Lawn mowed, a million other chores done and everybody awake meant we had a few hours to go fishing. We had not been to Cascade Burgers in Concrete for quite a while and I wanted to check out the Baker River fish trap so decision made, we were headed to Lake Shannon. On the way up the dirt road to the lake we crossed paths with a still dripping wet PSE fish transport truck. Was it possible that they were transporting adult sockeye to Lake Shannon? On arrival at the launch two things stood out, first the lake was higher than we have ever seen it and second there were a lot of trailers in the lot. Maybe the fishing was going to be awesome.

Boat in the water and a quick scan of the lake left me scratching my head. Where were all the boats? We never did figure it out, there very few boats out fishing. Other fisherman or not, I had a plan… After a short run up the lake to my usual starting spot and a quick sonar survey, again I was scratching my head. Earlier I questioned the possibility that they were transporting adult sockeye to Lake Shannon. The answer is yes, when we first shut down and checked the FF there were schooled sockeye on the screen. Interesting factoid but Lake Shannon does not host a sports fishery for sockeye so we motored out of the area or at least until the sockeye were no longer on the FF and got to work. Fishing 4 rods, I set up 3 Skagit Tackle dodgers and a swing blade attractor followed by a variety of custom kokanee lures. We were running wonder bread, 50/50, and a pink splatter dodgers and a green/white swing blade, the green and white swing blade followed be a green mini squid seemed to be the hot ticket. We tried a variety of hook bait but anise-krill scented shoepeg was the preferred appetizer for the day. I was running the gear stacked with a 12’ separation with one ball running at 32’ and the other at 38’.

Trolling a “S” pattern at 1.2-1.4 mph, right off the bat even before I could get all the gear down we were into fish. We fished C & R for an hour or two with multiple doubles and constant action before we had our C & R limit of a mix of kokanee, rainbow, cutthroat and 1 12-13” chinook. Limit caught and our 3 year old patience window closed we decided to go exploring. Gear stowed, exploring the various coves and anything else that looked interesting we ran up the lake to the stay out zone downstream of the Baker Lake dam. It was a beautiful boat ride and a great end to a short but satisfying afternoon on the water. On the way home we stopped by the trap on the Baker River and watched the few sockeye that were in the trap for a while. Fish watching done we headed to Cascade Burgers for yet another delicious meal which we topped off by sharing one of their handmade ice-cream sandwiches. The meal was a tasty end to a great afternoon.