Father's Day Kokanee - A Fish Princess Adventure

As the wild storms clattered and battered away on Saturday evening I prepared rods and gear for our first ever foray to Lake Stevens in search of kokanee. The weather called for kinder and gentler conditions on Sunday and we were thankful for the Father's Day treat of clear sunny skies and calm wind conditions.

I was up at 0355 getting dressed and then headed to the kitchen to get the food packed for the day. Given that we were right at solstice, the skies were already getting first light by about 0415. About that time I roused the Fish Princess from her peaceful slumber and then went off to pack the truck and hook-up the boat. She arrived in the garage, ready to go with blanky in hand, just as I was hitching-up the boat. I grabbed an iced coffee out of the fridge and we were down the road just before 0500.

We had an easy drive arriving at the city launch just after 0600 and loaded our gear in the boat to launch. We got the boat in the water, parked the truck, and headed out for our Dad's Day adventure on the lake. Not having fished this water before, we were relying on the reports here and on the Northwest Kokanee Addicts FB page to form a starting game plan.

Pink and green seemed to be favored colors so we started our day trolling with some of those colors in the mix. We made a short run and began our troll off the point just east of the north end of the lake. We put gear down stacked on two down riggers varying in depth from 25 - 45 feet.

We started out heading north and west toward the north end of the lake. As we approached the aerator we cut southward and skirted around the south end of the marker buoy line then back northerly again. About an hour into the troll we had our first bite on one of the rigs I proved out at Chelan. This was the 4" Fish Flash in the Candy Man pattern followed by 2 feet of leader to a customized pink Brad's mini cut-plug in a pattern I call 'Game Day'. Shout out to Sam Baird for the tackle tips that led to this creation. The plug was filled with tuna and trailed by garlic tuna corn. This fish hit the rod running at about 45'. I popped the rod off the down rigger and handed off to the Fish Princess. She worked it right up to the boat where I could see that it was a very respectable size kokanee by west side standards. Unfortunately, just out of net range it thrashed and came unbuttoned - RATS! Always hate to lose the de-skunker, especially so close to the boat...but that's why it's called fishing instead of catching. We reset this rig and got everything back to fishing.

Over the next several hours we tested a wide assortment of gear, depths, flavors of corn, and trolling speeds. We also worked over shallower water and deeper water with limited action. I got a cell phone tip form another angler to fish between 45' - 60' over deeper water. Our only solid bites were along the western section of the lake so we set our gear deeper and headed in that direction. About half way back across the lake running east to west toward the south end we got another take down and managed to put this one in the box and splash the skunk!!

This kicked off a period of about 30 - 40 minutes where we boated 3 fish and lost that many more...every one of them on the same rod/reel/lure that produced that first take down. I even rigged another rod with the same fish flash and a nearly identical plug filled with the same tuna, tipped with the same corn and fished at the same depth but it failed to produce a bite. After this little flurry of action things went quiet again for another hour or so.

Around mid-day, as I was pondering what gear to test out next, the Fish Princess was rifling through her tackle bag and suggested we run some of her stuff for a while. I said let's do it...it couldn't do any worse than most of mine and maybe we'd find another combo that would work. She selected her 'Go Hawks' spinner from Toni at WannaFishALure and we paired it up with a silver Arrow Flash dodger with moon glow wings. This combination produced our last fish of the day at about 45' and the Fish Princess did the honors of angling him expertly to net!

Final tally for the day was four nice kokanee in the box with another 4 or 5 lost along the way. Not lights out fishing by any stretch of the imagination but enough to keep us busy. Time spent on the water with my not-so-little girl was a priceless Father's Day treasure that beats any neck tie or 'things' that might have been exchanged in honor of the day and I'll not soon forget this time spent together on a near perfect northwest day.

Thanks to all of you who share your tips and tactics freely to help those of us exploring new destinations for the first time. Still put in our time and learn many things for ourselves but it's sure nice to start with enough information to have solid game plan to start the day and great to get timely tips while we're on the water to improve our success.

Good luck and tight lines out there!

Dawg

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