just transported fish to the hatchery, lake or both.

Lessons learned; during the early season fishery don’t go out expecting to catch fish and hit it early. The fish seemed to disappear shortly after the sun hit the water. It seems that the holding areas will be similar to last year. The water is very high and off color so the larger smiley blades may be a good idea. Finally all our action was on the 50/50 dodgers. It will be a solid 2 or 3 weeks before this fishery really starts to heat up. If you’re a numbers watcher you may not want to head up to Baker Lake until 2,500-3,000 fish have been transported to the lake.

It was an absolutely beautiful morning on the lake and I thank Toni and dbfield for allowing me to share the fishery with them and enjoy their fellowship.

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