Many of you have been asking about Loon and if the night fishing has started yet. Well I can tell you for sure it has!

My son and his family were over from the West Side this weekend and I wanted to take him and the grandsons fishing. They and a very busy short weekend with a birthday party and all. My son said how about night fishing at Loon? Sure why not ( I have never gone this early for night fishing up there) so we met at the public launch at 8:00 PM. Only one other boat there coming in at the same time as us. I asked if they had been night fishing and he said it was their first time.

Ran on down to the Granite Point end of the lake where I have an X on the bottom of the lake (almost got my grandson to believe it). Grandpa's are magic you know! Anchored up in 32' of water; wow what a beautiful evening it was. Got the lights all set up, gave instructions on how to bait up with three or four maggots and a piece of shoepeg corn on a Mack's #6 wide gap glow hook (the white looking ones glow best) 4" below a 1/4 oz Glow Swedish Pimple. Charged up the glow with the camera strobe (now grandsons official job) and sent it to the bottom quickly to avoid the blue gills! Up one crank from the bottom. It was now my sons job to bait up the other two poles as I had to see if I could catch a koke.

It wasn't long and I had the famous smash and dash kokanee nibble; rats missed the first one. Forgot how quickly they bite and leave unhooked and of course stealing the corn! Reset, I'm ready now; jiggle,jiggle.....missed the second one. Reset again, OK I'm really ready now!! All this happened before my son could get the other two poles set. OK major concentration....nibble....quick set with the wrist ....fish on! But wait I had to get it in the boat (we just flip them in without using a net for this) you guessed it came unhooked as I swung him in the boat. Finally got the first one in the boat about 9:30.

My son intently watched me do this and was finally able to hook his first one. Meanwhile the grand son is fidgety (maybe too many cookies?) Had to get him to take off his shoes to quiet down the thumping on the bottom of the boat. Hooked some and handed him the pole and got him to settle down to fishing a little bit. He finally hooked his first one by himself! It is amazing to get a 12 year old to concentrate for more than a minute ...but he did and caught one of those kokanee ghosts by himself. Yahoooooo!!!

We had our limit of 30 - 10 to 11" and one 9" by 11:30 pm; so that's an average of a fish in the boat every 4 minutes. I would call that a great bite. Beautiful ride back to the dock at 5mph on a clear starlit night. Life is so good; thanks God for all of your creation we get to enjoy!! Alan

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