Drove up after work to escape the heat and set up camp at the USFS campground on the south end of the lake. Decided to do a little bass fishing in the evening and scope out the kokanee grounds for the next day. Found plenty of bass all under 1 lb and marked a lot of what I assumed to be kokanee hanging out in 30-40' of water at 25' just above the thermocline.

Woke up at 4 AM and couldn't get back to sleep so slipped off into the lake with the kayak with a pale blue glow on the horizon. Arrived on the kokanee grounds about 30 minutes later and deployed my gear. I was using teardrop Big I dodgers in moon jelly pink and moon jelly orange with orange or pink microhoochies all from Paulina Peak. Due to lead restrictions imposed to protect nesting loons I used 1 oz of steel sinkers on both rods set at 100' back. Trolled thru several good looking marks with no action until around 5 AM when the sky really started to brighten. Immediately found a 13" fish followed by a 15" and then 16.5". The next few fish popped off including a real toad likely pushing 18" right at the boat. One more pass cleaned up my limit of 5 fish and I had limited out by 6 AM.

I was really impressed with quality of the kokanee on the lake and the cool temperatures were a nice relief. There are at least 3 age classes of kokanee in the lake with some very large fish in the 16-18" and next year's fish look big and healthy too. All good signs for a healthy kokanee fishery in the coming year.

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