Brian (FishDawg), Katy (FishPrincess) and I met up at Chelan for our annual kokanee fishing camp out. We all arrived late Thursday night. I had a break down on the way over (just had the truck worked on) Chris from SDNW was kind enough to drive from Spokane to the other side of Wilbur and get me going again; many thanks for saving the weekend!!
We didn't get an early start Friday but managed to get going around 9 AM. What a beautiful day with sunshine, little to no wind and a high around 80 degrees. We ran up lake from the State Park about 18 miles and fished a creek mouth (Over 400 feet away) and found really nice kokes to about 16" in length. Man were these fish fat and dandy! Caught 22 and four cut throat (clipped). A couple of the kokes were clipped also. We caught a small Chinook that was clipped too. The fish checker was really excited to see these.
It rained hard overnight Friday and was still raining when we got up. Had breakfast, blurberry Klondike pankes and ham....life is good when camping!! It kept raining so we put on the rain gear, launched the boat and went across to Manson Bay. Mighty glad to have the top and side curtians on. Fishing was slow so when it flattened out we ran back uplake. We found wind and big waves uplake but managed to get to where we caught fish the day before. Made one pass downwind in the huge waves and one of the rods went off. Katy began working on the monster fish that we thought was a Chinook. Turned out it was a 22" 3# 6oz rainbow. What a fight in the wind on lite kokanee gear! Good job Katy!!
Fished Sunday morning at Manson again but it was slow for us so we went down lake and cuaght up with a famous local guide for a few questions. Low and behold the fish were over 75' of water and we began catching them in the top 25'. I marked waypoints as we caught them and we soon had a route to follow. We continued to catch kokes and finally finished with 5 of the six rods we had out all going off at once. Fire drills are always so much fun...landed four of the five. What a great way to finish the trip!!
We found most of our fish 25' and above and caught them at 1 mph with the iTroll Hunt working the speeds on the kicker for us. Both lead core and downriggers worked with custom tied spinners with componets from Mack's and others. Water temp was 46 degrees.
Tight lines all, be safe out there - Alan
"The Experiment Must Continue"

---