Whoo-hoo, 2 weekends and three days on the water! After a year of it being very difficult to find time to get out on the water, 3 days in 2 weeks is a gift from the gods. Saturday we went crabbing and after we had the crabs cleaned, cooked and all the gear put away we set the boat up for Baker Lake sockeye and headed up the hill.

We arrived at the Panorama Point launch around 9:00 Saturday night and suddenly realized that there was a hole in our plan. The plan was to launch, head up lake and then sleep on the boat. The problem was that we did not pack any bug repellent and it seems that the Baker Lake mosquitoes are unique in that they can fly 25 MPH. We were swarmed at the launch and I had figured that as we got out on the lake they would dissipate, wrong… And we had planned to sleep on the open deck of the boat… Fortunately after dark the flying blood suckers were full and went back to their homes to sleep their feast off.

Having survived the night at 4:00 am we were, correction I was up and I pulled the anchor in preparation for getting underway. We motored from our anchorage to the area that I had planned to fish and were one of the first few boats on station. My plan was to run 4 rods off two riggers, stacking the rods with 15 feet separation. For my boat on a slower fishery I run the deeper lines inside and aft with the shallower lines outboard and forward. I had originally planned to run both dodgers and large swing blades but within the first hour it was apparent that the “0” dodger was the way to go so I switched things up to run dodgers on all 4 rods. At the pointy end of things we were running a variety of hook arrangements, Smiley Blades and Wiggle Hoochies on 8-10” 30 or 40 pound leaders. The heavier leaders help transmit the dodger action to the hooks. We were using a small hunk of cured shrimp for bait.

We did not identify any patterns or special tricks, I am kind of thinking that I should have mixed up the gear or bait colors a bit but that would have required some up front planning on my part and… The water was very warm and we found pockets where the water was 75+ degrees. We saw very few fish on the meter but when we did meter a fish I would adjust the downrigger depth which usually resulted in a hook-up. There are 15,000 sockeye in the lake but in the area we were fishing the meter was an empty slate. If I had any suggestion it would be to think outside of the box and go look for the fish. Maybe they are holding mid lake or even down by the dam. Meter around until you find schools of fish, mark them and work the school over until the fish box is full.

Rating the day is a difficult one; on the fishing side we had a tough scratch going and ended up with 1 for 7 solid hook-ups. We hooked about 15 kokanee and had a few other drive buys. The fishing was great but our catching was a bit of a challenge. As far as memories go the trip was incredible. Between the moonless clear skies the stars were spectacular. Although we only brought home 1 fish, a very bright 8# hen over all the action was steady all morning. We wrapped the day up with an early afternoon swim and crab feast. A great weekend on the water or should I say “on and in the water”.

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