by Mike Carey, May 02, 2017

The fishing at Lake Chelan for kokanee is red hot! If you’re interested in getting some shiny 11-15” silver bullets now is the time to go. I arrived on Thursday evening and met up with site members Fish Dawg and his daughter, Fish Princess, Downriggeral (Alan Hanna of ifishsolutions.com) and they filled me in on where to go and what techniques to use.

To paraphrase my guide friend Anton Jones - “what’s hot on Lake Chelan is… everything!”

First off, as in realty, it’s location, location, location. We spent all our time at one location and it couldn’t have been easier, either. From the Chelan State Park, run straight across to Manson Bay and depending on the wind direction start at one end or the other. I recommend starting upwind so your boat will drift with the wind. This makes it much easier to put out your lines. On this trip we ran a minimum of four lines (easy) to seven lines (more challenging) on my boat. The fish are pretty thick throughout the bay from the uplake end to Wapato Point. I found best success in the deeper, 200 foot plus area. I didn’t see a need to circle back on fish while trolling. The fish you left behind just meant more fish to discover. Also, the bay has attracted (understandably) a lot of boats, so running circles on pods of fish would have been challenging anyway. There were around 20-40 boats out each day.

I mentioned everything working and I wasn’t koking, er, joking. If you had a small dodger/sling blade and a pink or orange hoochie or wedding ring type lure you were going to get bit. Add a couple pieces of shoepeg corn to the inside hook and it’s go time. I do want to give a shout out to Fish Dawg and his amazing Technicolor corn. I won’t give away the recipe, but if you search the net you’ll find some ideas. I will say that he uses an orange die and that made for the prettiest corn I have ever seen. His corn out fished my corn two to one. They came home with easy limits every day, very impressive.

Trolling specifics that worked for us were a slower troll speed, from 1.0 to 1.4 mph. I recently had an itroll throttle control installed on my boat from ifishsolutions.com. The unit is awesome and has really made trolling and motor control a lot easier! On the downwind troll I’d have one memorized “hunt” mode set up, and then going into the wind I would just switch to another memorized hunt mode that had higher throttle settings. I used the “max” button for a burst of speed to make my turn and head into the wind. With the wind I’d hit “idle” if we got going too fast or just to vary things up. I was able to do all my steering from the helm which is really nice!

I mentioned earlier running up to seven rods. I can thank NWFR member Luke Hatfield for the courage to attempt that after he ran eight rods in his boat when we fished Swift Reservoir earlier this year. The technique for running all these rods isn’t too difficult but does require some spatial awareness of how your gear runs and which rods to set where. Here’s how I did it. Straight off the back I ran two leaded line rods at three colors, one out about ten feet more than the other. On the working end I used sling blades to keep the lures running straight back. With three colors out and a 60 foot fluorocarbon top shot that made these lures around 20-30 feet deep and back around 120 feet or so. Rod number three off the back was a another long line rod, but this time using a 2 oz dropper with 85 feet of line out, putting this lure about 40 feet deep and 45 feet back from the stern. Next, the deep downrigger lines on either side or the boat, run back 40-50 feet from the ball and 40 to 60 feet deep depending on where fish were being marked. Again, dodgers/sling blades that track straight were on the terminal end of the line. Finally, on each downrigger I ran a stacked line using a shower curtain 3oz dropper with release. The dodgers on this line were Mack’s Double D set to fan out and away from the boat. These rods we ran the gear down to 30 to 40 pulls as the 3oz weight on the shower curtain would slide down the downrigger cable. An alternate to stacking would have been to use planer boards for the last two rods to get the gear away from the boat.

So there you have it, seven lines running at various depths and setbacks, all working in perfect harmony, except for one time when a larger kokanee decided to make a beeline over a couple other lines. That tangle notwithstanding, it was a pretty impressive lineup of gear!

After fishing Saturday we had our yearly Lake Chelan B-Q and Product Demo Members event. The venue at Chelan State Park is spectacular and this year was one of the best events yet. Big Bass Dez was on hand and running the Casting Contest as members vied for a nice bag of gifts from our sponsors. Following that the members were treated to a great concert by country music artist Jesse Quant. Jesse played solo and was very personable, not mention an excellent singer/songwriter. I hope he can return next year and doesn’t forget the NWFR gang when he hits it big! Following the concert Randy Castello, AKA rseas, delivered on another fine meal featuring fish tacos, pulled pork, and hotdogs for the main course. Members brought a ton of food to share and a good meal was had by all.

After dinner came the sponsor presentations and product drawings. I can’t say enough about what a great lineup of sponsors we had this year. Mack’s Lure and Life Proof Boats were the presenting sponsors and provided lots of gifts for our members. Life Proof Boats also brought one of their boats, hopefully lots of members got to go out for a test ride. Mack’s Lures I can’t say enough about. Those Double D dodgers should be a must have in very angler’s tackle box. Plus they now have new colored tapes to give you the best fish catching colors on those dodgers. Alan Hanna of ifishsolutions.com gave away an itroll to a lucky member. And I should mention hats off to Tyler Hicks who first won the itroll but, since he is a kayak guy, offered the gift to be re-drawn. Class act Tyler! Darren Prouty of Precision Propeller gave away a propeller, very cool. Other sponsors we’d like to thank include Mike Mauk of Mauk Fishing Stuff who makes a great organization and protection system for gear, David Browning of Kekeda Flies ( he ties an awesome fly for rainbow and kokanee), Money Maker Tackle, maker of some of the best scent products on the market, as well as a lineup of deadly tackle, Fish With Gary, another innovative kokanee tackle lure maker out of Oregon, Columbia River Knife and Tool for some super knives, and Work Sharp for the gear to sharpen those knives when they get dull from cleaning all the fish you’ll catch from the tackle sponsors gear!

We hope you’ll be able to join us next year at our Member Get-together!