Where do I find the Kokanee/fish?
My wife and I went out at Buckboard, today. We’re getting used to the new boat—our second outing on this brand new pontoon boat. I searched for fish on my fish finder at numerous spots north of buckboard and marked very few fish all day. Lots of boats on the water, though. Where should I look for them? Are there certain areas or types of spots that I should be concentrating on? I know the gorge is full of fish. I just haven’t figured out how to locate them, yet.
Slow at the gorge. Good at Fontenelle.
Fished the gorge on Sat. 5/15 and Sunday. Launched at Lucerne Valley. Headed south toward Sheep Crk where we had caught Kokes last Sept. Only marked one small school and hooked zero. Trolled for a while at Linwood bay for lakers and caught a 5 lb. 25" baby. Sunday headed north from Lucerne and fished two areas where we had success last year. First was zero fish marked and caught, while the 2nd marked a few schools but no takers. BTW, there was a fishing derby going on so it was fairly crowded for this early in the season. Fished Fontenelle for a few hours on Monday. Landed 8 kokes and one rainbow. Kokes were between 18.5" and 16". That was fun. Used downriggers at 10 - 25' deep. Launched at the dam since we were told the north ramp near the campground was a mud flat. Caught the kokes mostly on hoochies (yellow with orange/pink hooks and accents). Also caught two on a long line, diving Rapala rainbow trout about 2.5" long! Go figure! Talked to a guy and his wife at the ramp and they caught limits of 6 each. They were using needlefish lures in pink about 3" long. He had been fishing the place for 22 years.
Late Memorial weekend report
Sorry for the late report... We fished 2 boats, 5 people through the weekend. Fishing was slow, but not unproductive. All the kokes we caught were 42 feet or less, with most coming around 25-30 feet. No particular color/dodger/combination worked any better than anything else. We pretty much threw the tackle box at 'em. Slow speeds did seem to help. We tried to catch a few pups and my buddy's boat only caught a couple; none for me. We jigged for burbot at night and were skunked one night and the other boat caught one and a big laker the second night. Great time camping! We spent Saturday afternoon playing cards in the tent while it rained. All fun and looking forward to the next trip.