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This report covers Saturday evening, Sunday all day, and Monday morning.
After our Epic Trip of a month ago, I was pretty excited to be able to return to Lake Chelan and go after more of those amazing kokanee. I had hopes of catching what I am considering to be a trophy class kok, 20” (at least on our state’s lakes). Added to the anticipation was looking forward to our WashingtonLakes.com Lake Chelan Get-Together and the chance to meet some fellow WL.com members.
Joann and I arrived at 4pm on Saturday and I was happy to see she was game to try some evening fishing. We launched out of Mill Bay and fished the Bay. Running four rods, in no time at all we were into our first fish – I’d say the first five minutes. It was a nice silver 17” football. Love these Lake Chelan Koks! I will break down each day’s depths, gear, etc at the end of the report. The evening fishing was hampered by tangle issues. In my haste to get gear down I totally forgot rule #101b when it comes to stacking – “Thou shalt not cross the deep rod line over the stacked line. I lost no less than three fish due to this silly error. Basically, the deep rod should be stacked on the inside rod holder, and the stacked rod on the outside. The reason it works (for me), is I am running all my stacked dodgers with the Double D dodger, which has a directional control allowing the dodger to fan away from the boat, there-by reducing tangles. But if the rod is on the inside rod holder then it crosses over the deeper line. I actual saw a fish have the hook come out of it’s mouth as it tightened up against the other line. Lesson learned, as we ended up with just one fish, having lost a depressing four fish. Ouch!
Sunday was our “crunch day” and we hit the water at 5:30am, and within twenty minutes had two fish in the boat. Nice start! And then, silence. A longgg stretch of no fish until 9am, and then pretty much one fish per hour, until everything shut down at 1pm. Final tally was six kokanee and one rainbow (what was he doing down at 60 feet??). Definitely not the slam dunk fishing of a month ago, but what quality. Everything we caught was 15 ½ to 18”, and most were 17”. So it was slower but still pretty good fishing, compared to anywhere else one can fish for kokanee in Washington.
Sunday evening’s highlight was our little get-together. I’d like to thank rseas and his wife for putting on a wonderful feast for the gang. I enjoyed meeting bassplayer, AFK, steelheading360, and a bonus, Bluefin Louie dropped by to say hi. If I’m forgetting anyone please, my apologies to you. I seem to be having that problem (more on that later). Anyway, we dined on surf and turf, with homemade ice cream over baked apples, courtesy of rseas’s kids and my wife spending twenty minutes rolling the ice cream ball back and forth. And I thought catching kokanee took patience!
Monday – today. We get one last chance to add some chunky kokanee to the cooler. Up at 4:15 and lines down by 5:15 and by 5:20 the first 17 ½” kokanee is in the boat. This is living! The sun is still behind the hills, the water is calm. There are just a couple boats working Mill Bay. I wish I could do this every week. Like a familiar refrain, things go quiet, and then it’s a fish here, a fish there. It seems like hunt and peck now, versus a month ago when the doubles and triples came left and right. This trip it was one fish at a time only. The closest to a rush of bites was over by the state park, when we got two fish five minutes apart, and marked several in the area.
Unfortunately the rest the fish were just not biting. So we again got into our one fish an hour routine, and ended the day with six, again ranging 16 to 17 ½ inches.
This is where my second brain fart showed itself. I had mention to rseas that I couldn’t remember if I added oil to my two stoke kicker motor’s gas tank. I “thought” “maybe” I had, but likely that was a lot of wishful thinking. Well, the puffs of smoke coming from my motor and the super-hot cowling convinced me that I need to write myself more notes. I shut the motor down and we called it a day at noon. (Post script – the motor appears to be fine. I added oil at home and ran it for fifteen minutes and it sounded fine).
So last trip we came home with 30 kokanee. This trip we came home with 13. Not great fishing, but not bad. I haven’t gotten my 20 incher yet, but we have one more trip planned in a couple weeks so I have my fingers crossed!
Day by Day Stats:
Sat evening:
4:10 – 65 ft, rose wedding ring (WR), shrimp, 17”
4:35 – 80 ft, lavender hoochie, berkly maggot, tangle, lost
4:45 – 70 ft, rose WR, shrimp, tangled, lost
5:00 – 50 ft, peach hoochie, shrimp, drive by bite
5:30 – 73 ft, rose WR, shrimp, tangle, lost
Sunday All Day:
5:40am – 70 ft, rose WR, shrimp, 17” fish
5:50 – 75 ft, red WR, berkly maggot, 17”
9:00 – 90 ft, rose WR, shrimp, 18”
10:35 – 75 ft, gold WR, shrimp, 15 ½”
11:00 – 60 ft, red/green WR, maggot, 13” rainbow trout
12:00 – 100 ft rose WE, shrimp, 15 ½”
12:55 – 70 ft, red/green WR, shrimp, 15 ½”
Monday Morning:
5:20 – 35 ft, red/green WR, shrimp, 17 ½”
6:55 – 85 ft, rose WR, shrimp, 17 ½”
8:05 – 90 ft, rose WR, shrimp, 17”
9:25 – 80 ft, gold WR, shrimp, 17”
9:30 – 80 ft, gold WR, shrimp, 16”
11:55 – 800 ft, gold WR, shrimp, 16 ½”
All rigs had corn on one hook, and bait on the other.
Adendum - on Sunday I tried a bit for lakers. Way too much work trying to keep the gear ten feet off bottom. The Lake Chelan guides definitely earn their money!
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