We had another successful day on the water today.
Our day started earlier than yesterday with the anticipation of getting to the lake and capitalizing on the morning bite. When I woke up, I followed my morning routine of making a cup of coffee and toast for the road. Austin followed his morning routine by eating a bowl of his favorite cereal and packing his snacks and plenty of water while I loaded all the gear and hooked up the boat.
We arrived shortly after the Park gates opened and were on the water in no time. Surprisingly, for the second day in a row, my boat was running like a top. Earlier this spring, I took my boat to a shop in Prince George with a concern of a fuel leak and lack of power. The shop was not able to fix the leak the first time, but asked that I bring my boat back to rectify the issue that was not solved the first time. They were confident they had fixed the problem. Apparently, it was not fuel that was leaking, but oil from a cracked seal on the drain bolt. Time would later tell me that I still had an issue that was not quite right. My boat was lacking power that it had when I first purchased it. Also, every so often (only when first starting the motor) there seems to be a small leak on the water. I will need to find a shop that can address this issue for me, as I’m not a mechanic or person who tinkers with their boat motor often.
We were on our way from the launch around 730am and had our bearing set for the northern section of the lake to find the “big” ones we were catching yesterday. I was amazed at how my boat planed out and almost hit 17mph. Just a few weeks ago, I was having issues getting to 8mpg. Could this be a plugged fuel line that is causing me grief? Time will tell, but for now I’m going to sit back and enjoy the wind on my face.
Our starting lineup was the same gear that was working yesterday. We tried to repeat what was working for us and were excited to catch some kokanee. Time would soon tell us that something was different today. We were marking kokanee, but they did not seem as active or happy as they were just 24hrs ago. We changed speeds, depths and baits. Eventually, two kokanee came on board and we were hoping things were looking up. Unfortunately, the bite was not happening for us. The differences we observed were extra clouds in the sky and the water seemed clear of all its debris from the day before. Also, I noticed Austin had brought a banana on board as one of our snacks for the morning. We ate it right away to try and get rid of our bad luck. Austin also asked why it was bad luck to have a banana on board. Clearly, I had no idea and could not give him an honest answer. Google will be my friend later. An hour passed and we had to do something different to try and entice a bite.
We changed out our watermelon dodger and apex first and switched to a Simon dodger paired with a Franks Fly Box fly we picked up at the Portland Sportsman’s Show. During this process, Austin noticed something amazing. Our Brad’s dodger was reflecting green colors on the side of our boat. The dodger had a moon jelly coating on it which made it very interesting to watch it reflect green colors. Then, we tried synthetic maggots on our Gibbs Delta Tackle dog tail dodger and Yamashita hoochie. The synthetic maggots seemed to be the ticket. We were getting bit right away. The only issue we were having (which was a big deal) was that we were loosing every fish that hit our lure tipped with the maggots. I tried re-rigging the maggot on the hook but this did not seem to help. They appeared to be short striking and we had to do something to stop that.
After many lost fish, we decided to change the bait once again. We switched to garlic bloody tuna corn and it was game on once again, except this time we were inviting kokanee home for dinner.
Once we figured out what the kokanee wanted (a slower troll speed and garlic bloody tuna corn) we had our limit and were heading to meet the rest of our family at the beach. Ethan and his cousin came on the boat to try their luck. Before we knew it, kokanee were biting once again. This time, we were marking them in a completely different location compared to earlier.
Our only issue today (after we figured out what the kokanee wanted) seemed to be finding the larger kokanee we were after. We landed a few at each of the three locations we were targetting, but could not seem to find where the big ones were lurking consistently. Thankfully, smaller kokanee smoke up nicely and we enjoy eating them. Next time, we hope to find the big ones knocking at our door to come on in for dinner.