Decided to try a new spot yesterday, well not really new, just a change from Lincoln area. Launched at Seven Bays just before 10 and motored down to Sterling Point area with lines in the water and trolling by 10:25.

My fishing partner was trolling a Muddler of unknown manufacture and I started with a Kekeda perch pattern fly and a perch pattern Rip’n Minnow. I think my buddy said he was out 3 colors, and I ran my leaded line out 150’ and the mono out 195’.

Was about 15 minutes before the first strike, but it didn’t stick and when my buddy checked his bait he ended up with a snarl forcing a retie. I continued to troll, and without a hit, for about a half hour while my buddy got his rig restored and back in the water. I jokingly told him I didn’t catch anything so he could have first fish honors, and wouldn’t you know it, he did about 10 minutes later!

I scooped a healthy Roosevelt ‘bow that was about 16 ½” and in the cooler it went. Then he backed that one with another nice ‘bow that went 18 ½”. After his first, I had swapped to a Kekeda orange/black fly, and after his second fish, was beginning to think maybe I needed to swap to a muddler. I pulled one out of the tackle box and had it sitting on my knee when my leaded line went down with a zzziiingg. Set the fly on the dash and back to fight the fish. My buddy scooped a nice 15”+ ‘bow that thought he was a lot bigger than he was. I sent that orange/black Kekeda back to the depths and it produced another about 10 minutes later, though a bit smaller than the first.

Then the bite quit, just stopped dead. Hmm. I decided to troll out over the deep water just in case they might be holding over the main channel. Turns out that was a good decision and we found a pocket that produced some fast action. Once we patterned the pocket, we put 6 more nice ‘bows in the cooler in about 45 minutes, interrupted by some bighorn sheep we just had to watch.

We had trolled out of our zone because we were bighorn sheep watching and not really paying attention to where we were. Hard to ignore the bighorns though, and yesterday we saw more bighorn sheep than we’ve ever seen at Roosevelt. We saw close to 60 on the shore across from Lincoln and then another herd across from Sterling Point that easily had to be 40 sheep and held the BIGGEST ram of my life yesterday, a full curl and a quarter, or more, with horns that looked to be 8” diameter at the base of his skull, they were just MASSIVE. He had to be THE granddaddy of all the bighorns.

After the wildlife viewing we got serious, returned to our pocket, and finished our limits. My buddy got bog fish honors yesterday, landing a beautiful 19.5” native ‘bow that weighed 2lbs, 14 3/8ozs. We finished out limits with a double, the second one of the day. My last was a deep chested 16” ‘bow that weighed 1lb, 11ozs, what a pig!

Trolling speed yesterday was 2.5 – 3.0mph depending whether we were trolling with the wind or against. All but the first 2 ‘bows were caught in water at least 100’ deep and 6 of those were suspended over the main channel 200’ – 225’. My buddy started the day tipping his Muddler with grubs, then switched to worms. I tipped the Kekedas with worms. The Rip’n Minnow was quiet most of the day, but it put my last two fish in the cooler back to back.

A nice ending to a great day on the water and as we traveled back to Seven Bays, all the bighorn sheep across from Lincoln were still there, all down at the water’s edge, stretched out in pockets along the shoreline for several hundred yards. We were both certain we saw at least 100 bighorn sheep yesterday and that was quite spectacular. :-)