Combined report for Saturday, 6/29 & Sunday, 6/30.

Wasn't sure I was going to fish this weekend as there were chores to do. However my buddy Mark said he'd be out on his pontoon boat and that I'd see him on the lake and that was all the incentive I needed. Fish Princess decided not to get up early Saturday so it was just me.

Air temps hotter than blazes both days (90+). Lake surface temp on Saturday was about 72 degrees and the fish were still high enough to bite consistently flat lining with 3/8 to 1/2 ounce of weight. Fished the pretty in pink set-up and the orange cream set-up. Pink rig out fished the orange rig 6 - 1 with all 5 keepers landed on the pink rig. One or two of the fish still looked a bit long and skinny but most have started to get some shoulders to them.

Spent a couple of hours after I got my koke limit testing out the spiny rays over by the weed line on the south side of the lake. Bobber and worm produced a few dinky perch and a wiggle wart produced a couple larger perch including one of about 7" that went home with the kokes and was part of lunch for the Fish Princess. Saw Mark in his 'toona boat and stopped in to chat for a few minutes. Got an e-mail from him later that he had to add weight to get down to the fish but he filled out a limit too.

By Sunday the lake surface temps got over 75 degrees and our surface trolling techniques were not producing consistent bites. I had the Fish Princess with me Sunday and as hot as it was we needed to stay busy working on our limits. I noticed the downrigger crowd was hooking up at a more consistent rate so I switched two poles onto the riggers. One at 20' depth and the other at 30' depth to start both with 65' set backs. The pretty in pink rig was running at 20' and produced a fish pretty quickly. After we landed that one I switched up the other rigger to 20' and we got bit relatively consistently after that. We had one little bad patch where we long released about 5 or six fish in a row, but that's kokanee fishing sometimes. After experimenting with a few tackle selections I found that a 50/50 silver/pink sling blade with an extra bend at each end to give it more of an "S" shape produced a reasonable facsimile of the dodger action of the Dick Nite dodger that had been so productive. I combined this with another metallic silver and pink Spin-N-Glo and the fish were biting this rig with the same regularity we experienced with the other productive set-up. Finished-up our limits and took a few victory laps around the lake at higher speed to cool off before we headed home.

Total tally was 5 - 7 on Saturday and 10 - probably 19 or so on Sunday. No pics from Saturday but took a few Sunday. Looking forward to crabbing and salmon fishing next weekend!

Good luck and tight lines out there!!

Fish Dawg

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