I have been having a hard time catching kokanee on Lake Chelan the last couple of years, but that ended on Thursday. Went fishing with a friend who invited his neighbor to come along. This guy had not fished for kokanee this season, but got a report from his coworkers that got us all dialed in. We started fishing opposite of 25 Mile Creek at about 7:30 and had a fish on within five minutes fishing at about 80 feet. We lost the first five fish, but they finally started sticking. We picked up a 15 inch kokanee and a rainbow about the same size. We had a ton of drive bys and fish coming unbuttoned. When things started to slow down we headed down to Mitchell Creek and fished about 150 yards out above the creek at 80 to 120 feet. We never really saw all that many fish on the finder. Things again heated up and we got another 15 inch kokanee and a 17 inch Chinook along with the regular sized kokanee. With all the action we still only boated about 8 fish, but that's kokanee fishing. We had fairly steady action until we left about 1:30pm. We were using Sling Blades and Rocky Mountain flashers that look very similar. The key was putting a small bend in the top portion of the flasher and trolled about 1.5 mph. You want the speed to cause an aggressive side to side motion without turning over. Behind the flashers we ran a small hoochie with a smaller Mack's Smile Blade and #4 double hooks tied close together. Our leaders we about 10 inches. We baited the hooks with Pautske's pink fire corn and also plain shoepeg corn soaked with Graybill's kokanee sauce. The fire corn probably caught more fish. We also ran hootchies without smile blades and they did well too. Making S turns really enticed the fish to bite. It was fun to finally have some great kokanee action.

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