A last minute up the hill to fish sockeye for a few hours on Baker Lake? Sure why not? Running on about 45 minutes of sleep Friday night the decision is made, I am up at 1:00 am and on the road by about 1:45 am. Arriving at the Panorama Point launch about an hour later I wait my turn to put the boat in the water. Boat wet, I head up to park and end up having to park in the brush alongside the road. I guess that my luxury of less than an hours sleep was in vain…

It was darker than dark out so I followed the breadcrumb trail on my GPS out of the bay and up towards Silver Creek. Even taking it very slow, I still found that I had to fend off numerous logs and large hunks of wood. I would actually recommend not running in the dark foggy conditions and waiting for some light but… I arrived at the point by
Silver Creek in the dark and with out a major floating debris incident. I was metering numerous fish so I just held station and waited for a few tendrils of light before I ran the gear down.

I started with what seems to be my 2012 standard, one of my sockeye flies tipped with cured shrimp and a smiley blade behind a 50/50 “0” dodger. With nothing for 30 or 40 minutes I start cycling through the gear. I end up running a double hook rig/dodger combo on one side of the boat and one of my sockeye flies/dodger on the other before I have it dialed in. Today’s trolling speed of choice was exactly 1.0 mph and all my fish were off the downriggers running at 21’-28’. For my boat the fish did not want a smiley blade today. While working the silver Creek area I managed to loose a few fish and put a nice 8 pound hen in the box before the crowd really got organized. Not being a fan of crowds I decide to pick up the gear and make a move. Moving up towards the Noisy creek area I find multiple meter marks and I have the area more or less to myself, in my mind a very good combination. Gear down in the new area drew immediate results and after number two was in the boat I remove the bait and catch and release for an hour or so before a double resulted in hooking a fish so deeply that I figured it was not going to make it. So number 3 was in the box and I was done for the day. Not bad considering it was 6:00-6:30 and I had lost a few, caught and released 11 fish and put three in the box.

It was a short but productive morning that ended with a slow trip through the crowd to visit with a few different friends that were also on the hunt. Over all a good way to start out a Saturday.

---