This is a report for our Lake Chelan kokanee trip May 3-May 6th (fishing the 4 and 5th). For the whole story read the “Lake Chelan Kokanee Get Together May 3-6th” forum posting:

After months of cold rainy weather the hot dry conditions forecasted for the Lake Chelan area were long overdue. I fished solo for 4 or 5 hours on Saturday and then one of the kids and I fished for 4 or 5 hours Sunday morning. In preparing for this trip I read a lot about the specialized gear required to catch Lake Chelan kokanee. Many sources were saying that you needed to run double dodgers or a larger dodger with and very specific lures to catch the Chelan kokes. I had all the gear on board to target kokanee using the specialized Lake Chelan kokanee gear my research suggested using but being a bit stubborn I decided to give my usual kokanee tactics a go first.

I found that a white and white or white and silver wonder bread patterned 000 or 0000 dodger to be the most effective. I also had very good success on a white and orange swing blade. At the pointy end of things I was running a variety of custom tied mini squids or mini squid/smiley blade setups all on 8-10 inch leaders. For my boat anything with orange in it seemed to be the hot ticket. After some experimenting I found that 2 or 3 kernels of corn cured in orange or pink Pautzke’s Kokane Fuel was the hot bait to tip the hooks with. Boat speed seemed to be important and all of our fish hit at 1.2-1.4 mph. I was running a 60-70’ setback from the clips with a tight clip tension. All our fish hit while I was chasing meter marks located between 70 and 90 feet. I am not real familiar with the various local Lake Chelan hot spots but we mainly fished the Mill Bay area with the far side of the lake being the most productive. I did one water temperature survey and the data represents an area 160’deep at the far side of Mill Bay.

Surface/55.9°, 5’/55.9°, 10’/55.9°, 15’/55.9°, 20’/54.7°, 25’/52.3°, 30’/51.3°, 35’/49.7°, 40’/49.2°, 45’/49.0°, 50’/48.7°, 55’/48.1°, 60’/47.5°, 65’/47.1°, 70’/46.8°, 75’/46.2°, 80’/46.2°, 85’/46.0°, 90’/45.8°, 95’/45.6°, 100’/45.0°, 105’/44.7°, 110’/44.7°, 115’/44.4, 120’/44.0°, 125’/43.7°, 130’/43.6°, 135’/43.2°, 140’/43.0°, 145’/43.0°, 150’/42.8°, 155’/42.8° and 160’/42.8

Saturday I caught 6 fish up to 18” and lost a chinook that hit my kokanee gear after I adjusted the gear depth for a healthy meter mark. Sunday Little B (our 3 year) and I also caught 6 fish with the largest being 21 ¼ inches and 3.1 pounds. Our 6 fish success on Sunday does not accurately reflect the fishing. Sunday was a three year old day, he reeled in all but one fish with his largest being 19” and 2.2 pounds. We lost many others due to the little guy learning curve. Lost fish or otherwise we had a blast and he hasn’t stopped talking about his Lake Chelan aquatic adventures.

A couple curiosities to consider; all our fish were males but I heard that most other fish caught over the weekend were females. Also if you review the temperature data above the kokanee we caught were most active at approximately 45.8 degrees to 46.8 degrees. Typically kokanee are most active at or around 52 degree. I don’t know the reasons for either but they are interesting factoids.

The weekend was a major success and we can’t wait to go back to the Eastside for another fun in the sun fishing trip. Every moment of the weekend was enjoyed especially the fellowship. My only complaint is at 53 years old there has to be a better way to pack, unpack, set up camp, tear it back down, repack, unpack back at home and put everything away. It seemed a whole lot easier when I was just 52!

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