Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Fast Action Guide Service
So since I missed out on last weekends cutthroat derby, a few of us from our church decided to do our own competition on 2 boats with 3 on each boat today on the big lake! On my boat was Ron Brown and Greg Brown dubbed "team Barry" and on the other was Nick Hudson, father Brian and grandfather Bob so a 3 generation boat load dubbed "team Nick"!
We met at 5:30 at the Atlantic city boat launch and went through some general rules of the lake ( thanks for all who helped me clear up the limit totals) and set our competition to start at 6 am. We motored out of the launch at 5:45 to head to our prospective hot spots to start our day!
I headed south east to start my troll along in the channel out of the Cedar to towards the west side of Mercer and turned north once I hit my spot. Set the speed at 1.7 and started with the lead core line out 115 feet down the middle of the boat with my 5.5 pink glow sling blade and pink and white assassin spinner tipped with pink gulp maggots and some shrimp scent. Second line went out with old goat lure pink 1.8" tipped with night crawler and 80 feet back 24' on the wire on left side down rigger. Before I could get the third line in the water, the lead core line starts dancing and it's fish on! But half way in it's fish off! Hmm wonder if that was a kokanee as from Rseas report from last Saturday, the kokanee seem to be on the hunt out here- As I was letting that line out, the old goat goes down and it's fish on! Greg reels this one in and it's a perch! Oh well, first fish in the boat at 6:03 so back out it went and finally was able to get 3rd line in on Ron's rod with a Hollywood mini brads cut plug dipped in krill/anise dipping sauce and pink maggots on both hooks.
Soon the lead core line dances again but this time we get it all way in and into the net and it's a fat 13" kokanee! Rseas was right! There are kokanee everywhere on the lake right now! We get 2 more on the lead core so decide to switch out the brads with a pink polka dot cut plug and replace the old goat with another pink and white assassin spinner. All hooks today tipped with maggots as that seemed to be working.
As we passed "team Nick' near the point of the south tip, they boated their 4th kokanee so the heat was on! Bot for some reason 3 other boats showed up so now we were in kind of a cluster so I instructed Ron to steer us out deeper so we could make the turn around the point away from the other boats. Just as we were making the turn Ron's rod bounces down and pulls off the clip and it's a big one and starts peeling line- taking a line from Wicked Tuna I yell "it's a screamer!" Ron battles it in and soon an nice 17" cutty is on the deck! Yes 1st one of the day and not soon after Greg gets on to hit his line so a bit smaller but still a cutty!
I am not going to go through every fish we caught but by 10 am we had 13 in the boat with 2 cutts, 10 kokanee and 1 rainbow with the lead core line definitely getting the bulk of the action so as we were turning way down the west side of Mercer and head back down the middle towards the point, the lead core line literally buries into the water and my line screams out to almost the backing and over 200 feet before I can get it out of the rod holder!! I am thinking uh oh, this might be a sockeye as I see a big jump way back behind the boat and when I just get it to the pink color and 100 feet it peels off another 50 feet of line! Holy cow this fish is on fire and it took 2 or 3 more runs before we got it close to see it was a fat cutty and not a sockeye so got it in the net and was surprised it only measured 16 1/2" but was it fat and heavy!
Got our last kokanee not too soon after so it was a 3 person limit by 10:30 am! Final count- 3 cutts, 1 rainbow, 11 kokes. Checked in with Nick and unfortunately had been having some motor issues so had to troll with the big motor and struggled to get 6 kokanee and no cutthroat. Bummer but still they had a great time on the water and we met up later to swap stories and some smoked kokanee I had for them from Lake Chelan!
It was a great day of fishing and fellowship today on the water and want to wish all you fathers out there a glorious fathers day tomorrow enjoy family and fishing if that is on the menu! See you on the water!
