Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Salmon Eye Charters
Wanted to try Bumping lake this year and try something different than American lake for Kokanee and lake trout. Lake always has low pressure and can be very productive or completely a miss. Only boat there at the public lot at 6:45 AM and likely due to the fires and low water. Lake was clear as smoke was moving west. Very-very low water so you have to dodge stumps for a couple hundred yards heading to the west end or natural part of the lake which is deep. Nice thing is Bumping went to 2 poles this year so me and my brother and have multiple fish setups. From the public dock I started out pulling flies about 50 ft out. I like to use a small weight to get the fly down about 3ft below the water line. Its great as we fish trout pulling fly's (ultra light gear) and Kokes with normal gear. Action was immediate. We got a nice trout on and lost it on a brown fly-WBugger. A minute later my brother caught a beautiful lake trout on color brown. We measured and it was 14 1/2 inches. Thought it was a Dolly at first due to the fight but was surprised to see a nice lake trout when we got it in the net.
Worked our way up the north side of the lake and dropped 2 Koke setups lines. To start I went 25ft on deep-lake side and just went on top on the shore side. Used standard small silver flasher on both, pink bladed hoochie and pole 1 scented corn, pole 2 white power maggot. Corn action was good. I picked up 2 small Kokes on top water by 7:30AM , both were really small. Moved to corn both setups and dropped down to 20 and 35ft on each setup as we got to the west end. Picked up 6 more small Kokes but like to fist 2 had no size. Nothing worth keeping and the biggest Koke was only 7 inches. On the West end we picked up one more 12inch really nice lake trout as well on a green fly. By noon it was hot and we were done.
Overall it was really fun. Kokanee need to grow up a little more and will plan for next year. I would suggest just pulling flies close to shore as the trout were really nice.