OK, first of all I apologize for the “Secret Lake” report. I know that by reputation I don’t believe in fishing secrets but out of respect for a friend I promised not to reveal where these fish were caught. In an attempt to justify the secret, consider that any lake that has feeder streams could be the latest “hot” kokanee lake. This report represents two days of fishing, both Saturday and then Sunday morning. The weather on Saturday was very wet, so much so that at one point I had a kokanee swimming in the bottom of my boat. Sunday morning was beautiful but the fishing was not as good as it was in the wind and rain the day before.

Both days I/we were trolling a variety of different lures targeted at the kokanee. After some experimentation I settled on the following custom tied rigs. My spin-n-glo flash rigs, smiley blade/mini squid with flash rigs and hand tied flash wedding band spinners. Do notice the common characteristic from lure to lure; it seemed that the “flash” was the key to our success. All lures were fished behind 0000 dodgers or 4 ½” swing blades enhanced with UV tape. Regarding bait, we started out with corn but it soon became apparent that we would be headed back to the dock early if I stuck with the bait plan so the corn was put away. Per the regulations, (page 31) “When fishing with bait all trout…are counted as part of the daily limit whether kept or released.” We trolled some combination of downrigger, lead line and flat line at various depths. The lead line rig was typically running at 1 color. The flat line at 30 pulls and I was chasing meter marks with the downrigger. Trolling speed was critical and had to be above 1.5 mph. The water temperature was an even 56 degrees with the thermocline running between about 12’ and 27’. Final count for our efforts, 6 fish retained. A 20" rainbow, 2 18" kokanee, an 18" cutthroat and other assorted fish. We caught a ton of smaller fish, a combination of rainbow and kokanee all released feisty and ready to be caught again. One of the kids got to break in the rod she won at the Lake Stevens kokanee derby and was very successful in her efforts.

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