For many of my off seasons (winter), I've been drooling over the Darrel and Dad's reports from lake chelan. Finally, this year I convinced my family to take a trip over there in the winter. My dad and I scheduled a guided trip with Jeff of Darrel and Dad's for the 5th and brought our own boat for the 6th. We booked a condo for the 4th 5th 6th and 7th. The tow over the passes was a little icey, but not too bad.

We checked out the mill bay launch the evening of the 4th, and it looked well scraped and fairly ice free. Jeff had called that evening to verify our trip and make sure we were prepared properly. Come the morning of the 5th Jeff calls and cancels due to icy conditions. Major bummer. He says he's got an opening for the 7th, but were planing to leave early in the afternoon. At this point, I hadnt done any of my normal mapping of fishing locations or rigging of tackle. I was hoping to learn the ropes with a guide, then set-up that evening to fish the next day.

My dad and I decided to go check it out any way, and thought the launch looked ok. Adding insult to injury, we could also see that Jeff's boat was docked right next to the launch. We rigged up some spinner hoochies and dodgers and got all the gear ready as fast as we could only to find our electrical system had lost power some where. We finally diagnosed and repaired our frozen electrical connections and cleaned the road salts and sand from our downriggers, etc... And got out on the water around 2pm.

We were in a 16 ft lund without a cover, but we did have propane heat going. Trolling was comfortable, but covering water at speed was tough! (cold) We did manage to locate some willing biters and put one in the box before giving up for the day.

When we got back to the condo, I did as much research as I could, but had a hard time locating any of the spots mentioned in reports. "Blue roof condos" are very difficult to find when all roofs are white with snow! Although disappointed, I wasn't mad at Jeff, because It did look pretty icy that morning...So... I called Jeff to beg for some tips and info. Jeff gave us some much needed advice and was instrumental in our Kokanee hunt the next day. From dodgers to leaders to lures we discussed it all at length on the phone.

The next day we got started much earlier, and just saw Jeff leaving with his clients for the day. We put in about 4.5 hours that day, above the narrows and in front of green's landing. Fishing varied depths 100-150ft and in 150-350 FOW. The hottest setup was a 6 inch dodger with 12 inch leader to a bright orange wiggle hoochie. Wedding rings and spinner hoochies worked well too. The wedding rings and other lures ran a shorter 8 inch leader, but the largest dodgers seemed to get hit the most. Locating fish was our biggest challenge. We made it back to the launch with 8 kokanee, and enjoyed a nice kokanee dinner that night.

The day of our departure, we decided to give it one more try and picked up two more kokanee above the narrows before giving in to the cold, coming back and packing it up. Wapato point was a great place to stay with kids and the rest of the family had a good time ice skating, swimming in a heated pool, etc..

So all in all, a good trip... could have gone better though. I certainly wont be driving half way across the state without doing my homework again any time soon. I'll be back again, i'm sure.

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