8-16, 17 Gorge

[already gone]

After being sidelined for the summer to take care of our son's wife for a major medical problem, I got my first chance to get up there yesterday since the Derby. My daughter in-law is doing much better and they were able to buy a house and they moved last weekend.

Anyway, I launched the boat on Friday evening and went out first thing yesterday. I went over to Breeze Hill and picked up a nice koke at 63 feet. About an half hour later, there was another one on the line-I didn't think he was big enough and let him go. I picked up another koke and kept him, but things were really slow. My wife and I have our sweet spots where we can pull out fish if things are slow but Saturday was very different. Ended up going all the way down to Wildhorse-hitting spots on the way down with no success of any kind. Then I stayed too long and got caught in a pretty good windstorm that took me about an hour to get back rather than 20 minutes. It was really frustrated but had a couple in the box for dinner.



Today I tried Breeze first with no success at all, and headed to a place by Big Bend that we could usually get our limits very quickly. I did pick up a couple of pup macs and a nice rainbow that I let go. After listening to the radio-it was sounding pretty bleak-(fishing reports from other guys) and I was going to head back to the marina, but decided to go to the new parade of boats down above the ranch house. Dropped one line at 65 and another at 75 feet using shattered glass dodgers and pink hooker squids. One downrigger went off right away and I knew this was a nice koke so I stopped the boat. Took me a little time to bring him up after some good runs but got him in the cooler-nice 23" koke. I set both riggers at about 75 feet and I picked up another nice one about 500 feet from the first spot. Same drill-nice fish, took a while to bring him up-he went into the cooler. Over the next 30 minutes I had 2 more fish on the line but wasn't able to get them up-these fish were pissed off because I was molesting their pod and they would hit more out of aggression I think.

I had to get back to Utah tonight so I settled for a 14" that I picked up a few minutes later and blew back to buckboard-it was as smooth as glass. Was able to get the boat out of the water by 12:30 and headed back home-(left boat up there for Labor day weekend). Here are a few pictures of yesterday and today's catch. I have been fishing the Gorge almost every weekend possible for over 3 years now, but this was the first time I was in the dark, and the lake has really changed since May\Early June. I'm just glad I stayed long enough to find a couple of spots that look promising for Labor Day. All my other spots in years past seem to be dead or the fish weren't biting. You could mark all kinds in the area that was successful but for the most part they weren't even interested. This year has definitely been a different year up there between all the wind, water, and not finding the fish in the same areas I'm used to.

Yesterday's dinner-


2 nice kokes on top of my cooler-nice size-


Took this picture with the 2 big ones when I got home just before I filleted them. Nice size!


MP

[Bduck]

Nice hogs Great report. I remember a year ago SuperD & I got caught in a wind storm from a cloud burst passing thru. At first it look like it was heading in a different direction but finally came at us. The reds are showing up. I wouldn't mind going back up after labor day weekend just to catch some hook jaws.

[freshie]

Thanks for the report. We fished Sunday and Monday and struggled as well. On Sunday we were able to grind out 6 kokes and had good success fishing rainbows. Only 3 of the kokes were mature fish. Lead core was key. No strikes cam off the down riggers. It seems the fish are becoming educated. The hot rig was a 4" classic dodger with a pink squid. On Monday, we found Heavy stacks of fish, but only had three bites and lost all three (all three bites came on the classic/pink combo). After 90 minutes of trolling through thousands of marks, we decided to end our frustration and go fish rainbows.

[already gone]

Freshie-

Yeah some of those stacks of fish between 60 and 80 feet were so thick, you could have walked on them if they were on the top of the water! The whole area was lit up with markers in those depths, or you had columns from top to bottom stacked as well. When I would get my hits, it was like a had a 20 lb mac that would refuse to budge. When I brought them up it was from straight down-like a big mac would be. You would have to sit there for a few minutes and let them take some line, then go into a holding pattern for a few minutes before starting to work them up. Then there's the part where you have an 8 foot rubber net, and every time you would pull them towards the net they would run! Finally had to put my finger on the line, push the net down a foot-then pull the koke over the front edge into the net hoping he wouldn't shake the hook for those few seconds while your line is locked down. There were a few adrenalin rushes that morning being on my own with the pole and net work!