After a short weeknight trip two nights before when my friend and i caught 16 keepers in just over 2 hours my buddy and i were pretty confident we had Whatcom dialed in. Friday morning i needed to be off the water by 10am to leave for the weekend, but we decided that was enough time to fish. I was the first ais inspection of the morning at 5:45, and 2 friends joined me in leaving the dock at 6am. My main motor is a 2 stroke, which is not legal to run on Whatcom, but luckily there are plenty of kokanee near the launch, and a 4 stroke kicker is all we need.

Just outside of the bouys we dropped our lines and had 2 in the boat before we could even get all 3 set. We ran 2 downrigger lines, 25-40', and 1 lead rod, 1-2oz. For the next 3 hours it was rare to have all 3 lines in the water as the action was so hot and only seemed to get hotter as the morning progressed. We lost many and released a handful of cutthroat up to about 2.5lbs, but by a few minutes after 9 we had 29 kokanee in the cooler. The next few hookups would be an absolute comedy of errors as the fish seemingly taunted us getting off repeatedly at the net. But by 9:30 we finished our limit, high fived, and headed back for the dock.

The fish are still small this year, but they are sure to grow as the months continue. The fishing should just pick up as well.

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