Mike
Well-known member
My Wife and I ventured to Strawberry Res for the first time this last weekend. We launched at Soldier, and camped off the boat in one of the coves near the narrows. We've been just blowing up an air mattress on the floor of the boat for our sleeping accommodations and despite the heavy day time smoke the night sky's were relatively clear and absolutely packed with stars, and shooting stars! As beautiful as the night skys were were they were chilly! We woke up to a low temp of 40 Sunday morning which made getting out of my sleeping bag harder than it normally is. We fished from 5:45am Saturday morning until 5pm that evening with a couple quick trips to shore so the dogs could stretch their legs. The lake was pretty quiet until about 9am and then I found myself surround by what seemed like 100 boats. Turns out Saturday was a kids fishing derby where the kids got paired with volunteer boats to go fishing for the derby. We thought it was a pretty good reason for the lake to be crowded. We hooked a nice 20'' cut about 5 minutes after trolling out of the cove we camped in but lost him at the OB bracket. It would have made for a good C and R pic. After that our lines went dead for about an hour despite marking hundreds of fish. So I started swapping gear only to find two dead lines with planter rainbows on them. I returned the rambunctious bow pups to the lake and swapped my presentation on each downrigger trying to dial in the koke bite. The dead line scenario plagued us the rest of the day. We finally hooked a fish with some shoulders at about 4pm and netted a nice cut, we threw him on the measuring tape only to find he was an inch over the 15''-22'' slot limit so we quickly returned him. We then hooked our first koke of the trip he was a stud at about 8'' but we kept him as he was badly hooked and the surface temps were nearly 70. Sunday morning we didn't rouse out of our sleeping bags until almost 7am due to the aforementioned chilly temps. We trolled out of the same cove again as the previous day, and were hooked up on a planter rainbow after about 30 minutes we quickly returned him, and I once again started changing gear, searching for the perfect combination to help entice a mature kokanee's bite. Finally at around 10 am my left downrigger got hit by a freight train. I'd finally hooked one of the kokes we'd been looking for only for it to come unbuttoned just outside of the nets reach. Having found a combo that finally was producing chrome we rigged our other side to match and circled back. We were hit again this time a respectable 15'' koke again lost at the back of the boat. Accepting defeat we returned to the ramp and headed home. We found the kokes on hot pink/chartreuse spinner from TNK behind an RMT shattered dodger with pink uv strip tipped with shoepeg corn cured with mortons tender quick and rehydrated with pro cure garlic bloody tuna, and pro cure sardine at 41 feet. I marked large clumped red schools of kokes all day but we just couldn't seal the deal. We had a great time and stayed busy with small trout, and are excited to explore the larger side of the res. [/SIZE]
