TroutScout
Well-known member
Fished the Gorge on June 4th and 5th. There was a bass tournament going on. The parking lot at Buckboard was full. The bass fishermen were well organized and launched and recovered their boats quickly considering how many were there.
The Koke action was very fast early in the morning. I had a hard time keeping two rods in the water. We had fish on within a minute of putting in the downrigger. The longest time between strikes was ten minutes. The action was constant until about 9:30 AM. Then we had to go searching for feeding schools. We found them just south of Buckboard near the island; I don’t know its name. They seemed to like the area where the depth changed from 40 to 82 feet.
Twenty feet down was a good early morning depth for the downrigger. Fifty to sixty-five feet down worked better in the afternoon and running the dodgers and lures 100’ behind the downrigger ball. Carp Spit scent was used on all the lures. I ran a “0” size hammered silver dodger and a red Apex lure. The best speed for that rig was 2.1 mph. It worked well in combination with RMT hyper-plaid with red stripe and a red Mini Hoochie with a red willow leaf spinner blade. The Kokes were nice and fat; our largest was 3 ¼ lbs.
We accidentally caught three rainbows when we ran into 40’ of water. The boat traffic was light. The bass fishermen were hardly noticeable on the water. Occasionally one would zip by. The water temperature was from 59 to 62 degrees; the wind behaved itself until Friday about 11:00.
The Koke action was very fast early in the morning. I had a hard time keeping two rods in the water. We had fish on within a minute of putting in the downrigger. The longest time between strikes was ten minutes. The action was constant until about 9:30 AM. Then we had to go searching for feeding schools. We found them just south of Buckboard near the island; I don’t know its name. They seemed to like the area where the depth changed from 40 to 82 feet.
Twenty feet down was a good early morning depth for the downrigger. Fifty to sixty-five feet down worked better in the afternoon and running the dodgers and lures 100’ behind the downrigger ball. Carp Spit scent was used on all the lures. I ran a “0” size hammered silver dodger and a red Apex lure. The best speed for that rig was 2.1 mph. It worked well in combination with RMT hyper-plaid with red stripe and a red Mini Hoochie with a red willow leaf spinner blade. The Kokes were nice and fat; our largest was 3 ¼ lbs.
We accidentally caught three rainbows when we ran into 40’ of water. The boat traffic was light. The bass fishermen were hardly noticeable on the water. Occasionally one would zip by. The water temperature was from 59 to 62 degrees; the wind behaved itself until Friday about 11:00.
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