Fishing
Report 11-25-05
My
buddy Tom Staley had asked me a few weeks ago about getting
out to fish the week of Thanksgiving. Tom is a school bus
driver and had the week off so we settled on going Tues.
Remembering that Tom has an excellent smoking recipe for
fish, I brought the kokanee rods as well as my full arsenal
for bull trout.
With the heavy fog we have been experiencing here in Central
Oregon the past week, we didn't get to the lake all that
early. It was close to 9:00 a.m. by the time the boat left
the dock. The fog was setting above us at the top of the
cliffs. My guess was it was just above freezing. We had
put the top up with all accompanying side curtains. The
heater would feel good today. When the light breeze picked
up I'm sure the wind chill was in the low 20's.
The lake is probably at its most beautiful this time of
the year. With the water temps in the high 40's to low 50's,
the algae is long gone. Often we are the only boat on the
lake during the week days. Today was no exception....we
had it to ourselves.
As
I came out from the dock, I watched the graph to see if
the bulls would be stacked up at the drop off around 90
feet like they had the previous two trips. There they were,
just as I suspected. I made a hard left to follow the shoreline
about 50 yards out. We started noticing several kokes popping
the top just up ahead of us. Sure enough, when we went over
them and the graph displayed a nice ball from 20-40 feet
down. I couldn't resist so we set up for kokes with my new
Shimano Talora kokanee rods and put out some Slingblades
with Pro-Troll kokanee killers in copcar pattern. They had
worked well on Sat. so I went right to them. Immediately
the rods started hopping with the tell tale bounce of a
kokanee. We were into them big time and stayed with several
schools we marked until lunch. I think we had 7-8 with that
many lost by 11:30.
I was interested in looking for some bulls, so we set up
a B-16 Bomber and a flatfish then staggered the depths with
the riggers at 45 and 65 feet and sat back to eat lunch.
I headed toward the area that had held a lot of bulls this
last weekend. When we got there we discovered that the schools
of kokes and bulls weren't there in the numbers we had seen
a few days before. Undaunted, I hung in there and we made
a few passes before moving out to mid-lake again and continuing
our search for some cooperating bulls.
Tom was really interested in loading up on some kokanee
for the smoker and a little added treat for his relatives
at Thanksgiving. We decided to move back to the general
area we worked in the morning and found the koke balls basically
right where we left them. We decided we would get to 15
and then finish the day dragging for bulls. By around 3:30
we were there. Time to put some more time in for the bulls.
Around
4:00 p.m. I finally noticed the rod with a 6 in. Lyman bouncing
with a fish. Tom got on it and I cleared the other rigger
and rod to get out of his way. When the bull got to the
top we could tell it was a nice bull....long male. He was
pretty skinny and could have weighed over 10 easily if he
had filled out to his length. It went right around 7 LB.
on my gripper scale. He was hooked right in the side of
the mouth, so after two photos, I slid he back to fatten
up for the winter. He had the biggest jaws of any male bull
I had ever seen....looked similar to many of the big male
browns I have seen. With no more bites we called it a day.
Look for my discount ad coming up for winter bull trout/kokanee
combo trips soon. Some of the best fishing at Billy Chinook
can be from now through Feb.
Tight Lines, Rick
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