You win some and you lose some. Today, we went for an afternoon fish on Ten Mile and had a great time as always.
The wind was making it difficult to keep the boat straight between multiple boats that were fishing the same “hole” we were hoping to fish. To make matters worse, there was also another boat “going against the grain” and trolling perpendicular to those of us trolling parallel with each other.
We hooked a few small kokanee in our “hole” which was productive last week, but not as promising tonight. And so, due to smaller kokanee sizes and competition for space among boats, we decided to head to Kostas Cove and try to troll with the wind there. As luck would have it, we were not so lucky. We were trying to replicate what had worked so well a week ago. We were using the same gear and same “secret” scent of which we called it “?” last week.
Our secret scent only produced a handful of kokanee. Some people have been asking what the secret scent is and the answer is simple. We bought a 4L jug of moose Anis made for hunting, dumped it in a can of corn and that’s where the magic happened. Something so simple produced copious numbers of kokanee a week ago and only a handful of kokanee today. Of those kokanee today, only one candidate made it in the cooler. The rest of them, as some would call it, were “shakers” and fell off before we could invite them home for a pan fry meal.
After unsuccessful attempts at convincing a few fish to bite, we decided to pull out some of our new gear we bought at the Portland Sportsman’s Show this year. We chose our Rocky Mountain Tackle Company dodgers and signature spinners. We managed to tune the dodgers to the right action we were looking for. We also managed to get a few customers, but none that wanted to commit and stay with us long enough.
Before we decided to call it a day and pack in the towel, we decided to try jigging for kokanee. We had finally found a few good schools of kokanee at the end of our trip and wanted to see if we could coax one of them home for dinner. The lake was peaceful at the end of the night. Once again, we were the last boat on the water. The wind was dying down and we thought we could jig efficiently. Unfortunately, we needed heavier jigs and decided to head home for dinner.
Next time, I’m hoping we can re-locate the big schools of kokanee faster than we did today. Maybe there’s a correlation between the time of year when we start seeing kokanee move closer to the deeper areas of the lake like we found them in today. One thing is certain, we will be back and looking forward to trying something new once again.