This is a two day combined report for December 19-20, 2015. The rating is a four because the 19th was a five and the 20th was a three. When we showed up to Keller on the 19th there were only two other trailers in the lot. We had the lake to ourselves and the weather was gorgeous. Drove down through snow and lots of blinding white conditions but it was well worth it to be on the lake. My boat finally was christened with her name on this trip, and the BLUE HOOCHIE fished strong for us!

We started our troll downstream of Keller on the big flat of the bend. Noticing the breeze coming out of the north east I decided to troll across the lake towards the bluffs to the south. On this crossing, to my surprise and delight, we picked up my first ever Roosevelt kokanee over about 280 feet of water. It fell victim to an orange Kekeda fly on a long line which continued to produce for us throughout the rest of the day. Fishing was not fast and furious but it was definitely enough to keep us busy for five or six hours and merit a five rating.

I think we ended the day with ten kokanee to the boat plus some bonus rainbow and I am not complaining at all about catching ten chunk kokanee. Not to mention I think we had three doubles and one triple. The triple was all rainbow on a close to shore pass, but it was still pretty awesome. The second day was a different story. My fishing buddy and I were exhausted and let that get the better of us sleeping in until 9 or 10. It had been a calm beautiful morning but by the time we had breakfast and were down to the lake it had started to snow.

In an open boat it was miserable, sleet and wind and WET and COLD! But we stuck in there and managed some fish. We almost had our kokanee limit but the last one we hooked wrapped up in the downrigger cable and broke off the stinger hook it was hooked on. Definitely pulling my balls in from now on. This was a major bummer because we would have quit if we boated that fish, but we kept fishing in search of our last koke only to hook 3 or 4 more rainbow. We ended with three kokes and a few rainbow.

Our method was my standard kokanee gear, 4/0 dodgers (I prefer luhr jenson but did also ran a double d), with 8 to 10 inch leaders to hoochies with smile blades or flies with smile blades. Size four octupus hooks were tipped with white shoepeg corn and krill scent or corn marinated in bloody tuna oil. I ran a big husky jerk for a while but we were getting too much interest on the other stuff so I just stuck with what was working. Off of the two downrigger rods we ran a pink and an orange hoochie. These were put 130 feet back and 12 to 15 feet down. Off the long line I tied a 1/4 ounce egg weight above the dodger 18 inches and set it back 150 feet. Pink and orange seemed to produce equally, but the orange kekeda fly may have produced as much as both downrigger rods. When we had a fish on it seemed to attract others and we picked up all our doubles while fighting fish.

My question to you all is what are thoughts on set backs? I know several don't run them as far, but we didn't pick up fish unless we were running long setbacks. Any thoughts are appreciated although maybe better for a forum post. Enjoy the video, I think its my favorite of the three we have so far. Thanks to all who post on Roosevelt that get to fish it more frequently than us and tight lines to all.