Fishing Report 6/28/06

Since I hadn't fished for kokanee yet this summer, and my Grandson loves to catch them, buddy Tom Staley, Colin and I ventured to Crescent Lake to sample the kokanee action. Reports had it that the kokanee were running fairly large this year with many at 15 in. and some to 20.

I picked up Tom at 4:00 and Colin slept in the back, while we made the hour and fifteen minute drive to one of Central Oregon's most beautiful lakes. We were going to target kokanee for the most part and maybe take a shot at the lakers or browns if we had time. This was a trip for gathering fish for Tom's smoker. He has an excellent smoking recipe.

Since I hadn't been to Crescent in weeks, we weren't sure where the kokes were. Usually they are around the Boy Scout Camp this time of year. However, this year everything seems to be about a month behind the normal schedule. The easiest way to figure out where they are is to simply look for the fleet of boats in general. They were off the farthest point west along the summer home side. Bingo!

We pulled up and set up the downriggers and started watching the graph for schools and the depth. There must have been fifteen boats working a small area and after watching the graph a little I could see why. There were quite a few kokanee schools balled up at 50-70 feet. As I watched a guy work in a kokanee and we passed within shouting distance, I asked what depths had been producing best. "65 feet was the magic number" he said.

After 15 to 20 minutes of working the area and seeing no one produce anything, I decided to adjust our set back and put the Slingbalde dodgers and Protroll Kokanee Killers back to 50 and even 70 feet behind the ball. That did the trick! We had a fish on within a minute or so. Nice kokanee of 14 in. After the second fish within a couple of minutes, we were rolling. This is a trick I learned from some of my buddies at Flaming Gorge. Often, when the bite is tough on kokanee, you can improve your success by lengthening your set back.

Though this helped our hook ups, landing them was another story. We did end up with 5 nice keepers out of 13 hooked before they shut off, big-time. That wasn't anything to brag about, but we observed that we easily had about 3 times the hook-ups of anyone else in the area this morning.

The wind came up to 15-20 rather quickly right at noon and we made a trip around the lake working Lyman's for lakers or browns. Tom caught a beautiful 3 LB. brown and I caught and released a laker of the same size before we decided to call it a day. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, so no photos this trip.

More trips coming to East, Wickiup and no name in the next few weeks before I head to California for the last half of July. The bull trout video is in editing right now and will be out by mid summer.

Tight lines, Rick