So this report is for the week beginning the day before mothers day- Since my wife is from Ephrata I talked her and my daughter into driving over for the weekend and entering her brother, his son and my daughter in the annual trout derby at Sun Lakes resort on Park lake. We got to the lake on Saturday mornning at 6:30 to get signed up and get out on the lake to test the waters before the 8am start. With 4 on the boat and a 9 year old I decided to just run 2 lines out with one fire tiger needlefish and one fire tiger rapala. On the first troll we got a hit on the rapala and had our first trout in the net so it looked like a good start but as I was trying to get the fish out of the net he thrashed around and one of the treble hooks buried into my ring finger past the barb! Oh great, the derby hadn't even started yet and we may have to go back to the launch~ well, looking at the faces of the kids I realized I had to stay out on the water so asked my brother-in-law to pass the needle nose pliers and proceeded to rip the hook, barb and all out of my finger! whew! So I said let's go anchor up in my favorite spot and just get out the power bait and start catching fish. I had heard some not so good reports from this lake but I know I have never had a problem getting limits so headed over to my honey hole and at 8am we started getting into the fish! it was fast and furious and the guys on the shore were heckling us to leave some for them- with 18 fish in the boat ( I was the only one without a limit as I spent a lot of time baiting hooks and changing lines) we headed back to the park to weigh in our fish at 11:30am

If you have never fished this derby it is a great event as all the proceeds go to cancer research so they get lots of great items donated from local businesses to add the prizes. They have 4 age categories and there are lots of kids that get into this derby and it is such a treat to see those happy faces dragging their catch to the table to get weighed! The largest fish caught was a 5lb 8z brown caught by a 15 year old boy! My nephew took 3rd place in the 7-11 age range and my brother-in-law took 2nd place and my daughter 3rd in the adult category so we did pretty good with 129 anglers participating!

Now comes the real interesting part of the trip! On Mother's day my wife actually wanted to go fishing and she wanted to go to Deep lake; well her brother informed me that they have kokanee's in there so I was excited to try out some of Toni's wannafishalures I had picked up at the Sportsman show in Feb. We launched at 7am and headed up the steep canyon with absolutely blue skies overhead and clear water underneath; now I had never taken my boat on this lake so was excited to see what it looked like on sonar and was amazed at how it goes from 35 feet to 115 feet in about 5 minutes! I had one downrigger mounted so set out one my kokanee lamiglas rods with a pink dodger and the 'orange thing' wannafish lure and other one with an ounce and quarter of lead set up with the rainbow spinner; both tipped with pink gulp maggots. No sooner did I get the lines in the water the downrigger started bouncing and I couldn't believe it but had on a fiesty koke!!
As we trolled up the canyon it was pretty non stop action with all of the fish between 8-10 inches but what amazed me was that the orange thing was catching fish 3 to 1

As we heading back to the launch and got back into the 35 foot range I pulled in the downrigger and put a weight on the rod with the orange thing and no sooner did it hit the water the BAM! Fish on and peeling line! After a short battle we netted a 19" rainbow and I scratched my head thinking that if this Kokanee set up worked on trout I should try it back over at Park Lake

To make a long story end ( haha) I stayed over in Eastern WA for the week as my church men's retreat was the following weekend at Sun lakes and when they showed up, my boat was the hot boat with constant hookups and limits for anyone who got on my boat and though it all, the wannafishalure Orange thing was the go-to lure! it made me a believer and got home and ordered more to have in my arsenal for future use and can't wait to try them out on Angle, American and Stevens over the next month or so! I will post a few pictures of some of the fish but my wife took the camera back with her when she left for Seattle on Monday so don't have any from our retreat but did get a few shots of deep and of the fish from the derby. Thanks for reading this and I promise most of my reports won't be this long! see you on the water!!

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