Great day on Baker, fishing wise, not so much weather wise. My girlfriend, daughter, and I launched out of Swift Creek campground at 5:30 and headed straight to the Noisy Creek area. Last time we were here we put in most of our time on the Swift Creek side and got skunked, so we wanted to try somewhere else.

We had 2 Lines in the water by 5:45 or so. We trolled outside of the crowd, more towards the middle and are glad we did. We ran 3oz lead to #0 Les Davis dodgers, and a pink squid with smile blade on one rod, and just bare hooks with smile blade on the other rod, both tipped with sand shrimp. At about 5:50, we had our first sockeye on the rod with the pink squid. While netting that fish, our other rod starts bouncing with our second fish of the day. Hooks from the first fish were stuck in the net, so my girlfriend had to play the fish until I got the net free, but we got her in the boat.

After that double, it got a little slow for us, until I decided to test out the downrigger I just mounted the night before. I rig up the third rod with a 50/50 dodger and pink squid, set it down 35' and within minutes, we had another fish in the boat. After that fish, we loose one off the downrigger rod, then we loose a fish and whole dodger rig off the other rod due to a snap swivel opening up. We circled the same area a few times, and got 2 more fish in the boat off the downrigger rod before we called it quits due to being freezing, and the non-stop rain. We left around 10:30 am with 5 sockeye in the boat.

For anyone looking for a fishfinder, after using my Garmin 501c for a few months, I'm really liking it. I never thought I would be able so see everything this thing picks up. While trolling with lead, your gear clearly shows up on the screen as long as its not too far out, so you know exactly how deep your rigs are running. The downriggers I have are old Cannon Sport Trolls which have the counters built into the swivel heads and do not work. I was able to use the fishfinder to get my gear down exactly where I wanted to. Anyway, good luck out there.

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