For the record, this month (Aug.) has been a difficult month to consistently locate decent kokanee schools. Definitely my most unproductive month this season. With that being said I felt it was necessary to scout the river Sunday evening in preparation for my 4 guests on Monday.

I invited a buddy to come along Sunday evening and we started our search. We stopped at several of my favorite Kokanee holes but the hummingbird was void of fish. My spirit finally lifted once we stopped at the basin. Finally I had some great marks on the screen and I knew they were big kokes. Apparently all the stars and planets aligned that night, because fishing was incredible. All of our takes were explosive and borderline scary. I was sure we were going to break a pole this evening. At one point the clicker on one of my rods caught my attention. At first I sat motionless and perplexed. I couldn't figure out how I had snagged up on the bottom. Just then my trance was broken by the sound of a 4 pound kokanee thrashing about the surface. I was never really great at math, but I finally put 2 and 2 together and realized we had a fish on. It's been 2 months since I've had a koke jumping on the surface like this. Well to make a long story short... between two doubles, a triple, and multiple other bites, we hooked up on 10 and took home 4 jumbo kokes in just a few hours. Simply an excellent trip.

Monday I returned to the same spot with 4 guests from Winthrop. The fish must have still been hungry, because we were blessed with a handsome limit of big Kokanee. All of these fish were caught in 90-135' of water. My guest had a great time and went home with a big batch of fillets.

Since these successful trips I have fished this same spot twice. The big kokes were not to be found. Not there or any of the other places I looked. I think I just got lucky on Sunday and Monday. These fish are really sparse right now and seem to be difficult to pattern. It looks like I may have picked the perfect time to switch over to catching kings.

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