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I had a great three day weekend of fishing. Day ½ (LOL) was spent on Cle Elum with Mark, AKA Gringo Pescador. We arrived and had gear running at 6:30am. Our target was macks and kokanee. We knew there was a Mack derby going on, but I was puzzled that as we fished a prime location boat after boat passed us and headed farther north. What the heck? Mark and I soon figured it out as at 8am the gun went off and all those boats came dashing full speed on top and past our location. So much for peaceful secluded trolling!
It didn’t really matter much as we found the fish anyway. In no time flat Mark had a fish on his kokanee gear at 35 feet on the rigger. The way the fish was fighting it was obvious he had hooked his first Mack. As the fish came up to the net I deftly reached out… and knocked it off. Now Mark will tell everyone it was an eight pound fish, but I’d put it more in the 4-5 pound ranger. Regardless, it was a nice fish and first Mack, so I felt pretty bad. Mark took it in stride though. I promised, “the next one is yours” and we proceeded to lose four fish. One half way up, the rest never really got good hook-sets. I know the issue is I need to increase the hook size on my hoochie rigs for lakers, so that can be fixed. I did find a great bait, at least it worked well getting bit. It’s… ?
Our rig is a hoochie and large smile blade, baited and run on the deck. Which gets interesting at 300 feet since Mark only had 320 feet on his rigger.
Anyway, the kokanee action was slow, we got two, but frankly it wasn’t our focus. The size of the fish were 12-13” and kind of lean compared to last year. I’ll be back for further investigation as my wife likes to do at least one overnight in the boat here.
On to the next report…
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