The original plan was to fish lake Roesiger however, when JoAnn and I arrived we found the lake down about a foot and after givign it some thought I decided to pass tring to launch my 20 foot Thunderjet on the damaged ramp or gravel area. So Plan B, we hopped in the truck and drove another hour up to Lake Cavanaugh.

Last year we hit some big fish on the lake and I was hoping for more of the same. We had lines in the water by 8:30 which is a late start but a year ago we had a nice bite of big fish at 11am so I wasn't too concerned. My hope was to find some big, aggressive pre-spawn fish.

We started getting bites right away on various lures. By far an orange Old Goat Kokanee style was the hot ticket. Only problem was they were all trout. We did get one dandy 14" cutthroat that I safely released.

Looking at the meter marks I decided there had to be kokanee mixed in so I decided to try an Elgin spoon in orange and run it down to the deeper marks. This was the ticket as the rod shortly thereafter doubled over with a solid kokanee that did some very impressive tails walks at the back of the boat befoer I was able to scoop him up. A beauty at 14" I thought I might have found a pattern - slight speed increase from 1.1 to 1.3-1.4 and aggressive spoons.

Alas, the one 14" was all we could manage, although we did loss another nice one at the boat. I think the lake was suffering a bit from over-heat-itis. 74 degrees may have slowed the fish down. I'd give it another try in a couple weeks. This under-fished kokanee lake has some quality fish in it. You just have to hit it on the right day.

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