Our group get together fishing day was both a success and failure.
I love meeting new people. Today was perfect. We had a few members come meet us and I enjoyed talking about fishing and learning about the area.
We started in the middle of the lake and fished for a while with no bites. We were fishing in 50ft of water. The bottom of the lake had lots of disturbance and it was difficult to mark fish near the bottom. We did mark fish, but I believe they were coarse fish based on their behaviors when jigging for them. The disturbance cleared a bit and came back which had me wondering, what was on the bottom of the lake? I have had conversations with a few people and they said there used to be blasting in the lake many years ago during oil and gas exploration. An angler this morning verified this exploration with his own story without me even asking about it. After the blasting, countless numbers of fish were found along the shore line and floating on the surface of the lake. I also heard that Puntchesakut Lake used to be a clear lake which drained towards Baker creek. The flow of water kept the lake in balance and clear. Today, I started questioning if what I was told about mud on the bottom of the lake from the blasting was true. Could the exploration efforts from years ago still be affecting the lake? Could the disturbance be from moving underwater currents and fish pulling mud up from the bottom? Could this be the cause of the color of this lake?
On my last trip here, the water was a dark brown to yellowish color, even while pulling the auger out of the ice. Today, while the water seemed clearer, the visibility was only 2 to 3 ft. We drilled a few holes around our tent and kept our ice tent close as a base camp, but eventually decided to pack up and explore shallower water to see if the fish were in a different area of the lake. Our adventure brought is to the north east corner of the lake. The bottom had no disturbance and we marked a couple fish in a few locations while forming a search pattern.
My new electric StrikeMaster Ice auger I bought last year did the job I asked of it and cut effortlessly through 11 inches of ice in spots.
When we arrived at the lake it was minus 17 outside. As we explored, the temperature was much warmer and we were able to move around without an ice tent. When the wind pick up, we noticed the ambient temperature drop as we sat jigging through our holes, so we set up our tent once again.
We had lunch at 1230 and while eating lunch we noticed fish showing up on our fish finder. Most fish were found between 8 to 12ft in 34ft of water. We spent the next 2 hours trying to get the fish to bite. We tried everything and had no luck. We tried short leaders, long leaders and different attractors. We tried different combinations of bait and jig colors. The fish stuck around and teased us for the 2 hours we sat there. While we had 4 bites, we left empty handed scratching our heads. What did we do wrong? While the fish heard us calling and came in to investigate, could the fish not find or see our presentation? Was our bait not strong enough?
Kokanee can be easy to catch, but they can also leave us baffled wishing we had another chance. Just one more chance to figure out what they want. Just one more drop. One more minute. One more hour.
Will the kokanee in Puntchesakut Lake ever cooperate? Time will tell.