Headed for the End of the Road

[kokanee64]

Part 2


While I can’t say why our luck was so good, I can share one technique that works – some of the time. In 2001 when we first got a boat (a 16ft Boston Whaler Dauntless), my dad and I learned how to fish for kokanees on Blue Mesa using leadcore line and later using manual downriggers. My dad would routinely grab the leadcore line right below the first rod guide and pull it down 18 inches or so, and then release it. Every once in while that was quickly followed by a bite. We did the same thing by pulling on a downrigger line, lifting the weight a foot or so, and letting the weight settle. Does it work? If jerking randomly, success will depend on an equally random chance that a fish is there to watch the lure speed forward and then stop for a second or two, making the lure easy to bite. Too many low frequency random variables leads to low success rates. We don’t do random. Mary drives our boat and she knows how to hunt kokanee. Once she finds kokanee she pulls our lures through them again and again. Kokanee hang out together, not randomly, and she works areas with fish. She drives in S patterns to tempt fish with modestly increase and decrease speeds. Then she “jerks up a fish.” Mary will be driving and see fish at 57 feet deep. There is no rush because it will take a minute or so for the lure to reach the fish. (At 1.2 mph it takes a minute to travel 106 feet and our lures are typically 80+ feet behind the release.). She waits to let the lures to approach the fish, and then walks back and gives the downrigger line a series of quick jerks. When the rod bounces with a bite she takes the slack out of the line and catches a fish. If it doesn’t bounce, she does the same on the other downrigger. She jerked lines several hundred times this summer and fish bit regularly. Sometimes she doesn’t wait long enough after jerking a line before going to the other side of the boat. I swoop in behind her and catch the fish for her. I also jerk the lines to her commands but she induces bites better than me. What is surprising is that after jerking up dozens of fish in front of near-by boats we have never seen anyone copy this technique. It works, just not every time.

So I guess what I’ve learned about kokanee fishing last summer is that every lucky boat has its own system of speed and lure and dodgers and line lengths and secret sauces and sometimes jerking fish and a whole lot more. I know plenty of very successful fishermen who build their systems around higher speeds, designed to get reaction strikes. There have been times when we watched faster boats with envy, their rods popping while we jerked unresponsive lines. Last summer our magic was working and we’re grateful. I hope your system works for you; experiment if it doesn’t.

[kokanee64]

Part 2

While I can’t say why our luck was so good, I can share one technique that works – some of the time. In 2001 when we first got a boat (a 16ft Boston Whaler Dauntless), my dad and I learned how to fish for kokanees on Blue Mesa using leadcore line and later using manual downriggers. My dad would routinely grab the leadcore line right below the first rod guide and pull it down 18 inches or so, and then release it. Every once in while that was quickly followed by a bite. We did the same thing by pulling on a downrigger line, lifting the weight a foot or so, and letting the weight settle. Does it work? If jerking randomly, success will depend on an equally random chance that a fish is there to watch the lure speed forward and then stop for a second or two, making the lure easy to bite. Too many low frequency random variables leads to low success rates. We don’t do random. Mary drives our boat and she knows how to hunt kokanee. Once she finds kokanee she pulls our lures through them again and again. Kokanee hang out together, not randomly, and she works areas with fish. She drives in S patterns to tempt fish with modestly increase and decrease speeds. Then she “jerks up a fish.” Mary will be driving and see fish at 57 feet deep. There is no rush because it will take a minute or so for the lure to reach the fish. (At 1.2 mph it takes a minute to travel 106 feet and our lures are typically 80+ feet behind the release.). She waits to let the lures approach the fish, and then walks back and gives the downrigger line a series of quick jerks. When the rod bounces with a bite she takes the slack out of the line and catches a fish. If it doesn’t bounce, she does the same on the other downrigger. She jerked lines several hundred times this summer and fish bit regularly. Sometimes she doesn’t wait long enough after jerking a line before going to the other side of the boat. I swoop in behind her and catch the fish for her. I also jerk the lines to her commands but she induces bites better than me. What is surprising is that after jerking up dozens of fish in front of near-by boats we have never seen anyone copy this technique. It works, just not every time.



So I guess what I’ve learned about kokanee fishing last summer is that every lucky boat has its own system of speed and lure and dodgers and line lengths and secret sauces and sometimes jerking fish and a whole lot more. I know plenty of very successful fishermen who build their systems around higher speeds, designed to get reaction strikes. There have been times when we watched faster boats with envy, their rods popping while we jerked unresponsive lines. Last summer our magic was working and we’re grateful. I hope your system works for you; experiment if it doesn’t.

[kokanee64]

Part 3.

Our last fishing trip was early September and fish were turning red. We were done at the Gorge. By the end of September it was cool enough to give Lake Powell a shot. We skipped the spring trips to Powell because of the mud – the mud line was 40+ miles down lake from the mouth of the Colorado. The drive to Powell is a little longer than to Manila but well worth the travel. We were a little early and spend two nights in the Bullfrog campground waiting for the wind to moderate – winds at LP can be worse than those on FG. Once on the water we headed 40 miles southwest to the junction with the San Juan, then 20 miles up the San Juan to the Piute creek area. It is only a few miles through shallowing water to the head of the San Juan and Navajo Mountain is just up the creek. We rarely see or hear others up the San Juan. A boat goes by once or twice a day but most fishermen are intimidated by the 120 mile round trip from Bullfrog and even longer trip from Page. Eight days of perfect pleasure and I love a long boat trip. We’ve had hotter bass fishing but luck was still with us and we caught plenty of smaller small mouth bass and a few 2+ lb smallies and large mouth bass. Limits are high because fishery managers want to remove more of the 1.25 pound and smaller fish; and we do our part, coming home with over 80 filleted fish. Even the smallest fish we keep are fabulous on fish tacos. The larger fish, lightly breaded and fried, are a guilty indulgence. We considered a second fall trip but family took higher priority and we were more than satisfied by the first trip.

My health remains good – cancer remains at bay and medicine has made a couple of big advances in treating prostate cancer since I was diagnosed 5 years ago and given 3 to 5 years to live. For the first time since this all started I have a Plan C to follow Plans A and B, the ones currently keeping me healthy. The heart ablation I had done in November for Afib (easy-peasy) and the Covid I’m recovering from now (not easy-peasy) are just things to be gotten through. I often think about Pauli’s advice, to “Finish Strong”, and it helps get me up and moving with a solid, positive attitude. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for so many things.

We expect to spend plenty of time fishing Flaming Gorge this coming summer. I somehow doubt that our magic lures will still possess magic by next summer, and we will have the pleasure of experimenting until we find what works. We will be camping on the water and especially in a slip in the Lucerne Valley Marina. Stop by afternoons if you are in the area. We have fishing stories to tell, some true, some semi-true, some aspirationally true.