OK first report of 2017, and it’s late… I have a good excuse though, my new computer and I are struggling in getting to know each other. That said I should probably also mention that aside from the project boat we are still boat-less. As you may or may not know we ordered a new boat and it is scheduled to deliver this week. As I type, it is in final rigging but you can’t rush good workmanship so our fingers continue to be crossed!

Being sympathetic to my current lack of a fishing boat my fishing buddy Tony offered to dust his boat off and fish the Lake Stevens Kokanee Derby with me. We agreed to meet at the WDFW launch in town 2:00 Saturday morning. We were both on time, launched the boat but decided to wait until 4:30-5:00 before we motored out in search of our quarry. At the last minute Tony realized that some needy soul had took position of his kicker motor and asked if I would bring my electric. I had it wired to plug into a trolling motor socket so I had to rewire it for Tony’s boat. I guessed wrong on the terminals so we had a bit of alternate wiring to do before we were fishing.

Boat ready we got to the business of winning the derby, or so we thought anyway. We started in 70’ of water just south of the cove with a plan the work north and south in 70-90’ of water. Utilizing out 2 pole endorsements Tony was running his custom two blade spinner rigs in chartreuse or pink off the starboard and aft downriggers. I was running my custom kokanee flies off the port downrigger and a lead line rig. Tony was using a Mack’s Double-D ahead of his spinners and I was using my trusty Poulsen ArrowFlash dodgers. Both of us were running our lures 12-14” ahead of the dodgers.

The color of the day seemed to be chartreuse behind moonglow dodgers. We tried to maintain 1.0-1.4 MPH but with my electric we were a little under gunned. Normally I chase meter marks when fishing kokanee but the fish all went into hiding on derby day. We saw very few kokanee on the meter and then at that the ones we saw did not want to come out and play. Most of our fish were on the lead line at 2½-3 colors or 38-48’ on the riggers. We tipped the pointy end of things with Tony’s proprietary corn recipe. Never hot fishing but we enjoyed consistent action all morning. We had a number of drive-bys, lost quite a few fish and put 10 in the box. Our highlight was a triple somewhere out in the middle of the lake. We ended up scooping up only one of the fish but it got the blood flowing!

We did not pick up any of the cash or merchandise prizes this year but we just missed the biggest boat bag limit… As always the derby was well run and very much a family event. For me it is always a fishing homecoming event and an opportunity to catch up with everybody. Time on the water with Tony is always time well spent. Tony, many thanks for the invite!

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