Fishing Report 11-19-05

I have had a guide trip lined up for Billy Chinook for several weeks now, but hadn't fished the lake since early Oct. Wisely deciding I should get up there before my trip, I took a friend, Tony Herron, to go pre-fish the day before the scheduled trip. It was a good thing I did!

I haven't marked sheer numbers of bull trout like this in several years now. I'm talking a ton of fish! Bad news was they didn't seem to want a thing I showed them. They were spread out from 50-90 feet and in past winters we have spanked them badly with riggers and a variety of lures. I don't know if the full moon had them off or what.

Tony and I must have pounded them for half a day with zilch to show for it. Finally after lunch, I decided to go work the area of the confluence of the Deschutes and the Crooked Arms. After swimming a lot of effective baits at various depths with no return, I decided to come way up in spite for seeing the majority of bulls at 50-70 feet. I had popped the release and started the rigger up. When the lure was near the top, bang, I hooked up on what felt like a nice bull. I handed the rod off to Tony and got the other rigger out of the way. Soon, he had a bull, that appeared to be a solid 8-10 LB., right to the boat. I reached for the net and heard the tell tale "Oh No." I turned back to see the rod unloading after the fish swam off. Tony looked like his best friend just died. Well, maybe not quite that bad.

On the next pass, I had set both riggers up top and it paid off with another bull of about 2 Lb. Unfortunately, that was the extent of our bite. I sure didn't feel like I had much of a drill for the real thing the next day.

Sat. morning before I ran out the door, I thought that maybe I should bring a couple of kokanee rigs just in case the bulls were as picky as they were on Fri. Good thing that I followed my instincts. When I arrived at the dock, Bill Seagren was already there and ready to hit it. I asked what he wanted to fish for and to my surprise, he said that he was interested it getting some fish to eat. Kokes were what we would target to begin with and then possibly we would spend some time looking for a big bull.

I suggested that we give the bulls a little attention right off the bat because they were all over the graph right when we dropped off the ledge around 90 feet. After plowing right through LOTS of bulls for 45 minutes without even a bump, I finally decided to rig for the kokes. The pattern for them appeared quite clear since we were seeing most of the balls from 40 to the top and fish jumping with some consistency. The water temp was 52.3 on the surface. I decided to pull Pro-Troll Kokanee Killers in Copcar and Watermelon behind Miralle's Shasta Tackle Slingbaldes in the nickel/glo finish.

It was around 9:00 a.m. when the first rod started bobbing with the telegraphed message of "koke on." Soon we had another and then another and probably 3 in 15 minutes. It looked like the copcar was the ticket (get it)? Anyway, I switched the second rod over and soon both rods were popping. The fish were small, I would say they averaged 9-10 inches. I would guess that we had at least 25 fish on between 9 and 11 that morning. Since Bill had never fished for koknaee before, it took a while and a few lost fish, before he started getting the handle on playing kokes. When it finally seemed to slow up a bit, I suggested we switch back to fishing for bulls and have our lunch.

I headed back to the general area where Tony and I had lost the bigger bull the day before. Going with what the graph was telling me, I went right back down to 50-80 feet and pounded them with a custom painted B-16 Bomber in kokanee pattern. The other rod was running a large Flatfish that has produced a lot for me in the past. After several passes with similar results to the mornings effort, I decided to come back to the top again. Right after getting both rods set, the rod with the B-16 started bobbing and then right when I took it out of the holder, it came out of the release. I set the hook and handed it off to Bill. As I was getting the other rod out of the way, I was soon hooked up on 4 LB. bull. I quickly released it to focus on Bill's much larger bull. After a few photos with each others camera, I slid the beautiful male bull back in the water and "high fived" with Bill. The big male bull weighed just under 11 LB. on my gripper scale.

We decided that we would pursue some more kokanee before it got too late and headed back to the ramp area to finish the trip. I ended up cleaning an even dozen kokes and I would bet that we probably had 30 on for the day. With what I had seen on the graph for the last two days, I am pretty pumped on the upcoming winter fishing on Billy Chinook. I will be starting a winter special soon for guide trips. Look for details on my Home and Guide Pages.

Screamin' Drags, Rick