It's taken a little while to get up the courage to make this report for Thursday, what can you say?
Zipity doo daa zippty ya we didn't get a bite the whole long day.
Long time friend Ron from Helena was able to come over and so regardless the windy forecast we headed for Keller early Thursday morning. Fog and strong winds made for a little later launch than planned but we had lines in the water above Keller by 8AM. We started up above the ferry on the south side to try and hide from the wind and it really wasn't too bad. Trolled up into the Hanson Harbor area across to the other side down to Covington, up the San Poil which looked somewhat sheltered when we entered it but soon got nasty. Picked up our lines and went up to the Jones Bay area and trolled back down and never a single bump, never saw a fish jump, nothing , nada.
Spent the night at Grand Coulee and were the 3rd boat on the water Friday morning. Started trolling right out of the launch and planned to work back and forth across at a slight upstream angle. After making the turn and getting back over to the launch side of the river we picked up our first Kokanee. Alright, here we go. Got 3 more in around the next 30 to 40 minutes all probably with in 300 yards of each other and then at 9:30 it was over. Worked it until around 2:30 and then had enough of the wind and cold and headed for home, which seemed to be a good choice because it got wetter and windier on the way home. If I hadn't got to spend some quality time with my old pastor and my grandson I would have just as soon stayed home.
The other positive note of the trip was I had my new iTroll up and running and being able to control the throttle on the trolling motor from the helm was a real plus in all that wind. Think maybe I need a smaller prop or something as the throttle range for my trolling speeds with my 8HP kicker on my 16ft Hewescraft is between 0 and 6% so it still a little touchy but I was glad to have it.

clawman

2/20/2016 9:33:00 PM

I'm wondering if the falling water level is making the fishing tough. Walleye has been slow for me the last three weeks.
iTroll- I've been using one for two years on my walleye boat and can't imagine being without it. Great product!

hewesfisher

2/21/2016 7:35:00 AM

Tough day indeed, but good to hear of some vindication Friday. Way to tough it out. :-)

tholman

2/21/2016 10:14:00 AM

Hi part time, we were the other boat at the hotel in grand coulee. Slow fishing out there. .. we got skunked up at Lincoln on Friday. Did you fish spring canyon 2nd day? Nice work getting 4!

Part-Time

2/21/2016 2:55:00 PM

Hey tholman,
Guess I did'nt't say 3rd boat at Spring Canyon did I? Reinforced a lesson that I need to pay more attention to. If you find fish, stay over them even if the bite drops off. Should have stayed in the area we caught the 4 and either the bite would have come back or we might just pick off a couple with time. After trolling over to the far side and then back up the launch side we saw another boat working that area and saw them boat one fish. The 2 guys in the boat that took out ahead of us had there 4 and I think they mainly worked the north side so it's really hard to figure when it's that slow. Guess we caught all we were meant too.
Keep after them,
Mark

downriggeral

2/21/2016 6:02:00 PM

Hi Mark - Glad the iTroll is working out. My personal saying is "never leave fish to find fish". Unless you can't make them bite of course!
Tight lines - Alan

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