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For those of you who are superstitious about such things, two buddies and I decided to fish Roosevelt in spite of a full moon, East wind, dropping lake levels, and falling barometer. To make matters worse buddy #2 brought along
a banana. These are not the best conditions for moody kokanee, but the "cattle factor" gave me a reason to be optimistic. What is the cattle factor you ask? Well the cattle factor is how I foretell the bite. If you don't have cows in the areas you fish, I recommend you persuade somebody along your route to get some. I find that cows and fish have similar feeding habits. It seems to me that when cows are hungry, fish are also hungry. So, by monitoring a cow's level of hungriness I can usually predict whether or not the fish are also hungry and actively feeding. Of course the more cows you have to monitor the more accurate your results will be. If you don't have any cattle to monitor, you could probably also get the same results by doing a coin toss.

Did I mention buddy #2 got a hook stuck in his thigh?

We started our troll with what we believe to be our best producing lures. For buddy #1 this was a vintage rooster tail that is no longer in production. I chose to go with a couple of plugs. The other 2 rods had a fly and a spinner on. 10 minutes into our troll my first plug rod hooked up on a fish. 30 seconds later said fish broke the line and swam off with my newly acquired plug. What a bummer. The next fish hit on my buddy's prized rooster tail. This fish decided to wait till he was right next to the boat before he broke the line and swam off with my buddy's lure. Turns out our bad luck wasn't over yet. It was at this point when my buddy got impaled with a hook followed by me breaking off plug #2. Wow, we got off to a terrible start. Looking at us you would think we were a bunch of incompetent rookies. I still don't know how we broke off these fish, But I guess it was a good reminder to always check your leaders prior to each trip. Well we ended the freak show by painlessly removing the hook out of buddy 2's thigh. This also ended the bad banana karma. We managed to land our six jumbo kokes without any further mishaps. The beautiful scenery and fish combined with good company made for another fabulous day on the water. I am still finding these fish up really shallow. I anticipate that these fish will start running deeper in another month when the water starts to really warm up.

Today's Tidbit: I suggest that all fisherman should be proficient in the art of hook removal. Our little hook mishap today could have ended our trip prematurely and cost us a trip to minor emergency. I would recommend watching how to videos on YouTube and then practice on something like a piece of steak. This hook came out painlessly. (Unlike the one we removed from DownriggerAl in the Loon Lake Video found on this site ).

I am looking forward to next week as I will be fishing all week with NWFR members. Thanks for your support.

Captain Dave's Guide Service, Booking Now! Columbia River salmon - including Summer &
Fall Chinook and Sockeye, and Lake Roosevelt Kokanee and Trout.
509-939-6727
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ridgeratt

4/22/2016 8:10:00 PM

Is that buddy #2 in the photo's he looks like guy I know from Spokane. Nice batch of fish.

downriggeral

4/22/2016 9:06:00 PM

Great report Dave...painless, ya right!! I think the bad words were edited out of the video at Loon.
It always seems the "priceless" lures are the ones we loose. Guess that's because they catch fish and we keep using them. Never have lost a one I didn't fish. Then there's the case of new plug itis.....been there and done that too. The Elephant loves us; we keep buying tackle!! Bananas are always good, just ask our friend Garyld, no trip is complete without at least one in the boat. We even throw them at each other.....while walleye fishing at Kettle.
Thanks for the laughs (at your expense of course) tight lines and may they not break - Alan

PS The Experiment Must Continue

CaptainDavesGS

4/22/2016 9:21:00 PM

Ridgeratt, I'm not at liberty to say.

Part-Time

4/24/2016 7:22:00 AM

Dave,
Was that fishing cleaning station open? We were after Walleye again at Porcupine and it was still closed. The water level was pretty low there, made recovering by buddies 22ft Hewes pretty marginal.

CaptainDavesGS

4/24/2016 4:24:00 PM

Yes, been very nice to use.

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