NWFR Spring Gathering - A Fish Princess Adventure

We were up bright and early on Saturday morning at about 0430 with plans to fish the sunrise bite then come back in for breakfast. Well, the fish had other plans for us this day!

While our good friend Alan Hanna goes by the handle downriggeral, this day would prove that he chose the wrong name for himself! See, Alan is fond of his lead core rigs and he is making a believer out of me too. We brought along two of Alan's lead core rods and the one I had with me just to see what we could do with them. It took a little bit of observation and adjustment, but pretty quickly we developed a pattern and had multiple hook-ups on the lead core lines and were bringing in the kokanee so fast and furious that we were losing track of how many we had in our bleed bucket and in the cooler. We established that the kokanee were keyed in on the action imparted by Arrow Flash dodgers trailing a white terminal presentation with a bit of pink or orange in the mix. The dodger color didn't seem to matter much as we had roughly equal success on a black one, one with p[ink netted wings and a silver one with moon glow wings. We had good success with a white and pink spinner hoochie, a Frank's Fly Box Kotton Kandy (white/pink), and Al's hand made 'Cyclops' spinner. 3 colors of lead core and about 1.2 mph to 1.5 mph was the ticket. Needless to say, we decided that henceforth our buddy Alan shall be known as '3-color Al'!!

The Fish Princess was a veritable angling machine! She was continuously reeling in kokanee, netting fish for Alan and me, and even taking her turns at the helm navigating so we could set the gear and clear the decks. We missed the breakfast bell by a few hours, but managed limits for all three of us by about 11:30 and we were back in camp by noon (good thing I had plenty of coffee in the thermos and Alan and I had plenty of grub in the cooler to keep us fueled-up through all the action)!

Alan whipped up another tasty brunch meal for us then we tackled the mountain of fish to be filleted. We wrapped-up in plenty of time to get our contributions together for the potluck festivities. Alan made a nice batch of cole slaw, The Fish Princess baked a delicious Dutch oven Pinot Noir lasagna, and I rounded out the deal with a Dutch oven blueberry cobbler.

We enjoyed socializing with so many of our NWFR friends that we hadn't seen in too long. We also thoroughly enjoyed the excellent spread of fish tacos and all of the wonderful potluck dishes brought to the feast.

The sponsor gifts were very generous and included several extravagant prize packages that were raffled off following sponsor presentations. Mike selected the Fish Princess to do the honors of picking the winning raffle tickets. I thought it was both funny and memorable for her when she drew her own tickets out of the hat and won one of the prize packages. Then a few draws later she pulled my ticket too. What an amazing pile of great fishing and outdoors loot we hauled home with us! Thanks again to the sponsors for supporting this great event and for the generous donations!!

It was a day to remember catching plentiful fish with my kiddo and our buddy Alan and visiting with our other NWFR friends!

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