I got to go fishing with my son James on our annual overnight trip. Decided to head over to Cle Elum and use some of shad I had caught on the Columbia. Last time I tried this I got a huge laker of around 15 pounds so ever the optimist I was expecting to catch another, with a little luck!

We arrived and put the boat in around 8pm Friday night and anchored up, enjoying the stars and later the moon rise over the water. It was a bit windy up until midnight but then calmed down allowing us to get a decent bit of sleep. Of course, day light comes early when you're boat camping so by 5am we had gear down and were working the waters.

We ran four rods, two off the bottom for lakers and two suspended for kokanee. We started on the 90-100 foot flats north of the boat launch and in short order had our first fish on a kokanee rod, which turned out to be a sockeye of about 20". Safely netted and released we got back to our target species.

7:30am and the port downrigger rod goes off with a nice fish which I hand to James. He reels in a beauty of a laker which I almost knock off when netting because I grabbed the kokanee net, not the big net - rookie move! Anyway, it's a beauty and I'm thinking this could be the start of a great day. The fish was caught on a monster kwickfish shad wrapped bait 4 feet off the bottom.

The wind died off and we worked the flats until about 10am and then pointed south and trolled deeper waters, down to 300 feet deep. I was hoping to get one of those 15 pound monsters that see little pressure but it was not to be. We did have one nice bite and head shake on the other end but he came off. With the wind picking up we ran back up to the flats and trolled until 2pm, picing up a couple kokanee. The koks are running small this year, 11-12". Last time I fished Cle Elum (3 years ago?), they were a legit 14" class. Remember, the kokanee are a slot limit on this lake. They have to be between 8-15". Anything over or under is considered a sockeye in the regs. We caught the kokanee on Mack Double D dodgers and Old Goat kokanee style lures in orange two tone. I suspect there are more kokanee down by the dam but we didn't get to fish that area as much as I would have liked due to the wind.

We called it a day just as a rain squall arrived, loaded the boat and headed back to civilization. On a Saturday there were just two boats fishing the entire lake. Amazing.

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