Between fish and chickens a very busy weekend at compound rseas. Saturday we did the 4th Annual Lake Stevens Kokanee Derby. Then Sunday we laid a foundation and built a chicken coop. Chickens safely tucked away in their new home it is time to “peck” out my Lake Stevens Derby report.

Taking his and hers vehicles, I had the boat warmed up and ready to go when the rest of team rseas arrived. At that point I had been receiving early kokanee related text messages from fellow derby participants so the wait for the better half of team rseas arrival was a bit nerve racking but nothing to ruffle my feathers over. After a late start, while I was still getting gear down a downrigger clip pops for the first kokanee of the day. The fish was 11” and the smallest fish to go in the box. From that point we had steady action with lots of drive bys, lost fish and fish for the box. Steady action but someone must have hid a banana in the boat. Right off the bat a downrigger stop bead had slid (a first for me) and the electric retrieve wound the ball right to the pulley and popped the ball snap and ball right off sending them to the bottom in a stream of I’m out of here bubbles. Thinking a few choice words I revised my derby strategy and got back to business. I stacked two rods on the remaining downrigger, ran two lead line rigs and one surface line.

In general most of our fish were caught at 34’ on the downrigger with the stacked rod, lead line rigs and surface line drawing only the occasional strike. I was running a variety of dodger lure combinations with our hot set up being a wonder bread Skagit Tackle dodger followed by a custom tied kokanee fly or a white mini hoochie. Our most productive trolling speed was 1.2 mph but a change of speed up or down seemed to be the key to drawing strikes. Chasing meter marks was very effective with many of the net fish coming off meter marks. Monitoring the side scan was also helpful in keeping us on the fish. If I detected a school of fish on the side-scan I would steer port or starboard as appropriate and then adjust depth to align with the meter mark.

As mentioned earlier we had steady action but our gremlins continued as we lost more fish than usual including two very large fish at the net. It just wasn’t our day but we still were able to “scratch” (more chicken talk) out 13 fish with the biggest being about 16.5” and 1.6 pounds. Speaking of, it turns out that we did not weigh our big fish. It was hiding under a coupler smaller fish at the bottom of the ice chest. While waiting for the ceremonies to begin we were talking with other derby participants and it seemed that standard red wedding band spinners 10-12” behind a dodger was the hot ticket.

The derby was well run and we scored a new Fetha Styx spinning rod. All participants went home with a swag bag filled with gear valued at more than the cost of the derby ticket. The event was very much enjoyed and one of our highlights was talking with a number of the WashingtonLakes flock. The picture of B and the leader board was taken with about 5 minutes to go. It was a stressful 5 minutes and in the end he missed it by just a few ounces.

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