What a wonderful day of fishing on Yale Reservoir!

JoAnn, the dogs, and I set off mid-day Saturday D/T the high heat conditions, knowing we would arrive late in the day. We figured things would have cooled off enough to go fishing in the evening and then have all day Sunday to fish. What we didn’t figure was leaving just a little too late after lunch and also the long(er) drive to our campsite at Swift Creek Campground at Swift Reservoir. By the time we arrived I decided it best to just go to our campsite.

Good call, as the drive to this beautiful park is another 20 miles past Yale. I may have to explore this reservoir another day as it does have land-locked coho silvers, but no kokanee according to the WDFW site. Sure is a pretty looking lake!

We spend a restful night and then drove to Yale, lines in the water by 6:30am. Us and just two other boats had the fish all to ourselves. Normally on Merwin on a Sunday morning we’d see a dozen or so boats. It’s their loss, as we had one of the better and enjoyable days of kokanee fishing I can remember.

We started directly across from the boat launch and trolled northward. I’m having fuel line issues with my kicker, so it was the big motor and sea anchors deployed. We were averaging 1.4-1.5 this way, and into the wind a perfect 1.0-1.2. Later in the day as the wind came up I was able to turn the motor off and just drift with the wind at around 1.1-1.3, again perfect speed. Conditions were a pleasant sunny, 70s kind of day. The wind does get pretty strong in the afternoon and the launch is not protected like Merwin, so boaters beware. We had white-caps. Not a big deal for my boat, but returning to the dock was a bit challenging.

The action started right from the get-go. Four rods deployed and within minutes the tap tap of a kokanee. We ran the deep DR rods at 45 and 50 feet, and the stackers at 35-40 feet with DD dodgers. Most fish were marking in this range. We used the usual assortment of gear. I took a picture of today’s hot set up, which was a DD dodger and a Hevi-Bead rig that they gave away two years ago at our Chelan Get-together. This rig at 38 pulls on the stacker rod accounted for a lot of fish, and was hit harder than my hoochie rigs. All rigs had corn, either tuna flavored (AKA the rseas method of preparation) or krill flavor. I saw no preference by the fish.

Our first fish turned out to be the big fish of the day, an honest 13”. The rest of the fish were mostly 12”, with a few smaller guys. The bigger fish came deeper, smaller fish shallow. Also of interest, early morning hours the deep rods saw more action, afternoon hours the shallow rods saw more bites.

In addition to fishing across from the launch, we spend some time up by the big bay north of the dam. I would say the bigger fish and better action was across from the launch and then trolling north.

One BIG warning – this lake has a lot of areas where it wasn’t clear-cut very well. You can be trolling in 90-100 feet of water and suddenly find yourself staring at a sonar image of a tree reaching up to 55 feet from the surface.
Hence, the reason I didn’t venture much deeper than 50 feet on my DR. And really, there was no need to chase those deeper fish. There are plenty to be had between 35-50 feet deep.

The action was pretty steady throughout the day. I think the biggest lull was maybe 45 minutes in the morning a couple of times. I told JoAnn “we’re here all day and we can keep 32, so we aren’t leaving until we get em all!” Well, it wasn’t quite that good for us, but we did end up with 16 fish and lost 6. We only had the one day to fish so I don’t know how Merwin is doing, but I must say 22 fish-on score a 5 star day in my book. I know Merwin has bigger fish, but Yale has come along nicely from three years ago when all I could pull out was 6-8 inch fish. Now’s the time to put in some time at Yale!

Also pictured, our recent Lake Wenatchee smoked sockeye batch. Now I've got a smoker full of kokanee to get to!

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