Fished hard two weekends ago along with a fleet of 100+ boats and only caught 1 for two days of fishing with my two sons. Lost a few and cnr'd some kokanee. The one sockeye my oldest son landed was a great fish and a fight to remember though, broke a kokanee rod into three pieces as he was fighting the fish which went under the boat, into our downrigged lines, back out, and managed to get the line between the kicker and transom. Had to kill the motor and hand line the fish free of the motor with my son handling the rod in pieces. Lesson learned: 8 yr old + kokanee rod + feisty sockeye = broken rod + great story.

Fished at 30-40ft but probably should have been at 40-50ft after talking to others. I have to give a big thanks to our camp site neighbor, Les "Freespool", for giving us pointers and helping me tie his special leaders. Hopefully I'll run into him on the Snohomish soon.

Fished hard Monday and Tuesday this week with my two boys again. We had a rough start on Monday. I accidentally left my box of goodies on the rower's seat and on our way to the Swift creek launch from Horseshoe Cove the cover flew off followed by my leader rolls (spent a very late night tying them and also lost my "Freespool" specials). While on the water getting things set up, I realized....no leaders! Went back to try to find them on the road but only found my cover and an empty ziplock bag. Tied six leaders on the water with tinsel, magic thread, and superglue (didn't take any shortcuts because I knew fishing has been tough). Late start but we got a double after losing one earlier, my older son lost his but my youngest reeled in a beauty. It was slow for the rest of the morning but then we marked a school at around 1pm (most called it a day by this time) and as I was telling the boys to get ready with some optimism, a rod starts to do the dance and my youngest reels in another nice fish. We ended the day late at around 2pm with a pretty choppy ride back in the wind. My oldest lost 2 and caught 1 kokanee and my youngest caught 2 both on the road side of the lake. Only spotted a few small schools all day at around 40ft. We saw only a few other fish caught so we felt very lucky.

On the road back to camp my oldest says, "what's that red thing", OUR LEADER ROLL! Stopped the rig, picked it up and tried to find the other roll with no luck but we were very happy to find the one leader roll with the best goodies.

Started at around 5:30am on Tuesday. It was a very slow morning. Didn't see any fish being caught on the road side so we went to the other side and finally saw a few being caught. Not long after we get a hit but my oldest loses another! But not long after that, I notice a rod buckled over and line is peeling off like it's snagged. I get it out of the holder actually thinking it's snagged on something but feel it change direction, FISH ON! I quickly hand the rod over to my oldest and as he's struggling with the fish still peeling line, I look behind and notice another rod unclipped. I reel in the slack....DOUBLE (again)! I quickly hand the rod over to my youngest and the fights are on! After two long battles, particularly for my youngest, both are in the boat! High fives and huge fish! My youngest catches our largest sockeye ever! After that we call it a day and as I'm cleaning up with two rods still in the water, my youngest says, "dad look!"....another rod unclipped. I reel in the slack, FISH ON! I quickly hand the rod over to my oldest (youngest not happy about that) and he reels in his second fish. 3 for 4, not a bad day considering how slow it was.

On Wednesday, our last day, we slept in and explored the area around our camp site at Horseshoe Cove. We marked a lot of small fish and a few big and saw a lot of fish jumping, but we didn't get a single hit.

All in all, it was a great trip, not crowded compared to the previous week. Tough fishing but we managed to bring home 5 nice sockeye. I didn't even get to tag one myself, my kids caught them all

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